Cordova Step Counter Plugin

Uses the step counter service APIs introduced in Android 4.4 KitKat to, you guessed it, count the number of steps whomever is holding the device running your app takes.

Using

Create a new Cordova Project

$ cordova create hello com.example.helloapp Hello

Install the plugin

$ cd hello
$ cordova plugin add https://github.com/texh/cordova-plugin-stepcounter.git

Edit www/js/index.html and add the following code inside onDeviceReady

    var success = function(message) {
        alert(message);
    }

    var failure = function() {
        alert("Error calling CordovaStepCounter Plugin");
    }

    // Start the step counter
    // startingOffset will be added to the total steps counted in this session.
    // ie. say you have already recorded 150 steps for a certain activity, then
    // the step counter records 50. The getStepCount method will then return 200.
    var startingOffset = 0;
    stepcounter.start(startingOffset, success, failure);

    // Stop the step counter
    stepcounter.stop(success, failure);

    // Get the amount of steps for today (or -1 if it no data given)
    stepcounter.getTodayStepCount(success, failure);
    
    // Get the amount of steps since the start command has been called
    stepcounter.getStepCount(success, failure);

    // Returns true/false if Android device is running >API level 19 && has the step counter API available
    stepcounter.deviceCanCountSteps(success, failure);

    // Get the step history (JavaScript object)
    // sample result :
    //{
    //  "2015-01-01":{"offset": 123, "steps": 456},
    //  "2015-01-02":{"offset": 579, "steps": 789}
    //  ...
    //}
    stepcounter.getHistory(
        function(historyData){
            success(historyData);
        },
        failure
    );

Install Android platform

cordova platform add android

Run the code

cordova run

Known Issues

No issues found for the moment, you can check the todo list below for enhancement that are waiting

Changes in 0.0.6

The getStepCount method now returns the nb steps since START command has been called. When calling START, count go back to 0.

Fixed : The master count (getStepCount) should return the nb steps since START command has been sent, Todat : if service is killed it might restart to 0.

Changes in 0.0.5

The "isEnabled" Property is now an app preference so the service and boot handler can use it even if app is killed.

Fixed : The service auto-start on device BOOT, even if START command has never been called Fixed : The service won't really stop even if STOP command is called (will auto-restart) Fixed : The success callback is called after Start and Stop actions

Changes in 0.0.4

Added : Re-integrated support for getStepCount which return the step counted since app is started Added : Method getTodayStepsCount for an agregated steps count for all a day (uses offset and history to calculate) Fixed : Issue with phone rebooting in a middle of a day (causes negative steps for the day, due to step < offset)

Changes in 0.0.3

getHistory() and getStepCount() return parsed JSON objects.

Changes in 0.0.2

The StepCounterService is now automatically relaunched when killed (and after one hour for some 4.4.2 START_STICKY Service problem). The StepCounterService should be automatically launched on device boot (using StepCounterBootReceiver)

All the step counter data are saved in the "UserData" SharedPrefs, with the "pedometerData" key so we keep the step counting history JSON formatted ("day": {"offset": XXX,"steps": YYY} A new js function (for cordova) called getHistory() has been added to access the JSON formatted data containing step count history

Compatibility

This will only work on Android devices running 4.4 (KitKat) or higher, and that have a step counter sensor. This includes Google's Nexus line of handsets, and potentially some others.

Use stepcounter.deviceCanCountSteps() to see if a device meets these requirements before trying to use it any further.

Here be dragons

The quality, usefulness and functionality of this code is in no way guaranteed. This is far from production ready stuff you're looking at, and definitely has a few hairy parts that need combing over. If you'd like to help, I'd love to hear from you!

More Info

For more information on setting up Cordova see the documentation For more info on plugins see the Plugin Development Guide

Todo / Work in progress

It should be interesting to merge this plugin with an ios compatible plugin such as leecrossley/cordova-plugin-pedometer. We should look into changing the interface of this plugin for v0.1.0 release to match that of leecrossley/cordova-plugin-pedometer as closely as possible so as to be able to work towards this in the future. We should review the storage way in StepCounterService to use SQLite rather than SharedPreferences, so the custom queries will be possible