Is it possible to add specific properties to gradle.properties file from config.xml?

[PeterHdd]

Hello Cordova android community,

First thank you for all the effort in the android platform! I have a question, is there a way to add properties to the gradle.properties file automatically? So basically when doing cordova build android I want a specific property to be added there so the build passes in the CI. I know for androidx we can just add this in the config.xml:

<preference name="AndroidXEnabled" value="true" />

But what if some other property needs to be added how would we do that?

For example if i wanna ignore jetifying the jackson-core library:

android.jetifier.ignorelist = jackson-core

Can this somehow be added in the config.xml or the plugin.xml and then it gets added to the gradle.properties? If so how can this be done?

[breautek]

There's nothing like <edit-config> or <config-file> (which only operates on XML files) for the gradle properties file.

But you can configure an after_prepare hook to run a NodeJS script to manipulate the gradle.properties

The config would look something like:

<widget ...>
    ...
    <platform name="android">
        ...
        <hook type="after_prepare" src="scripts/configureJetifierIgnore.js" />
    </platform>
</widget>

And inside scripts/configureJetifierIgnore.js:

const FS = require('fs');
const Path = require('path');

module.exports = function(context) {
    const propertiesPath = Path.resolve(process.cwd(), 'platforms/android/gradle.properties');
    
    let properties = FS.readFileSync(propertiesPath, {
        encoding: 'utf-8'
    });

    // Replace any lines that begin with android.jetifier.ignoreList
    properties = properties.replace(/^android\.jetifier\.ignorelist.+/m, '');

    // Append a new ignoreList directive on a new line:
    properties += '\r\nandroid.jetifier.ignoreList = jackson-core';

    // Finally write the file back out
    FS.writeFileSync(propertiesPath, properties);
};

Notes:

1. Code is untested, I don't remember what the actual current working directory is in hooks, but I assume it's the project root directory, where you normally run your cordova commands. The example code might require tweaks to work properly.
2. after_prepare hook is the hook after cordova sets up the native project. By this time all files that cordova manipulates/updates should be written. So any manipulations done by the hook should persist for the build step which starts just after the prepare step.
3. I do not remember if gradle.properties is one of the files that is consistently wiped, so you may have to check if android.jetifier.ignoreList key already exist in properties and either remove it (like the script does) or parse to update it.
4. The context object isn't well documented. What it contains will vary on hook type, platform, and CLI options passed. You can console.log it to see if there are anything that is helpful.

[PeterHdd]

Thank you, worked perfectly!