Mobile App Development: Cordova, Framework7, React Native, Capacitor and Android with Kotlin

Mobile App Development is the fourth volume of the Web Coding Series. It takes a web developer from the browser to the phone. You wrap a web page in a native shell with Cordova, make it look like an iOS or Material app with Framework7, render real native widgets from JavaScript with React Native, package a web app as an Android project you own with Capacitor, and finally write the app in Kotlin with Jetpack Compose. One app, BookNest, a small bookshop with the same six books, runs through all five chapters, so you can compare the same screen built five ways.

Almost every example was run. The apps were built with cordova-android 15, Framework7 9.1.3, Expo SDK 57 with React Native 0.86.3, Capacitor 8 and Kotlin 2.4.20, then installed on an Android 16 emulator, and the listings show the build logs, Logcat sessions, test runs and screens they actually produced. iOS steps, which need a Mac with Xcode, come from official documentation and are marked as not run here. Where something needs a paid account or an API key, the book says so instead of inventing a result.

What you will learn

Cordova: the Android toolchain and emulator, config.xml, the WebView bridge, core plugins and writing your own in Java and Kotlin, a signed App Bundle, remote debugging and security, and an honest comparison with Capacitor.

Framework7: the iOS and Material themes, navbars, tabs and the router, lists, forms, pickers, sheets and panels, virtual lists, the built-in Store, React and Vue bindings, and an installable Progressive Web App.

React Native: the New Architecture and Hermes, Expo and EAS, core components, Reanimated and Gesture Handler, Expo Router, TanStack Query and Zustand, forms with Zod, NativeWind, a Turbo Native Module in Kotlin, authentication, push notifications, maps and the camera, testing with Jest and Maestro, performance and publishing.

Capacitor 8: the CLI workflow, native projects you own, how the bridge works, official and Capawesome plugins, a custom plugin, migrating from Cordova, live updates, App Links, secure storage, a signed release, and a comparison with React Native, Flutter and Tauri.

Android with Kotlin: the language for TypeScript developers, coroutines and Flow, Jetpack Compose, Material 3 and navigation, ViewModel, Hilt, Room, Retrofit and WorkManager, CameraX and widgets, testing, profiling and R8, Google Play, and Kotlin Multiplatform.

Why this book is different

The code was executed, not imagined. Where the documentation and the real behavior disagreed, the book reports what actually happened.

One BookNest app is rebuilt in every chapter from the same data, so the approaches are compared screen by screen, not in the abstract.

It covers the platforms as they stand today: React Native's New Architecture with Expo, Capacitor as Cordova's successor, and Jetpack Compose instead of XML layouts.

Hundreds of listings, tables, diagrams and emulator screenshots, quick-reference appendices, a glossary, and an index of open-source tools with their repositories and licenses.

Ten "Test Yourself!" questions end every chapter, and every answer was produced by running the code.