Develop Reference

Why my Android app exit suddenly?

I am using Delphi 10.2 to create Android app that uses Rest components to read returning data from post form. When I press on a button to load the data it load them normally after about 3 seconds freeze. The problem if the user try to click (or touch) any control on the form the app exit immediately after the 3 seconds freeze but if the user did not touch the app the data was loaded normally !
What is the reason for that and how I should fix it ?
The code I use for the button is
RESTRequest1.Execute;
I use 3 components RESTClient , RESTRequest and RESTResponse
and here is the code I use to get the data:
procedure TfrmMain.RESTRequest1AfterExecute(Sender: TCustomRESTRequest);
var
return_response: string;
begin
if RESTResponse1.StatusCode = 200 then begin
//fill years
return_response := RESTResponse1.Content;
memo1.text := return_response;
end;
end.

On mobile platforms you should always use ExecuteAsync because it does not run in the same thread as the UI. Execute instead runs on the same thread as the UI so it freezes while the request is processing. Android closes the app if it is not responsive (= freezed) after some seconds, and this is your problem!
To be more precise, here's the doc:
The use of the ExecuteAsync method is strongly recommended on mobile
platforms. iOS (and likely Android) will terminate an application if
it considers the main thread to be unresponsive, i.e. if a running
request takes more than a second or two to return
You can find more info here.
The function ExecuteAsync, as you can see in the doc, has an useful parameter which takes an anonymous procedure. The code of this procedure will be called once the ExecuteAsync has finished his task. Here's an example:
RESTRequest1.ExecuteAsync(
procedure
begin
ShowMessage('Finished!');
end;);
This is very easy and also you don't need to type the other parameters since they alrady have a value by default. Again, if you look at the doc you'll see for example ASynchronized: Boolean = True;, so setting the second parameter after the anonymous proc to True would be not relevant.

AS3 - Loading Image Coordinates from URL

I am developing an Android App in Air for Android using Flash Pro CC & I am tired of pushing updates all the time to change a spawn location for an image that needs to move every few days to a specific location. I won't know the location until just minutes before the update needs to be pushed & it would be much faster to simply have the app load the spawn coordinates for the image upon launch from my website in a .txt file. I would need something where I just type the X and Y coordinates in a file & then the information is loaded and AS3 spawns the image at those coordinates. If no coordinates are available in the text file (as 5 days of the week there won't be), I need a different image to be displayed wherever I place it. I will probably just have a separate frame for that though.
Any help is greatly appreciated & I'd prefer it if the image can be used in a motion tween but if not then I will work something out.
NOTE: I am new to AS3 coding but I have Flash itself figured out for animating with the timeline.

Have a look at URLRequest and URLLoader for retrieving the data. For spawning the image at a specific location, consider just moving it instead; Any object on stage is a DisplayObject, and DisplayObjects have properties x and y. For swapping out the images, look at DisplayObjectContainer, specifically the functions DisplayObjectContainer.addChild(child:DisplayObject) and DisplayObjectContainer.removeChild(child:DisplayObject). I have provided links to the documentation for each of the relevant functions.
If the update is on a daily basis, have a look at the Date class too - that will allow you to find out what date it is and whether you need to make an url request to load the textfile to display the image.
If you have any specific questions regarding the use of these classes, I think it's best if you make a new question with a link back to this one for context. You're good with English, not so good with AS3 (as you say), so I could explain the relevant bits where needed, but it would be a long and complex story if I were to explain this entire functionality in one go. ... I think you'll find that these class names will make googling easier too.
I expect that you'll have to use an URLLoader with an URLRequest to load the textfile, then depending on the results, display the image by adding it to stage via addChild if it's not there yet, and then setting its x and y values. You'll have to use the Date class to check whether you need to make a new request every time the user starts the application or does some specific action.

