Capacitor / Ionic SDK

@appspacer/capacitor — OTA live updates for Capacitor and Ionic apps. Push updated web bundles (HTML/JS/CSS) to users without an app store release.

Update model: Downloads a zip of your updated web assets, verifies its integrity, extracts it to the device’s documents directory, and reloads the WebView from there on next launch.

Requirements

	Minimum
Capacitor	`>= 6`
iOS deployment target	`14.0`
Android minSdk	`22`

Installation


npm install @appspacer/capacitor
npx cap sync

iOS — add SSZipArchive

AppSpacer uses SSZipArchive to extract update bundles. Add it via CocoaPods:


# ios/App/Podfile
pod 'SSZipArchive'

Then run:


cd ios && pod install && cd ..

Initialization


import { AppSpacer } from '@appspacer/capacitor';
 
// Call once at app startup (e.g. app.component.ts for Ionic Angular)
await AppSpacer.init({
  deploymentKey: 'your_deployment_key',
  appVersion: '1.0.0',
});

Config Options

Option	Type	Default	Description
`deploymentKey`	`string`	Required	Deployment key from the dashboard
`appVersion`	`string`	Required	Current native app version
`debugLogging`	`boolean`	`false`	Verbose logs

Sync (recommended)

sync() handles the full lifecycle: check → download → verify → apply.


import { AppSpacer } from '@appspacer/capacitor';
 
const result = await AppSpacer.sync();
 
if (result.updateAvailable) {
  // Reload to apply the update
  await AppSpacer.reload();
}

Manual Control


// 1. Check
const update = await AppSpacer.checkForUpdate();
 
if (update.updateAvailable && update.packageUrl && update.hash && update.releaseId) {
  // 2. Download and extract
  await AppSpacerCapacitor.downloadAndApply({
    packageUrl: update.packageUrl,
    hash: update.hash,
    releaseId: update.releaseId,
  });
 
  // 3. Reload to apply
  await AppSpacer.reload();
}

API Reference

Method	Description
`AppSpacer.init(config)`	Initialize the plugin
`AppSpacer.sync()`	Full check → download → apply flow
`AppSpacer.checkForUpdate()`	Check server for an available update
`AppSpacer.reload()`	Reload the WebView
`AppSpacer.resetToBuiltIn()`	Remove OTA bundle and revert to bundled app
`AppSpacer.getDeviceId()`	Get the unique device identifier

Backend Integration

The Capacitor SDK uses the standard update check endpoint:


POST /api/sdk/capacitor/check
Body: { deployment_key, app_version, package_hash, install_id }

POST /api/sdk/capacitor/report-status
Body: { release_id, device_id, app_version, status, error_message }

Returns { update_available: true, package_url, hash, release_id, mandatory } when an update is available.

Push a new web bundle (zip of your www/ directory) via the dashboard or CLI with --platform capacitor.

Deploying Updates


# Build your Ionic/Capacitor app
ionic build --prod
 
# Zip the www directory
zip -r update.zip www/
 
# Push via AppSpacer CLI
appspacer push -a my-app -d Production -p capacitor --bundle update.zip