iOS native app upgrade to hybrid app

Question

I have a native app version 1.0 in iOS and now the client wants the next version to be a hybrid app using html5 and javascript. If i build the hybrid app, can the native app users upgrade to the hybrid app? Will there be any difficulties, issues in doing so? Im using corodova for building the hybrid app.

Answer 1

There’s two things: the app itself, and data.

There won’t be any problems upgrading the app itself: users just get a new version from the app store, and that’s it. The old code is removed, new code is installed, and users can run it just fine.

The data is another matter. If you have any data stored on the device by the native app, the hybrid app likely won’t be able to access it out of the box, unless you code some sort of migration. So just think about how this will work. If your data happens to live in the cloud, you can just re-download everything. If you store the access credentials in Keychain and the app ID doesn’t change, it’s likely that the new hybrid app can use the same credentials that the old app stored.

So, in summary, upgrading the app executable won’t have any problems, but you have to think about data.