JavaScript in Android

I am way late to the party here, but I had this exact need. iOS 7 now includes JavaScriptCore natively and it is really easy to use (despite limited documentation). The problem is that I didn't want to use it unless I could also use something similar on Android. So I created the AndroidJSCore project. It allows you to use your JavaScript code natively in Android without requiring a bulky WebView and injection. You can also seamlessly make asynchronous calls between Java and Javascript.

Update 27 Mar 17: AndroidJSCore has been deprecated in favor of LiquidCore. LiquidCore is based on V8 rather than JavascriptCore, but works essentially same. See the documentation on using LiquidCore as a raw Javascript engine.

From the documentation:

... to get started, you need to create a JavaScript JSContext. The execution of JS code occurs within this context, and separate contexts are isolated virtual machines which do not interact with each other.

JSContext context = new JSContext(); 

This context is itself a JavaScript object. And as such, you can get and set its properties. Since this is the global JavaScript object, these properties will be in the top-level context for all subsequent code in the environment.

context.property("a", 5); JSValue aValue = context.property("a"); double a = aValue.toNumber(); DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat(".#"); System.out.println(df.format(a)); // 5.0 

You can also run JavaScript code in the context:

context.evaluateScript("a = 10"); JSValue newAValue = context.property("a"); System.out.println(df.format(newAValue.toNumber())); // 10.0 String script = "function factorial(x) { var f = 1; for(; x > 1; x--) f *= x; return f; }\n" + "var fact_a = factorial(a);\n"; context.evaluateScript(script); JSValue fact_a = context.property("fact_a"); System.out.println(df.format(fact_a.toNumber())); // 3628800.0 

You can also write functions in Java, but expose them to JavaScript:

JSFunction factorial = new JSFunction(context,"factorial") { public Integer factorial(Integer x) { int factorial = 1; for (; x > 1; x--) { factorial *= x; } return factorial; } }; 

This creates a JavaScript function that will call the Java method factorial when called from JavaScript. It can then be passed to the JavaScript VM:

context.property("factorial", factorial); context.evaluateScript("var f = factorial(10);") JSValue f = context.property("f"); System.out.println(df.format(f.toNumber())); // 3628800.0