Ionic and Android 6 Runtime Permissions

Android Permission Provisioning has changed recently, If an app is using Android SDK API level 22 or below, users are asked for all the permissions in bulk at the time of installation i.e. Without granting permission user can not install the app. Now with Android 6's security patch called Run Time Permission (API level 23 and above) the app while in use can request for specific permission when the need arise ( similar to iOS ) e.g. you will be asked for the location's permission when you actually try to access the location of the device.

To work with runtime permissions on Ionic, you would need to install Cordova diagnostic plugin which gives you the function to fetch the status of the native api's exposed to the app. If a certain permission is mandatory for you app you can prompt the user to grant access to proceed. Further you have specific functions for granting permissions.

Install the plugin

cordova plugin add cordova.plugins.diagnostic

To avail the features of Run Time Permission, you have to build the app with Android platform 6.

Check you current Android platform version

ionic platform

If the version of your Android's Platform is below 5, you will need to update it to 5 or above.

Remove android platform:

ionic platform remove android

Install Android platform version 5 or above:

ionic platform add android@5

In config.xml, set the target of sdk version to 23

<preference name="android-targetSdkVersion" value="23" />

So far we are all set to ask user's for permission on the fly. We will have to call a functions to fetch the status of particular permission for the app. On the basis of the status we will ask the user to grant permissions or ignore it.

Add the following function in your app.js in $ionicPlatform.ready() function.

This will make $rootScope.checkPermission() global and you can call it whenever you wish to check if the user has given the permission to fetch device's location.

$rootScope.checkPermission = function() {
  setLocationPermission = function() {
    cordova.plugins.diagnostic.requestLocationAuthorization(function(status) {
      switch (status) {
        case cordova.plugins.diagnostic.permissionStatus.NOT_REQUESTED:
          break;
        case cordova.plugins.diagnostic.permissionStatus.DENIED:
          break;
        case cordova.plugins.diagnostic.permissionStatus.GRANTED:
          break;
        case cordova.plugins.diagnostic.permissionStatus.GRANTED_WHEN_IN_USE:
          break;
      }
    }, function(error) {}, cordova.plugins.diagnostic.locationAuthorizationMode.ALWAYS);
  };
  cordova.plugins.diagnostic.getPermissionAuthorizationStatus(function(status) {
    switch (status) {
      case cordova.plugins.diagnostic.runtimePermissionStatus.GRANTED:
        break;
      case cordova.plugins.diagnostic.runtimePermissionStatus.NOT_REQUESTED:
        setLocationPermission();
        break;
      case cordova.plugins.diagnostic.runtimePermissionStatus.DENIED:
        setLocationPermission();
        break;
      case cordova.plugins.diagnostic.runtimePermissionStatus.DENIED_ALWAYS:
        setLocationPermission();
        break;
    }
  }, function(error) {}, cordova.plugins.diagnostic.runtimePermission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION);
};

 Here is a link of the code snippet.

Of course, you can choose to skip all this and stick to sdk target version 22, but you will miss out the new cool feature of Android 6 and amazing user experience.