how to single react native kontaktio for android and ios - android

How do I make a single component (say MainContent.js) that branches off according to the Platform to start scanning for beacons, with the kontaktio ios api, on an iphone, but with the kontaktio android api on an android phone?
The scanning is configured and callbacks are set up, in componentDidMount(), and also the scanning itself is started in componentDidMount().
But the ios kontaktio api uses NativeEmitter and has a very different api from the android kontaktio api which uses DeviceEmitter and has very different events, methods, and structures, (for example using connect() instead of init()).
I cannot do this in one code file, because I need to import different things and set different constants for each platform. But the results are the same. I identify a beacon nearby and set some state. (for example through Redux).
There's probably a simple way to do it, and this is most likely a stupid question, but somehow I cannot think of a way to do this since the components are not visual and there is no "render".

OK. From these answers here: Can I require a module specifically for iOS in React Native? I learned to make an AppMain.ios.js and an AppMain.android.js and automatically react native chooses the correct one.
I had to uninstall the latest app on my device, and then did a gradlew clean in the android directory, and then ran on device as usual and everythings ok. Similarly for the iphone.

Related

Is it possible to develop mobile keyboard app in flutter

We want to develop mobile keyboard app - (Third party keyboard) that have some unique features (such translate on the keyboard).
We would like to know if there is a way to developed it once both for IOS and Android, with Flutter, or any other solution?
There's a long and a short answer to this. The short answer is basically no, it's not feasible at this time to do this.
The long answer is that it may be somewhat possible but with a fairly large amount of work for you to do. You're going to have to first create and appropriate project type in android and ios, and then import the dart code & set up the build. You may be able to start with a normal flutter application and modify the xcode/gradle builds to match the specifics for ios/android, but I'd guess that's somewhat unlikely. So you'll probably still have to maintain two separate projects, but which could import the same dart library for the UI.
Because Android and iOS use different APIs for their keyboards, you're going to need to write a Platform Plugin or at least method channels which communicate between your app and the native code, for each of iOS and Android. You'll also probably have to embed the flutter view yourself - see this example as I'd bet the normal FlutterApplication etc won't apply.
I'd guess that on android you could probably get this to work eventually with a lot of work (depending on how familiar you are with android, platform channels, and integrating libraries such as flutter's into the build); on iOS you might have luck but it's somewhat conceivable that iOS blocks certain features that flutter needs in the keyboard for performance or security reasons - just guessing from my experiences developing apps in native iOS although I haven't done a keyboard specifically.
That being said, if you do try this I'd be interested to hear the results, and if you were to go about it in a somewhat generic way that could be re-used it would be of great benefit to the flutter community!

How to migrate a multi-platform app in React Native?

I’ve started to dig into integrating React Native in existing apps, and I mean real industrialized apps (iOS and Android version of a same app) that we wish to refactor with as much RN as we can for bringing code bases together (there is also an existing web version).
We are pretty convinced that including multiple RCTRootView sharing the same bridge is the best approach for us, starting from the basic content views (where sharing code bases is easier and more profitable) and iterating to turn more and more parts of app in RN (Animation, Navigation, …).
But when we’ve investigated this approach, several questions popped out, both technical and organizational.
First of all, although we don’t want to be iOS-first or Android-first, the Android platform doesn’t seem to have the same maturity of the iOS platform for this kind of work. We faced some problems like:
The ReactRootView doesn’t follow the React lifecycle, unlike iOS’s RCTRootView, there is no API to update props : https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/6303
It’s impossible to include a ReactRootView inside a native scrollview. This limitation exists from the day one of the Android release (see https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/9022)
The following is not really a “problem” but it adds some doubts about the Android support.
The iOS part of the integrating doc clearly mentions that it’s possible to init a view using an existing bridge (initWithBridge, the API is explicit too).
On Android, the same doc mentions that multiple views can share the same ReactInstanceManager, but if you expose 2 components in your bundle and use it, you have to call twice startReactApplication and you’ll see 2 lines in Chrome console
Running application "XXX" with appParams
Running application "YYY" with appParams
Sounds not very optimized to me… Did I really create 2 entire “RN apps” here ?
That being said, we are looking for feedbacks and answers :
About the Android platform, is it reasonable to synchronize the refactor on both platforms or we’d better turn the iOS app into RN and then the Android one ?
How far can we go in RN views displayed simultaneously ? 10, 20 views at a time ?
Our app is “data-oriented”. Is it a good idea to move the data-fetching in a Redux app in the RN world first ? I guess we have to expose data and notify store updates to the native world: what is the most efficient way to do this ? (Native modules makes the communication in the other side easy, native toward RN, but they seem not helpful for this purpose).
Also, how to organize the VCS ? Is moving the 4 code bases (iOS, Android, Web and the RN bundle) in a mono-repository a necessary move ?

