tiapp-composer

A Titanium plugin that enables the definition of a template file for the tiapp.xml of your project. It now supports the app/config.json file too!

NOTE: this script works only as a global plugin, since it has to modify tiapp.xml and config.json before the Titanium CLI parses them.

Installation

npm i -g tiapp-composer

Done!

Usage

The plugin will search for a config (tiapp-cfg.json) and a template file (tiapp.tpl) in your current working directory whenever you launch the titanium build and titanium clean commands. If it doesn't find the config file, it will give a warning and skip to the rest of the command. Once you define the config, however, you have to write a template, or the plugin will simply write an empty tiapp.xml.

tiapp.tpl and tiapp-cfg.json

The tiapp.tpl is an exact copy of a tiapp.xml. The only difference is that it will be treated as an ES6 template literal, so you can define custom variables:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><ti:app xmlns:ti="http://ti.appcelerator.org">
	<id>${app.id}</id>
	<name>Tiapp Composer Test</name>
	<version>{$app.version}</version>
	<publisher>not specified</publisher>
	<url>caffeina.com</url>

	[...]

	<ios>
		<enable-launch-screen-storyboard>true</enable-launch-screen-storyboard>
		<use-app-thinning>true</use-app-thinning>
		<plist>
			<dict>

				[...]

				<key>LSApplicationQueriesSchemes</key>
				<array>
					${app.ios.querySchemes}
				</array>
				<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
				<dict>
				<key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoads</key>
				<${app.ios.allowArbitraryLoads}/>

				[...]

			</dict>
		</plist>
	</ios>
	<android xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
	</android>

	[...]

	<sdk-version>${app.sdkVersion}</sdk-version>
<plugins><plugin version="1.0">ti.alloy</plugin>
</plugins>
</ti:app>

and the corresponding tiapp-cfg.json would be:

{
	"development": {
		"app": {
			"id": "com.myapp.title.test",
			"version": "6.6.6",
			"sdkVersion": "7.0.0.CUSTOMBUILD",
			"ios": {
				"querySchemes": "
				<string>testscheme</string>
				",
				"allowArbitraryLoads": "true"
			}
		}
	},
	"production": {
		"app": {
			"id": "com.myapp.title",
			"version": "6.6.0",
			"sdkVersion": "7.0.0.GA",
			"ios": {
				"querySchemes": "
				<string>twitter</string>
				<string>fb</string>
				",
				"allowArbitraryLoads": "false"
			}
		}
	}
}

As you can see, you can replace entire sections of the tiapp with a custom string. Hell, you could even put the whole tiapp.xml in the config as an attribute. I'm not judging you.

config.tpl and config-cfg.json

You can write a template and configuration for your config.json file too, in the same manner as above. Check out an example template and configuration

--tiappenv

You can use the --tiappenv flag in your titanium build or titanium clean command, with one of the top-level attribute names you defined:

ti build --platform android --target device --device-id all --tiappenv development

Running tiapp-composer...
[INFO]  tiapp-composer: Successfully wrote tiapp.xml

If you use a name you haven't defined in your config, the plugin will not write the tiapp.xml file:

ti build --platform android --target device --device-id all --tiappenv ayylmao

Running tiapp-composer...
[WARN]  tiapp-composer: Couldn't find the environment "ayylmao" in the tiapp-cfg.json file.
[WARN]  tiapp-composer Skipping tiapp.xml composing.

If you don't add the --tiappenv flag to your command, the plugin will default to the name development:

ti build --platform android --target device --device-id all

Running tiapp-composer...
[WARN]  tiapp-composer: --tiappenv flag not set, defaulting to "development"
[INFO]  tiapp-composer: Successfully wrote tiapp.xml

Tips

• If you use TiNy (and you should, it's a real time saver), you can write a custom tn.json file and add some recipes with different --tiappenv flags:

tn project save testdroid --platform android --target device --device-id all --tiappenv mytestenv
tn project save proddroid --platform android --target device --device-id all --tiappenv myprodenv

• If you use Git in your project (and if you are reading this, that's probably the case), you should append /tiapp.xml to your .gitignore file, since it will be overwritten at each build command. The plugin will even give you a warning if you don't do so.

But why, though?

The reason behind this contraption is that I had to switch between different tiapp settings in one of my projects, depending on the type of build i had deploy (test, enterprise, production...). Initially I would keep several branches with different tiapp files, but that approach was time and space consuming, and prone to errors. After trying other solutions, and with the pressing need to adopt CI in my projects, I decided to write my own plugin.