When you develop for iOS, you can quickly add third-party libraries to your NativeScript projects via the CocoaPods dependency manager.

To work with such libraries, you need to wrap them as a custom NativeScript plugin and add them to your project.

• Install CocoaPods
• Create CLI Project
• Wrap the Library as NativeScript Plugin
• Build the Project

You need to install CocoaPods. If you haven't yet, you can do so by running:

$ sudo gem install cocoapods

NOTE: All operations and code in this article are verified against CocoaPods 0.38.2.

To check your current version, run the following command.

$ pod --version

To update CocoaPods, just run the installation command again.

sudo gem install cocoapods

To start, create a project and add the iOS platform.

$ tns create MYCocoaPods
$ cd MYCocoaPods
$ tns platform add ios

For more information about working with NativeScript plugins, click here.

cd ..
mkdir my-plugin
cd my-plugin

Create a package.json file with the following content:

{
  "name": "myplugin",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "nativescript": {
    "platforms": {
      "ios": "1.3.0"
    }
  }
}

Create a Podfile which describes the dependency to the library that you want to use. Move it to the platforms/ios folder.

my-plugin/
├── package.json
└── platforms/
    └── ios/
        └── Podfile

Next, install the plugin:

tns plugin add ../my-plugin

tns build ios

This modifies the MYCocoaPods.xcodeproj and creates a workspace with the same name.

IMPORTANT: You will no longer be able to run the xcodeproj alone. NativeScript CLI will build the newly created workspace and produce the correct .ipa.