Platform.ready() called before cordova deviceready for livereload builds (this.platform.is("cordova") also returns false).

[sachingarg05]

Bug:

platform ready() is called 'before' cordova deviceready when doing a livereload build. And it is called with readySource = "dom" instead of "cordova".

Reason:

ionic:platform code to setup ready() promise runs before cordova.js has loaded. So it decides that it is not in cordova environment and doesn't need to wait for deviceready.

Why this seems to be happening:

(Probably not due to this, see my comment below)

When doing ionic cordova run ios --livereload, cordova.js is added in script tags at the end. This could be the reason why vendor.js/main.js code doesn't find window.cordova object when settings up platform.ready promise.

Same behavior as above when trying to run using:
ionic serve --no-open --external --consolelogs --engine=cordova --platform=ios

When doing ionic cordova prepare ios, cordova.js is added in script tags before vendor.js or main.js. So things work OK here.

Possible Fix
Change order in which code adds cordova.js script tag for livereload/serve builds. It should be before code adds script tags vendor.js or main.js.

Ionic Info

Ionic:

   Ionic CLI                     : 6.12.1 (/Users/user/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/@ionic/cli)
   Ionic Framework               : @ionic/angular 4.11.13
   @angular-devkit/build-angular : 0.801.3
   @angular-devkit/schematics    : 8.1.3
   @angular/cli                  : 8.1.3
   @ionic/angular-toolkit        : 2.3.0 // Pinned to this slightly older version because https://github.com/ionic-team/angular-toolkit/issues/435

Cordova:

   Cordova CLI       : 10.0.0
   Cordova Platforms : android 9.0.0, ios 6.1.1
   Cordova Plugins   : cordova-plugin-ionic-keyboard 2.2.0, (and 30 other plugins)

Utility:

   cordova-res (update available: 0.15.2) : 0.15.1
   native-run (update available: 1.3.0)   : 1.2.2

System:

   Android SDK Tools : 26.1.1 (/Users/user/Library/Android/sdk)
   ios-deploy        : 1.11.3
   ios-sim           : 8.0.2
   NodeJS            : v12.19.0 (/usr/local/bin/node)
   npm               : 6.13.6
   OS                : macOS Catalina
   Xcode             : Xcode 11.6 Build version 11E708

[sachingarg05]

This doesn't seem to be related to order to script tags as I suggested above.

Manually setting window.document.addEventListener("deviceready" works but even after deviceready this.platform.is("cordova") returns false.

[mhartington]

@sachingarg05 do you have a sample project that we can debug? Otherwise, we can't debug the issue.

[sachingarg05]

Not sure if this is due to Ionic 4 or due to large number of native plugins in our project resulting in a timing-issue/race-condition (30 plugins, app compiles to 125 MB on Android). Will try to create a sample project.

[mhartington]

@sachingarg05 Hey, any luck getting a sample project together?

[sachingarg05]

We couldn't reproduce it in a fresh ionic5 project, and our main project was on ionic4 AND it didn't use cordova-plugin-ionic-webview (we stayed on file:// when we started using ionic to not have to migrate saved preferences of existing users).

We have now update our app to ionic5 + cordova-plugin-ionic-webview + a small custom plugin that reads old stored prefs from file:// origin and sends it to main cordova+ionic webview. (We couldn't make ionicons5 work with file:// even with whatwg-fetch polyfill + cordova-plugin-wkwebview-file-xhr combination that fixed it for ionic4).

Will try reproducing if this problem still exists with ionic5 in this new setup and report back with a sample project. Some of our plugins are closed-source and if removing them from sample project hides the bug that will complicate it. All this might take a few days.

[mhartington]

If thats the case, Im going to close this then. Since the issue can't be replicate in a fresh project, it's probably something specific to your app.