Migrating app from Cordova to ionic

2
votes

Experts,

We have a couple of hybrid mobile apps we have developed using plain Cordova plugins and AngularJS that we developed over last few months. I have been following Ionic framework over last few months and see that there are some benefits over plain Cordova/Phonegap. If anybody has gone through migration of Hybrid apps from plain Cordova/Phonegap to Ionic or those who have implemented Apps using Ionic framework, pls share your thoughts:

  1. Are there real performance benefits of using Ionic over plain Cordova with AngularJS?
  2. I have had issues with Cordova plugins like camera plugin and file chooser plugin and getting support or fixes from Cordova team has been a herculean task. Does usage of Ionic alleviate such problems via quick support/fixes?
  3. I intend to use DB plugins (like mysql lite). Has anybody used ionic mysql plugins that helps in faster (and performing) DB operations? Any experience?

Thanks and regards, Giri

1
ionic-frameworkcordova-pluginshybrid-mobile-app

1 Answers

3
votes

I won't call myself an expert however:

  1. Ionic framework is basically just cordova + angular. So the benefits won't be from a performance standpoint. You would be able to write your apps as a single screen webpage as you would with angular. That's about it. There is also some convenient css going on but I get the impression that that is not really your concern

  2. I haven't had issues with plugins like that. But again, it is really just cordova at the core so ionic probably wont alleviate that. It uses exactly the same plugins as plain cordova.

  3. Once again, it is just cordova + angular. So your experience would be the same mostly. Nothing that I've tried at the plugin level ever worked better or worse in ionic.

Ionic really excells at being cross platform and looking/feeling native without having to write two completely different applications. As far as I can tell it is up to the developers of the plugins to maintain them and not the ionic team so any problems that you have with pluugins will follow you right through with any cordova variants (phonegap, ionic etc.)