I have the finished code here. loadURL is the Document Class loaded by Flash. Everything works great!
package {
// IMPORTS EVENTS USED
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
import flash.net.URLLoader;
import flash.events.UncaughtErrorEvent;
import flash.events.ErrorEvent;
import flash.events.Event;
// DECLARES VARIABLES
public class loadURL extends MovieClip {
public var Xurl:String = "URL GOES HERE";
public var Yurl:String = "URL GOES HERE";
public var URLloaderX:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
public var URLloaderY:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
public var marker:Marker = new Marker();
public var gone:Gone = new Gone();
public var connectionerr:ConnectionErr = new ConnectionErr();
// CODE EXECUTED UPON LAUNCH
public function loadURL() {
// constructor code
trace("Loaded");
URLloaderX.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeHandlerX);
URLloaderX.load(new URLRequest(Xurl));
URLloaderY.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeHandlerY);
URLloaderY.load(new URLRequest(Yurl));
loaderInfo.uncaughtErrorEvents.addEventListener(UncaughtErrorEvent.UNCAUGHT_ERROR, onUncaughtError);
}
function completeHandlerX(event:Event):void
{
if(URLloaderX.data == null||URLloaderX.data==(""))
{addChild(gone)}
else{addChild(marker);marker.x = (URLloaderX.data)}
}
function completeHandlerY(event:Event):void
{
if(URLloaderY.data == null||URLloaderY.data==("")){}
marker.y = (URLloaderY.data)
}
private function onUncaughtError(e:UncaughtErrorEvent):void //Checks for no internet connection
{
e.preventDefault(); //leave this
// RESULT OF NO INTERNET HERE
addChild(connectionerr);
}
}
}

App using Mobile Android GNSK crashes when identifyAlbumAsync() is called before audioProcessStart()

I have being upgrading an application to use the new Mobile Android GNSK but I have noticed that using the new MusicID-Stream is a little bit tricky. If the "identifyAlbumAsync" method get executed before the "audioProcessStart" method(since this need to be executed in a different thread), the application just crashes. In the Gracenote Demo application, the "audioProcessStart" method is continuously running so there is no need to synchronize its execution with the "identifyAlbumAsync" method call. Is it the way it is supposed to be used? It will be convenient if the application didn't crashed at least when the methods are not executed in order. Also in our application, we don't want to have the "audioProcessStart" method continuously like it is done in the demo application. We only want to run the "audioProcessStart" method when the user request identification and when the song playing gets identified , we want to stop the audio processing by calling "audioProcessStop". Is there an easy way to do this? Right now, we are getting the Thread where "identifyAlbumAsync" is running to sleep for 2 seconds in order to make sure that the Thread where the "audioProcessStart" method is supposed to run has time to get executed. Thank you in advance for your prompt response

In the upcoming 1.2 release, IGnMusicIdStreamEvents includes a callback that signals audio-processing has started, and an ID can be synced with this, e.g.:
#Override
public void musicIdStreamProcessingStatusEvent( GnMusicIdStreamProcessingStatus status, IGnCancellable canceller ) {
if (GnMusicIdStreamProcessingStatus.kStatusProcessingAudioStarted.compareTo(status) == 0) {
try {
gnMusicIdStream.identifyAlbumAsync();
} catch (GnException e) { }
}
}

Thanks for the feedback, you're right about this issue. Unfortunately right now sleeping is the best solution. But we are adding support for an explicit sync event in an upcoming release, please stay tuned.

Measure Android app startup time

What is the most precise way to measure startup time of an Android app?
By startup time I mean the difference between 2. and 3. :
The app process is not running
User clicks on app icon in the launcher
Main Activity is fully initialized
So I basically need to somehow get time elapsed since JVM started and log it.

I understand I am too late to answer, nonetheless, this precisely answers the question.
This information gets logged on Logcat by default for API version 19 or higher.
From Android 4.4 (API level 19), logcat includes an output line containing a value called Displayed. This value represents the amount of time elapsed between launching the process and finishing drawing the corresponding activity on the screen.
ActivityManager: Displayed com.android.myexample/.StartupTiming: +3s534ms
The key is looking for it in the right place -
If you’re tracking logcat output from the command line, or in a terminal, finding the elapsed time is straightforward. To find elapsed time in Android Studio, you must disable filters in your logcat view. Disabling the filters is necessary because the system server, not the app itself, serves this log.
The extracts are from the documentation.

