Fixes android plugin install that fail because it cannot find AndroidManifest.xml

patch-android-studio-check.js

/**
 * This hook overrides a function check at runtime. Currently, cordova-android 7+ incorrectly detects that we are using
 * an eclipse style project. This causes a lot of plugins to fail at install time due to paths actually being setup
 * for an Android Studio project. Some plugins choose to install things into 'platforms/android/libs' which makes
 * this original function assume it is an ecplise project.
 */
module.exports = function(context) {
  if (context.opts.cordova.platforms.indexOf('android') < 0) {
    return;
  }

  const path = context.requireCordovaModule('path');
  const androidStudioPath = path.join(context.opts.projectRoot, 'platforms/android/cordova/lib/AndroidStudio');
  const androidStudio = context.requireCordovaModule(androidStudioPath);
  androidStudio.isAndroidStudioProject = function() {  return true; };
};

Add this hook to your cordova project using the cordova hooks syntax. I've found success using only "before_plugin_add".

<platform name="android">
  <hook type="before_plugin_add" src="scripts/patch-android-studio-check.js" />
</platform>

Thanks for this fix! If you already have plugins installed (ie: already have ios platform working) you can add

<platform name="android">
        <hook src="scripts/patch-android-studio-check.js" type="before_plugin_install" />
</platform>

So it will run before install plugins in new platform

just to let you know, cordova has a fix for it too.

add this to your config.xml:

<edit-config file="app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml" mode="merge" target="/manifest/application" />

source: http://cordova.apache.org/announcements/2017/12/04/cordova-android-7.0.0.html

just tested it and it works!

Thank you very much for the patch ! I did not succeed to apply "official" method with the edit-config tag.
Any details or advices @fishgrind please ?

As said here on stack overflow, we should add a few more hooks to let the projects build:

<hook src="hooks/patch-android-studio-check.js" type="before_plugin_install" />
<hook src="hooks/patch-android-studio-check.js" type="before_plugin_add" />
<hook src="hooks/patch-android-studio-check.js" type="before_build" />
<hook src="hooks/patch-android-studio-check.js" type="before_run" />
<hook src="hooks/patch-android-studio-check.js" type="before_plugin_rm" />

I was running the same issues on build/run too

Thank you! It works great in terms of the error 'ENOENT: no such file or directory'.
In my case, some plugins don't support newer Android codes. So my solution was to downgrade android platform to 6.3.0.

Doesn't work for me:
ionic versio: 3.20
npm: 5.6.0
node: v8.11.3

Tried both the hooks folder solution and the one suggested in http://cordova.apache.org/announcements/2017/12/04/cordova-android-7.0.0.html.

The whole trace of error:

cp: copyFileSync: could not write to dest file (code=ENOENT):/Users/jorge.banguera/projects/fp-kitchen-ioinic/platforms/android/res/xml/config.xml

Parsing /Users/jorge.banguera/projects/fp-kitchen-ioinic/platforms/android/res/xml/config.xml failed
(node:87312) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Users/jorge.banguera/projects/fp-kitchen-ioinic/platforms/android/res/xml/config.xml'
    at Object.fs.openSync (fs.js:646:18)
    at Object.fs.readFileSync (fs.js:551:33)
    at Object.parseElementtreeSync (/Users/jorge.banguera/projects/fp-kitchen-ioinic/platforms/android/cordova/node_modules/cordova-common/src/util/xml-helpers.js:180:27)
    at new ConfigParser (/Users/jorge.banguera/projects/fp-kitchen-ioinic/platforms/android/cordova/node_modules/cordova-common/src/ConfigParser/ConfigParser.js:30:24)
    at updateConfigFilesFrom (/Users/jorge.banguera/projects/fp-kitchen-ioinic/platforms/android/cordova/lib/prepare.js:106:18)
    at Api.module.exports.prepare (/Users/jorge.banguera/projects/fp-kitchen-ioinic/platforms/android/cordova/lib/prepare.js:42:20)
    at Api.prepare (/Users/jorge.banguera/projects/fp-kitchen-ioinic/platforms/android/cordova/Api.js:192:45)
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/cordova/node_modules/cordova-lib/src/cordova/prepare.js:106:36
    at _fulfilled (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/cordova/node_modules/cordova-lib/node_modules/q/q.js:787:54)
    at self.promiseDispatch.done (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/cordova/node_modules/cordova-lib/node_modules/q/q.js:816:30)
(node:87312) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Unhandled promise rejection. This error originated either by throwing inside of an async function without a catch block, or by rejecting a promise which was not handled with .catch(). (rejection id: 1)
(node:87312) [DEP0018] DeprecationWarning: Unhandled promise rejections are deprecated. In the future, promise rejections that are not handled will terminate the Node.js process with a non-zero exit code.

any ideas?

I finally made it work but I gad to downgrade the android platform version to 6.3.0

worked for me on android@7.1.0, cheers!

FYsI: updating to Android 8.0.0, from 7.1.4, meant I had to remove this script as it was causing build errors.

I'm upgrading to 8.0.1 and still running into the same issue, unfortunately . Does anyone have any idea ?
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open './platforms/android/AndroidManifest.xml'