Mobile SDK npm Packages

Most mobile developers want to use Mobile SDK as a “black box” and begin creating apps as quickly as possible. For this use case Salesforce provides a set of npm packages. Each package installs a command line tool that you can use at a Terminal window or in a Windows command prompt.

Mobile SDK command line tools provide a static snapshot of an SDK release. For iOS, the npm package installs binary modules rather than uncompiled source code. For Android, the npm package installs a snapshot of the SDK source code rather than binaries. You use the npm scripts not only to access Mobile SDK libraries, but also to create projects.

Mobile SDK provides the following command line tools:

forcedroid

Creates native Android projects in Java or Kotlin.

forceios

Creates native iOS projects in Swift or Objective-C.

forcehybrid

Creates a hybrid project based on Cordova with build targets for iOS, Android, or both.

forcereact

Creates a React Native project with build targets for iOS, Android, or both.

Npm packages reside at https://www.npmjs.org. We recommend installing Mobile SDK packages globally using the following command:

• On Windows:

  • where npm-package-name is one of the following:

    • forcedroid
    • forceios
    • forcehybrid
    • forcereact

  • To install a package locally, omit -g.

• On Mac OS X:

  • where npm-package-name is one of the following:

    • forcedroid
    • forceios
    • forcehybrid
    • forcereact

  • If you have read-write permissions to /usr/local/bin/, you can omit sudo.

  • To install a package locally in a user-owned directory, omit sudo and -g.

• If npm doesn’t exist on your system, install the latest release of Node.js from nodejs.org.

• Npm packages do not support source control, so you can’t update your installation dynamically for new releases. Instead, you install each release separately. To upgrade to new versions of the SDK, go to the npmjs.org website and download the new package.