Google+ Cordova/PhoneGap Plugin

by Eddy Verbruggen

0. Index

1. Description
2. Screenshots
3. Google+ API setup
4. Installation (CLI / Plugman)
5. Installation (PhoneGap Build)
6. Usage
7. Troubleshooting
8. Changelog
9. License

1. Description

This plugin allows you to log on with your Google account on iOS and Android. You will not only get the email address of the user, but also stuff like their full name and gender.

2. Screenshots

Android

   

iOS

     

3. Google+ API setup

To communicate with Google+ you need to do some tedious setup, sorry.

iOS

To get your iOS API key, follow Step 1 of this guide get a configuration file here. This GoogleService-Info.plist file contains the REVERSED_CLIENT_ID you'll need during installation.

Android

To configure Android, follow Step 1 of this guide

Make sure you execute the keytool steps as well or authentication will fail.

4. Installation (PhoneGap CLI / Cordova CLI)

This plugin is compatible with Cordova Plugman, compatible with PhoneGap 3.0 CLI, here's how it works with the CLI (backup your project first!):

Using the Cordova CLI and npm

$ cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-googleplus --variable REVERSED_CLIENT_ID=myreversedclientid
$ cordova prepare

To fetch the latest version from GitHub, use

$ cordova plugin add https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/cordova-plugin-googleplus --variable REVERSED_CLIENT_ID=myreversedclientid
$ cordova prepare

GooglePlus.js is brought in automatically. There is no need to change or add anything in your html.

5. Installation (PhoneGap Build)

Add this to your config.xml:

<gap:plugin name="cordova-plugin-googleplus" source="npm">
  <param name="REVERSED_CLIENT_ID" value="myreversedclientid" />
</gap:plugin>

6. Usage

Check the demo app to get you going quickly, or hurt yourself and follow these steps.

Note that none of these methods should be called before deviceready has fired.

isAvailable

You'll want to check this before showing a 'Sign in with Google+' button.

On iOS it will check whether or not the Google+ app is installed. If it's not and you invoke the login function, your app will redirect to Safari which seems an app rejection reason these days.

On Android it will check whether or not Google Play Services is available. It's more likely than not that it is.

window.plugins.googleplus.isAvailable(
    function (available) {
      if (available) {
        // show the Google+ sign-in button
      }
    }
);

Login

window.plugins.googleplus.login(
    {
      'scopes': '... ', // optional space-separated list of scopes, the default is sufficient for login and basic profile info
      'offline': true, // optional and required for Android only - if set to true the plugin will also return the OAuth access token, that can be used to sign in to some third party services that don't accept a Cross-client identity token (ex. Firebase)
      'webApiKey': 'api of web app', // optional API key of your Web application from Credentials settings of your project - if you set it the returned idToken will allow sign in to services like Azure Mobile Services
      // there is no API key for Android; you app is wired to the Google+ API by listing your package name in the google dev console and signing your apk (which you have done in chapter 4)
    },
    function (obj) {
      alert(JSON.stringify(obj)); // do something useful instead of alerting
    },
    function (msg) {
      alert('error: ' + msg);
    }
);

Note that if you're only targeting Android you can pass {} for the first argument.

The success callback (second argument) gets a JSON object with the following contents, with example data of my Google+ account:

 obj.email        // 'eddyverbruggen@gmail.com'
 obj.userId       // user id
 obj.displayName  // 'Eddy Verbruggen'
 obj.imageUrl     // 'http://link-to-my-profilepic.google.com'
 obj.idToken
 obj.oauthToken

 // these are only available on Android at the moment
 obj.gender       // 'male' (other options are 'female' and 'unknown'
 obj.givenName    // 'Eddy'
 obj.middleName   // null (or undefined, depending on the platform)
 obj.familyName   // 'Verbruggen'
 obj.birthday     // '1977-04-22'
 obj.ageRangeMin  // 21 (or null or undefined or a different number)
 obj.ageRangeMax  // null (or undefined or a number)

Try silent login

When the user comes back to your app and you're not sure if he needs to log in, you can call trySilentLogin to try logging him in.

If it succeeds you will get the same object as the login function gets, but if it fails it will not show the authentication dialog to the user.

The code is exactly the same a login, except for the function name.

window.plugins.googleplus.trySilentLogin(
    {
      'offline': true, // optional and required for Android only - if set to true the plugin will also return the OAuth access token, that can be used to sign in to some third party services that don't accept a Cross-client identity token (ex. Firebase)
      'webApiKey': 'api of web app' // optional API key of your Web application from Credentials settings of your project - if you set it the returned idToken will allow sign in to services like Azure Mobile Services 
    },
    function (obj) {
      alert(JSON.stringify(obj)); // do something useful instead of alerting
    },
    function (msg) {
      alert('error: ' + msg);
    }
);

logout

This will clear the OAuth2 token.

window.plugins.googleplus.logout(
    function (msg) {
      alert(msg); // do something useful instead of alerting
    }
);

disconnect

This will clear the OAuth2 token and forget which account was used to login. On Android this will always force the user to authenticate the app again, on iOS using logout seems to do the job already. Need to investigate this a bit more..

window.plugins.googleplus.disconnect(
    function (msg) {
      alert(msg); // do something useful instead of alerting
    }
);

7. Troubleshooting

• Q: After authentication I'm not redirected back to my app.

• A: You probably changed the bundle id of your app after installing this plugin. Make sure that (on iOS) the CFBundleURLTypes bit in your .plist file is the same as the actual bundle id originating from config.xml.

• Q: I can't get authentication to work on Android. And why is there no ANDROID API KEY?

• A: On Android you need to execute the keytool steps, see the installation instructions for details.

8. Changelog

4.0.4: Using framework tags again for Android. 4.0.3: On iOS isAvailable always returns try since that should be fine with the new Google SignIn framework. Re-added imageUrl to the result of SignIn on iOS. 4.0.1: Login on Android would crash the app if isAvailable was invoked beforehand. 4.0.0: Removed the need for iosApiKey, reverted Android to Google playservices framework for wider compatibility, documented scopes feature a bit. 3.0.0: Using Google Sign-In for iOS, instead of Google+. 1.1.0: Added isAvailable, for issue #37 1.0.0: Initial version supporting iOS and Android

9. License

The MIT License (MIT)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.