For up-to-date product documentation, see the IBM MobileFirst Foundation Developer Center.

Register Cordova applications from the MobileFirst Platform CLI

We can use the IBM MobileFirst™ Platform Command Line Interface (CLI) to register your Cordova application to an instance MobileFirst Server.

Before you begin

• You must have the IBM MobileFirst Platform Command Line Interface (CLI) installed. For more information, see Install the MobileFirst Platform CLI.
• You must have an instance of MobileFirst Server running. The server can be running locally, or it can be a remote server, but it must be reachable from your local computer. For more information, see Set up the MobileFirst Development Server, Install the IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation Developer Kit, or Install IBM MobileFirst Platform Server.
• You must have a Cordova application on your local computer, with platforms already installed. For more information, see The Command-Line Interface at the Apache Cordova web site.

Once you have the client side of your Cordova application initially defined, we can prepare for further development tasks by registering it to a MobileFirst Server.

Procedure

1. Check that the target MobileFirst Server is up and running.
2. Navigate to the directory that contains your app, or one of its subdirectories.

   Important:

   • If the current directory is platforms/platform or one of its subdirectories, the registration occurs for only the corresponding platform.
   • For the Windows platform, if we want to register only specific versions of the Windows app, use the --windows option of the mfpdev app register command to specify the versions. For example: mfpdev app register --windows windows,windowsphone8 registers the app for Windows 10 Universal and Windows Phone 8.1. mfpdev app register --windows windows8 registers the Windows 8.1 desktop portion of your Cordova app.

3. Register your app to the server. Use one of the following procedures:
   • To register the app to the default server, run the following command:

     mfpdev app register

     Note: If you have not previously set a default server and a MobileFirst Server is running on the local system, this command registers the app to the local MobileFirst Server, and this server is made the default.

   • To register your app to a server that is not the default server:
     1. Create a server profile by running the mfpdev server add command. For example:

        mfpdev server add Server1 -url https://company.mobile.com:9080 -login admin -password secretPassword!

        For more information about the mfpdev server add command, run mfpdev help server add.

     2. To register your app to the server that you just defined, run the mfpdev app register command, and specify the server profile that you just created. For example:

        mfpdev app register Server1

   For more information about this command, including optional parameters, run mfpdev help app register.

4. To propagate the changes to all the target platforms of your Cordova app, run the cordova prepare command.. The server URL is copied into the config.xml files that are located in each platform's subdirectory.

Results

The app is registered to the target server. Data about the app that is obtained from the config.xml file such as application name, version number, and app ID is sent to the server. The root client properties file config.xml is updated with the value of the server's URL, as are the copies of config.xml that reside in subdirectories that correspond to each of the app's platforms.

What to do next

We can proceed with other development tasks that depend on the MobileFirst Server. For example, we can preview your app, test your app's security features, and manage your app from the MobileFirst Operations Console.

Parent topic: Register Cordova applications to MobileFirst Server