What is PhoneGap Technology?

PhoneGap is a software development platform provided by Adobe System, which has been developed with the intention of creating mobile applications.One of the main characteristics of PhoneGap platform is, for creating mobile applications one need not be efficient in mobile programming languages and only needs the knowledge of Web Development languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

If you own a simple website where most of the thing that you have created is static and has nothing to do with server-side programming then you can surely use PhoneGap for creating an app of your Website and converting your web application into an app. PhoneGap allows you to create an app for all the platforms whether it's an android app or an IOS app or a windows app, you can create all. But As I told you earlier your web application should only be made up of either HTML, CSS, and JavaScript cause PhoneGap only support these threes.

Source: Google Images

You can create an app using PhoneGap in two ways, either Online or Offline. In this article I Will be explaining the Online way, For Online creation, you simply need to upload the complete files of your already existing web application into the PhoneGap build website and rest of the process will be performed by them only. Steps for an Online building of app using PhoneGap:

• First of all, go to https://build.phonegap.com/, then click on Get Started, once you click on Get Started you will be asked to select the plans as there are various plans available there is a free plan and there is paid plan also, select the plans that suit you the best.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Now you will be asked to sign in, If you already own an adobe ID then you can directly Login into your account and if you are visiting for the first time then you need to generate and Adobe ID for yourself and for that you need to register yourself on the website.
  
  
  


• After registering yourself successfully to the website, you will be logged in into the dashboard where you have to upload the files of which you want to create an app.







• Now simply clicks on upload a zip file and upload the files of you already existing web application.Once the Uploading of the file gets completed, you will see the following screen.








• Now just click on Ready to Build after providing your app name and description, Your app will be built down supporting all the platforms whether its IOS or ANDROID or WINDOWS.








• Now Click on the Corresponding Platform Icon, whose app you want to download. After Downloading the app you can install it into your phone and use.Now In order to upload it on the AppStore or PlayStore, you need to sign it to prove its authenticity just click on the name of the app and you can add a key there.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Use the following tool from the command line to generate a Key Store  File: Go the path where the java KeyTool is available and then type the following command.Make sure to access command line in Administrator mode.
  keytool -genkey -v -keystore E:\myapplication.keystore -alias server -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -keystore E:\myserver.jks -dname "CN=myapp,OU=IT-WebDev, O=MyDreamers, L=Raipur, ST=CG, C=IN" && keytool -certreq -alias server -file D:\myserver.csr -keystore E:\myserver.jks. 





• Click on add a key and then upload the created Key Store File, Now once you are uploading the key make sure to use the same alias name that is used while generating the key, in our case the alias name is server and you have to upload the .keystore file , once you upload the key there might be an error regarding key is locked then you will have to unlock it by providing the same password that you used while creating the key. Once Everything is done you can download the signed file.
  
  
  

That's it In this article of mine about PhoneGap, I hope you guys finds it informative and now have the information regarding PhoneGap platform to convert your web applications into an app. How to use PhoneGap offline i will explain in my some other article.