React Native & Android?

I'm contemplating on using React Native for a new web app. Is it possible to ship both iOS and Android apps using it?
I know that it's on the roadmap, but it's unclear to me whether it's going to be a separate open-source project (e.g., React Android vs React Native), or just one (e.g., React Native).
TLDR: Most likely you can. But it depends on your use cases.
You can aim for about 80~99+% code reuse (depending on how much Android/iOS native views/modules you use eg. Do you have custom graphics code or low-level TCP networking code; Those can only be done in native code; And expose as API to your JS code. The amount of the platform-specific JS code is actually minimal. Plus you can also use platform check like if (Platform.OS === 'android'){} to solve that) of code reuse, which is pretty nice. Dropbox and other companies have done similar projects: using c++ to build a 'shared' component between iOS and Android project, while implementing most of the UI code in native iOS(Objective-c or swift) and Android(java). But now you are doing C++ with Java and Objective-C or Swift, more language to master, more complexity and more brain juice went down the drain. And it probably took some super tough gymnastic move to make different native code work in both iOS and Android, plus debugging...
React Native just makes it a lot easier to write almost everything in JavaScript. But there is a catch, only about 80% of the JS code could be shared. In the foreseeable future, you still need to write 'platform-specific' JS code for Android and iOS versions.
That's why FB said they aim for 'Learn once, code anywhere' instead of 'run' everywhere.
But it's still very nice other than code reuse(80+% code reuse is still a big improvement comparing to maintaining 2 entirely different versions: Android and iOS ya?)
Cmd +R to refresh the app is a GREAT boost for development speed. Waiting for a big project to compile just makes you felt you were dying inside.
Declarative UI you get for free, because of using React. This is another great plus! As you don't need to 'dig' into your specific UI code that often anymore. Data changed? Just 'flush' it and UI just update accordingly. No brain juice wasted.
I just ported my not so complicated Android React Native App to iOS. And it took me 3 days. The request for and iOS version for the App came as a rather abrupt and unplanned move. So could definitely be even faster had I built the Android with a plan for iOS too. Huge win:)
Another great benefit is able to do hot code push without going through the hellish 1 week app store review process. So no more, "YAY, our app is approved. Let's release. Oh Shiiit. Critical bug and our app keeps crashing(that's gonna keep happening for at least a week before your fix is live). And you have to beg Apple to speed up the process". This is possible because the major part of the code base would be written in JS and with tools like AppHub or CodePush, you could almost instantly deploy code to your users. This is conditionally allowed by Apple.
3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code, and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework, provided that such scripts and code do not change the primary purpose of the Application by providing features or functionality that are inconsistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application as submitted to the App Store.
Lastly, as an open-source project, project longevity tends to be a concern. Not an issue for React Native. Internally used by(FB Ads Manager) and backed by FB(a dozen FB Engineers?) by Facebook, with close to 500 contributors and 25k Stars, React Native is full of life. Seeing is believing :) (https://github.com/facebook/react-native)
EDIT 1
I realized that I am apparently a bit biased and only talked about the good stuff about React Native. So do checkout https://productpains.com/product/react-native/ and Github issues to have a full picture. It's definitely not silver bullet. That being said, it satisfies most of my use case and I couldn't see me use native iOS or Android anytime soon.
EDIT 2
The Facebook F8 conference app released by Facebook (duh..) is 100% open source and they have a really nice tutorial to show you how you could have both iOS and Android native experience(90% as good as native ?), and at the same time, achieved 85% code re-use. check it out --> https://makeitopen.com
EDIT 3
You may also want to checkout Flutter and its pros & cons :)
It doesn't make sense to have a single codebase if you want a truly native experience. At the moment we have things like NavigatorIOS in React Native which provides an iOS-style UI for navigating between app screens, but if we were to just start using that on Android it wouldn't feel like a true Android app.
Therefore I'd expect to see a NavigatorAndroid component or similar when the time comes, and the same for various other components that behave differently between the platforms.
One benefit that you would get is that any application logic - maybe a store, or your backend interactions - could be written in a JavaScript file and then included by both iOS and Android.
So while you won't get that write-once run-everywhere developer experience from React Native I would expect to see a solution that gives first-class UI on both platforms while encouraging as much reuse as possible. I personally also hope to see strong build tools to help develop and ship on multiple platforms.
React Native for Android has just been released, Android folder will be creating along side with iOS folder upon creating a new project.
Just another tip as NavigatorIOS was mentioned. Facebook are not really maintaining the code for NavigatorIOS. Instead they are focusing on Navigator.
Yes. We're running it in production with about 5m registered users.
Some things are a little behind iOS but catching up quickly. It's a good wagon to be on.
React Native is designed so that you can deploy to both iOS and Android. There is a caveat, of course.
React Native has supported iOS for much longer, coming to Android only recently. So, there are some differences in terms of what is supported on each platform.
For example, if you place borders on Text, they will show up on iOS, but not on Android. In order to overcome this, you need to place a View around the Text, and apply a border to that. Luckily, React Native makes it easy to integrate separate stylesheets for each platform (or even platform-specific styling on a single stylesheet).
Support for Android is continuously evolving, so it will only be a matter of time before React Native for Android is on par with iOS. Nevertheless, this shouldn't deter you. In my experience, it's a great way to quickly develop for both platforms, and it does save some headaches.
you don't need to maintenance separate code base for android & ios. Actually you can use same code base for build android & ios. I recommend to read the react-native documentation(according to react-native version you are using) before using any inbuilt component in your code.
Eg:- TextInput component onKeyPress function supports for ios only.
if ur are using external lib check these lib support for both ios and android.
Anyway you have to configure external lib separately(install) both android and ios.
hope this will helpful.

