In this chapter, we have seen what Cordova plugins are, and how they can be used in an existing Ionic application. We started off by setting up a local development environment for Android/iOS, and then we learned how to emulate/run the app. Next, we explored how to add Cordova plugins to an Ionic project and use them. Finally, with the aid of ngCordova, we injected plugins as dependencies to our Ionic/Angular app and worked with them in a more Angular way.

In the next chapter, we are going to build another app that uses Ionic, ngCordova, and Firebase.

The application we are going to build is a Chat app, where a user logs in into the app and sees all the users who are online. Once the user selects another user to chat with, they can exchange texts, photos, and Geolocation details.

The aim of the Chat app is to integrate Ionic with a real-time data store, such as Firebase and, at the same time, access device features to make communication richer.