Introduction

Cross-platform geolocation for Cordova with battery-saving “circular region monitoring” and “stop detection”

This plugin can be used for geolocation when the app is running in the foreground or background. It is more battery and data efficient than html5 geolocation or cordova-geolocation plugin. It can be used side by side with other geolocation providers (eg. html5 navigator.geolocation).

This project is based on @mauron85/cordova-plugin-background-geolocation, which in turn was based on the original cordova-background-geolocation plugin by christocracy. Hayl Ltd have taken on responsibility for hosting it and will be maintaining it and merging PRs from the community. If you have any fixes, features or updates that you would like included, please do raise a PR or issue on the GitHub repository.

We are also looking to maintainers to help with this, so that the project does not end up orphaned. If you are interested in helping out with maintaining the project, please see the pinned discussion at GitHub.

The NPM package can be found at cordova-background-geolocation-plugin.

Installing the plugin

cordova plugin add cordova-background-geolocation-plugin

You may also want to change default iOS permission prompts and set specific google play version and android support library version for compatibility with other plugins.

Note: Always consult documentation of other plugins to figure out compatible versions.

cordova plugin add cordova-background-geolocation-plugin \
  --variable GOOGLE_PLAY_SERVICES_VERSION=17+ \
  --variable ANDROID_SUPPORT_LIBRARY_VERSION=26+ \
  --variable ALWAYS_USAGE_DESCRIPTION="App requires ..." \
  --variable MOTION_USAGE_DESCRIPTION="App requires motion detection"

Note: To apply changes, you must remove and reinstall plugin.

Usage

First, configure the plugin with the settings you require.

BackgroundGeolocation.configure({
    locationProvider: BackgroundGeolocation.ACTIVITY_PROVIDER,
    desiredAccuracy: BackgroundGeolocation.HIGH_ACCURACY,
    stationaryRadius: 50,
    distanceFilter: 50,
    notificationTitle: 'Background tracking',
    notificationText: 'enabled',
    debug: true,
    interval: 10000,
    fastestInterval: 5000,
    activitiesInterval: 10000,
    url: 'http://192.168.81.15:3000/location',
    httpHeaders: {
      'X-FOO': 'bar'
    },
    // customize post properties
    postTemplate: {
      lat: '@latitude',
      lon: '@longitude',
      foo: 'bar' // you can also add your own properties
    }
  });

Then call start() to start location tracking.

For a more detailed example, see Example

Location Providers

You can choose from three location providers:

• DISTANCE_FILTER_PROVIDER
• ACTIVITY_PROVIDER
• RAW_PROVIDER

See Which provider should I use? for more information about providers.

Compilation

Compatibility

Plugin version	Cordova CLI	Cordova Platform Android	Cordova Platform iOS
>1.0.0	8.0.0	8.0.0	6.0.0

Please note that as of Cordova Android 8.0.0 icons are by default mipmap/ic_launcher not mipmap/icon, so this plugin will have a build issue on < 8.0.0 Cordova Android builds, you will need to update the icons in AndroidManifest.xml to work on older versions.

Android SDKs

You will need to ensure that you have installed the following items through the Android SDK Manager:

Name	Version
Android SDK Tools	>26.0.2
Android SDK Platform-tools	>26.0.2
Android SDK Build-tools	>26.0.2
Android Support Repository	>47
Android Support Library	>26.1.0
Google Play Services	>11.8.0
Google Repository	>58

Android is no longer supporting downloading support libraries through the SDK Manager. The support libraries are now available through Google’s Maven repository.

Geofencing

There is nice cordova plugin cordova-plugin-geofence, which does exactly that. Let’s keep this plugin lightweight as much as possible.

Licence

Apache License

Copyright (c) 2013 Christopher Scott, Transistor Software

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.