App Development Process

Ionic is a collection of Angular.js, UI Router, Angular directives, Angular services, JS utilities, and mobile focused CSS styles. These are bundled together as ionic.bundle.js and ionic.css.

First, you must install the ionic CLI with npm:

npm install -g ionic

After that, you can start an app using one of our starter templates, or start from scratch, using the command

ionic start myApp blank --type ionic1
ionic start myApp tabs --type ionic1
ionic start myApp sidemenu --type ionic1

You can also use a github or codepen URL to start a project from a cool example you may find.

During the development process, be sure to test on devices often. While Ionic makes it significantly easier to create performant mobile apps, it does not stop you from adding features that are buggy or slow. Please see Caching and Optimization for more tips and tricks for creating performant apps.

To test on a device, first add the platform:

ionic cordova platform add ios 
# or 
ionic cordova platform add android

Then run the command ionic cordova run android or ionic cordova run ios. If you have the device plugged in, it will run on the device. Otherwise, it will start the respective device’s emulator. Note that the npm package ios-sim must be installed for the iOS simulator to be started from the command line.