Building hybrid IOS and Android app with NuxtJS and Capacitor

CapacitorJS is an open-source native runtime that allows for building Web Native apps for cross-platform IOS and Android applications with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The underlying stack can use any front-end frameworks such as VueJS, React, Svelte, Angular, and more.

In this post, you'll be learning how to integrate a new or existing NuxtJS web-based application with Capacitor and to run it as IOS and Android application. If you are not using NuxtJS, Capacitor can be dropped into any existing web projects, and below are some of the frameworks/libraries ready to be used.

Install CapacitorJS on Existing NuxtJS Application

Install capacitor core and CLI in the existing NuxtJS application.

npm install @capacitor/core @capacitor/cli

Alternatively, if you are using yarn

yarn add @capacitor/core @capacitor/cli

Initialize CapacitorJS

Initialize the CapacitorJS and set dist as the web directory to which the runtime can refer to. 

npx cap init --web-dir=dist

Adding Android and IOS platform

To add the cross-platform that you want to support run the command below.

npx cap add android
npx cap add ios

Copy Web Code to Native App Directory

To copy all of your web code from the /dist directory into the appropriate native app directories run the following codes.

npx cap copy

Launch Application on Xcode or Andoird Studio

To open the IOS and Android development projet run the following code but ensure Xcode and Android Studio is installed and available in the system.

npx cap open ios
npx cap open android

Update package.json Scripts

Update package.json to add new script command which is to generate without ssr and right away copy the distribution folder for android and ios application files.

"scripts": {
    "generate-capacitor": "nuxt generate --no-ssr && npx cap copy"
}

Final Workflow (3 Commands)

During development run "yarn watch" to keep the live server running

yarn watch

Once the development is done generate NuxtJS for distribution and copy the generated directory to android

yarn generate-capacitor

Open the project in Xcode or Andorid Studio

npx cap open ios
npx cap open android

Run the application with the simulator.

Plugins

Capacitor comes with many plugins that enable JavaScript code to interface directly with Native APIs and you can visit directly on the Capacitor Plugin Listing page. They have both Official Plugins and Community Plugins available to use right if necessary.