I'm going to interpret your question as 'Is my app startup time fast enough. How can I check I have done everything I can do?'
The startup time is largely a false metric as it will vary across devices and ROMs. I guess what you're most likely to be interested in is how much of your code is taking a long time to execute and what is potentially blocking the main thread.
I've found the most effective way of doing this is to use Traceview on the app start and then reviewing how long it takes the method to execute and if there are any gaps on the main thread.
Start tracing:
public class MyApplication extends Application {
#Override
public void onCreate() {
super.onCreate();
Debug.startMethodTracing("startup");
}
}
Stop tracing:
#Override
public void onViewCreated(final View view, final Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onViewCreated(view, savedInstanceState);
Debug.stopMethodTracing();
}
Once the trace has been collected, you should be able to see anything that is having a major impact on startup time. In my case, seen below, there was a big gap on the UI thread where is was being blocked.
It transpired that both Crashlytics and Coremetrics were requiring a call to randomUUID() which was then being synchronized across threads and blocking the main thread. The solution was just to spin up a new thread to initialise the Coremetrics code.
This is something I would not have otherwise picked up with just measuring the startup time, but it actually sped up the app 'startup time' by a few hundred milliseconds.
Here's another snapshot after spinning off a separate thread for Coremetrics initialisation:

Check in adb shell in below manner.
adb shell
adb logcat -b events | grep am_activity_launch_time
[Output]
01-01 12:32:53.469 1236 1262 I am_activity_launch_time:
[0,205360373,com.sec.android.app.clockpackage/.ClockPackage,378,**378**,0]
Remarks:
Launch time for Clock is 378ms.

Wrap the entire onCreate() method in a TimingLogger. Just put this at the beginning:
TimingLogger timings = new TimingLogger(TAG, "methodA");
and this at the end:
timings.dumpToLog();
If you want to drop times at some intermediate step, you can do timings.addSplit("name"); to get the time it took to get to that step.

A simple way to display startup time in android.
Sometimes the Displayed line in the logcat output contains an additional field for total time. For example:
ActivityManager: Displayed com.android.myexample/.StartupTiming: +3s534ms (total +1m22s643ms)
In this case, the first time measurement is only for the activity that was first drawn
Source: Time to initial display

It is possible to implement time tracking using the next code:
Override your Application:
public class CustomApplication extends Application {
public final static long APP_START_TIME = System.currentTimeMillis();
/**
* Do all other application stuff
*/
}
And add few rows to your main Activity:
public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
final View contentView = findViewById(android.R.id.content);
contentView.getViewTreeObserver().addOnGlobalLayoutListener(new ViewTreeObserver.OnGlobalLayoutListener() {
#Override
public void onGlobalLayout() {
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 16) {
contentView.getViewTreeObserver().removeOnGlobalLayoutListener(this);
} else {
contentView.getViewTreeObserver().removeGlobalOnLayoutListener(this);
}
long launchTime = System.currentTimeMillis() - CustomApplication.APP_START_TIME;
Log.e("TEST", "App launch time = " + launchTime);
}
});
}
}
And don't forget to define your custom application in Manifest:
<application
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:name=".CustomApplication" >
</application>
Important: You have to kill your application before launch, because Application stores static variable which tracks initial time.

Use SysTrace
Also the Trace class can be used to measure sections using
Trace.beginSection("name");
Trace.endSection();
This YouTube video is a quick primer as well.

I think this has been built into Firebase Console, under performance now

One possibility would be is to save the time at the beginning of the onCreate() method and at the end of the onCreate() method and then subtract those times from each other to get the time taken to initialize the app.

loading screen when window opening up: Android

i am using the Titanium studio for developing android application. a user click on item a new window is being opened which fetch data from a site and populate the tableview. so this window does take time to open.
mean while i am fetching the data and showing loading screen like:
anotherWind.addEventListener('open', function (e) {
activityIndicator.show();
setTimeout(function(){
e.source.close();
activityIndicator.hide();
}, 6000);
});
the problem is at this point i'm assuming it takes 6 second to fetch and display a tableview. but in real time it may not be the case as time may vary depending upon the data
when user click a icon it should display the loading screen only for the time data is not pulated and showed in tableview.
its a kind of notification between two tasks. one when task is complted it should notify other one.
how can i resolve that ?

You can use a custom event listener.
Example:
Ti.App.addEventListener('tableDataLoaded', function() {
activityIndicator.hide();
}
When your table data is loaded, you fire the event:
Ti.App.fireEvent('tableDataLoaded');
I hope this will help you :)

It seems multi-thread will be a good solution.Android provide some mechanisms of communication between different threads or processes.

i have implemented the same. my new window needs to load remote data and populate the tableview.
so i just show the indicator in window open
anotherWind.addEventListener('open', function (e) {
activityIndicator.show();
});
and then hide it when my remote data is loaded. inside the callback of httpclient
'APIGetRequest(this.apiURL, function(e) {
var status = this.status;
if (status == 200) {
populatetableview(this.responseText);
activityIndicator.hide();
}
});'