The best place to start with Ionic is our documentation page.

Ionic currently best supports iOS 6+ and Android 4.1+, with scaled-down support for Android 2.3.

What is Ionic?

Ionic is the open source HTML5 Mobile Framework for building amazing, cross-platform hybrid native apps with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

We built Ionic because we wanted a framework that focused on building hybrid native apps, rather than mobile websites. We wanted this framework to be obsessive about great design and performance. A framework that left the past behind and focused on the future where mobile devices could make HTML5 feel native.

It's important to realize that Ionic is not a replacement for frameworks used for building mobile web apps. There are a lot of great solutions that work well for websites, like jQuery Mobile.

Ionic is also not a good solution if you need to support older generation devices. Our compatibility starts at iOS 6 and Android 4.1. We will never support versions earlier than those. This is a framework for the future. Learn more: Where does the Ionic Framework fit in?

Quick Start

To start using ionic, you have two options: copy over the built JS and CSS files, or use the ionic tool (ionic-cli) which can be installed through npm: (You may need to prefix the command with sudo depending on your OS and setup.)

$ npm install -g ionic

Then, you can start a new ionic project by running:

$ ionic start myproject

Manual Start

• Download the latest stable release from:
  • The release folder of this repository
  • The Ionic CDN: Latest Release
  • bower install ionic
• Download the bleeding edge just-from-master release from:
  • The Ionic CDN: Nightly Build
  • Look in the ionic-bower Repository for the latest version, and do for example bower install driftyco/ionic-bower#0.9.23-alpha-652 (bower install ionic will have the latest available soon)

Once you have a release, use js/ionic.js, js/ionic-angular.js, and css/ionic.css.

For most cases, you'll need AngularJS as well. This is bundled in js/angular/ and js/angular-ui-router/.

Demos

• Ionic Codepen.io Demos

Community

• Follow @ionicframework on Twitter.
• Subscribe to the Ionic Newsletter.
• Have a question that's not a feature request or bug report? Discuss on the Ionic Forum.
• Read our Blog.
• Have a feature request or find a bug? Submit an issue.

Authors

Max Lynch

• https://twitter.com/maxlynch
• https://github.com/mlynch

Ben Sperry

• https://twitter.com/benjsperry
• https://github.com/bensperry

Adam Bradley

• https://twitter.com/adamdbradley
• https://github.com/adamdbradley

Andrew Joslin

• https://twitter.com/andrewtjoslin
• https://github.com/ajoslin

Development

• npm install && npm install -g gulp protractor to setup
• (if you wish to run end-to-end tests): webdriver-manager update --chrome to install the webdriver.
• gulp or gulp build to build
• gulp docs to generate docs (read Documentation below for how to test docs locally).
• gulp build --release to build with minification & strip debugs
• gulp watch to watch and rebuild on change
• gulp karma to test one-time
• gulp karma-watch to test and re-run on source change
• gulp snapshot to test e2e tests locally (run gulp demos first to generate e2e tests). Be sure to run ./node_modules/.bin/webdriver-manager update --chrome to first install the chrome webdriver dependency.

Documentation

• Documentation is generated into dist/ionic-site. To test documentation properly, follow these steps:
  1. Clone ionic-site into ./dist/ionic-site.
  • git clone git@github.com:driftyco/ionic-site dist/ionic-site
  2. Start jekyll, telling it to rebuild whenever the site changes.
  • cd dist/ionic-site && jekyll serve -w
  3. Go back to project root and build the docs
  • gulp docs [--doc-version=(versionName|nightly)]
  4. Open localhost:4000 and see your changes! Re-run gulp docs again whenever you change something, and jekyll will update the site.

Demos / Kitchen Sink

• The demo site is generated into dist/ionic-demo. To test the demos, follow these steps:
  1. Run gulp demos [--demo-version=(versionName|nightly)]
  2. Start an http server from dist/ionic-demo:
  • cd dist/ionic-demo && python -m SimpleHTTPServer
  3. Navigate to http://localhost:8000/{versionName|nightly} and use the demos
  4. Run gulp demos again whenever you change the demos

Commit Conventions

• Uses http://github.com/ajoslin/conventional-changelog conventions

Pushing New Release of Ionic

• Almost all of the logic for releasing Ionic is done on the Travis server
• To push a new release:
  1. Update package.json version to new version
  2. Generate changelog with gulp changelog
  3. Go through the changelog, and fix any mistakes or clarify any unclear commit messages
  4. Commit package.json and CHANGELOG.md and push to master
• Travis will detect that this commit changed the version in package.json and push out all necessary for this new release (tags, release files, site config, ...)

LICENSE

Ionic is licensed under the MIT Open Source license. For more information, see the LICENSE file in this repository.