Hooks aren’t solely related to plugins — Cordova projects can have project-level hooks too. That said, hooks can be pretty advanced, so they’re a little beyond our scope in this workshop. Even so, I wanted to mention them so you would be aware of them in case you ever need to add them to your plugin.
What is a hook?
noun A piece of code that hooks into a Cordova process in order to perform some action on behalf of the plugin; see dev guide.
Hooks can execute at many different times (triggered by a Cordova CLI command), but you’ll usually use an after_plugin_install hook or a before_prepare, after_prepare, or before_build hook. Hooks run within your consumer’s development environment, so you do need to be very careful with what your hook does — please, don’t be evil.
So what might you use a hook to accomplish?
- Create entitlements as needed
- Transform code (transpile, version # replacement, etc.)
- Create launch images and icons
- Check plugin versions and warn if out-of-date
I should note, however, that hooks are NOT supported by PhoneGap Build, so if you need to support PGB, either make the hook a value-add, or don’t use hooks at all.
If you want an example a plugin that uses hooks, check out one of my plugins: cordova-plugin-webpack-transpiler
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