Is there a way to emulate an android application within a windows program?

I realize it is an odd request, but I'm trying to enable an android app running within a windows program. It doesn't technically need to run within the program, but I would like to display the android app interface within my program along with being able to interact with the app. Anyone ever tried anything like this or could point me in the right direction? If it helps, I'm looking to do this within either a unity or unreal engine simulation.
Did you have a look at BlueStacks? It allows you to run Android app on Windows or Mac. You can try then to interact with it in a standard for Win/Mac way. But, since BlueStacks doesn't provide any API to access the application, you'll have to inject hooks on display related WinApi functions by yourself. And that's not the simplest task.
As an alternative I can suggest you to run Android app inside VirtualBox and use its SDK to access the app output and display it where you like to. You may also check the AndroVM project (predecessor of Genymotion) and its SDL player.

An approach to porting a project to another platform

I am an intern at a company trying to push an android and iPhone out out within the next 5 months. Today, I received information about my first "real" assignment which will entail porting the iPhone App to the Android platform. Here's my problem though: I've never seen a single line of Objective C code and I only just started programming in Java and for Android devices last wednesday.
So how do I go about porting an application? Where do I start? How do I best organize myself and get an overview of which tasks to complete and when to start working on them ?
tldr; How do I port an application to another platform?
Word porting means in effect creating an application on another platform (in another language if needed) that maintains the same functionality. As iOS and Android use different languages and internally very much different operating model, you cannot simply take iPhone code and translate it line-by-line into Android.
What you do need to do is analyse the functionality of the iPhone app and create an app for Android that will perform the same functionality. Do not approach this as a direct "porting" project, but rather as a new development project. You may be able to translate some business logic one-for-one - but anything related to the user interface (and, most likely, to any back-end server communication if you have any) will need to be written from scratch. You may encounter certain things that are present in an iPhone but are not supported at all in Android, or are very complicated to implement, so try to think how to substitute them with whatever Android does support.
The biggest problem you'll encounter with Android is the multitude of screen sizes and versions, each of which may behave differently and support different things. I suggest you start from the beginning and do one screen at a time, adding functionality step-by-step until you get the desired app.
5 months is a long enough period of time to complete the job for almost any app. Good luck!
P.S. I have gone through this exercise myself: having an iPhone app I had to "port" it to android platform. Using the approach I described, it took me about 2 months to complete the android app, which initially took about 3 months to create on an iPhone platform.

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