AWS S3 Java SDK: detect time/clock skew programmatically? - android

My Android app uses the AWS Java SDK for uploading user photos to S3.
Whenever a user's phone's clock is 'skewed', this causes all transfers to fail. This is a well documented aspect of S3:
http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1109?_encoding=UTF8&jiveRedirect=1#04
It appears that the upstream S3 service reports this error quite clearly:
HTTP Status Code: 403 Forbidden
Error Code: RequestTimeToo-Skewed
Description: The difference between the request time and the server's
time is too large.
However when using the Java SDK, it seems as if the informative 403 code is lost ... and I have only an opaque "TransferState.Failed" to go by (which incidentally is the same error if internet connectivity is lost, if it times out, etc...).
As far as I can tell from the docs:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/index.html
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/com/amazonaws/services/s3/transfer/TransferProgress.html
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/com/amazonaws/services/s3/transfer/Transfer.TransferState.html
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/com/amazonaws/services/s3/transfer/Upload.html
There is no way to get the additional "RequestTimeToo-Skewed" metadata about a transfer failure.
Am I missing it? Is there any way to get additional error information when an S3 transfer fails using Amazon's Java SDK?
UPDATE #1:
A commenter kindly highlighted that I should clarity two points:
I am actually using the AWS SDK for Android (which seems very similar to the Java SDK, but is nonetheless distinct)
I am using the TransferManager class to perform my upload. Apparently, this is a high-level class that wraps the lower-level AmazonS3Client ... and this lower-level class should expose the error reporting I need, but I am still investigating the exact tradeoffs involved between TransferManager and AmazonS3Client. As far as I can tell, there is no way to get progress information via the (synchronous) AmazonS3Client.putObjectRequest which would be a blocker for me...
UPDATE #2:
My sincere thanks to Jason (of the AWS SDK team) for stopping by and helping me out here. The important information is, indeed, available as properties on an AmazonS3Exception if you use certain methods. The docs had originally confused me and I thought that a manual Thread.sleep() loop was required to poll status (and thus I could not leverage waitForCompletion or waitForException), but if you use ProgressListener on PutObjectRequest you can get full progress callbacks and the error-fidelity of AmazonS3Exception.

these two methods should help you out:
Transfer.waitForCompletion()
Transfer.waitForException()
If you detect that your transfer has failed based on a transfer progress event, you can simply call Transfer.waitForException() to be returned the exception that occurred. That exception will be an AmazonServiceException in this case, with all of the info that you need to see that the real problem was a clock skew issue.
Alternatively, the Transfer.waitForCompletion() method will unwrap the original exception from an ExecutionException and directly throw the original exception, just as if it'd all been happening on one thread. This might be a more convenient approach if you want to use a catch blocks to catch different types of errors cleanly and elegantly.
I disagree that the "catch Exception" block is "brutally broad". The point of that code is to catch any error that happens, mark the transfer as failed and rethrow the error so that the application code can know about it. If it were less broad, then that's exactly the case where exceptions could sneak through and transfer progress wouldn't be updated correctly and would be out of sync with reality.
Give those two methods and shot and let us know if that helps!

Well, I have debugged Amazon's SDK and I'm sorry to say that this information is being swallowed internally. Perhaps I will try to submit a patch.
Details: an AmazonS3Exception is being thrown internally which does in fact accurately report this exact error scenario, but a brutally broad try catch ( Exception e ) consumes it and washes away the specificity.
Here is the guilty try-catch:
https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java/blob/master/src/main/java/com/amazonaws/services/s3/transfer/internal/UploadMonitor.java#L145
Here is a screenshot showing that an AmazonS3Exception is correctly thrown with the right info...

Related

Android BLE BluetoothGatt.writeDescriptor() return sometimes false

I'm trying to write BLE Android app. I found that sometimes when I call
BluetoothGatt.writeDescriptor() it returns false.
I have not found in documentation any note of limitation to this function. But ppl on stack overflow says that I need to wait for BluetoothGattCallback.onDescriptorWrite() before I try to write another descriptor.
Here is one reply saying that BLE is busy with writeDescriptor() and can not do other write.
Here is another thread saying that you can not call twice writeCharacteristic().
My questions are
is it really true?
is there really missing some internal android API buffer for serializing BLE requests and every developer has to do it on it's own?
Is it true for different functions? For example when I call writeDescriptor() I understand I can not call second time writeDescriptor() before I receive onDescriptorWrite(). But do I have to wait for onDescriptorWrite() when I want to call writeCharacteristic()?
Also if there is inter-function dependency then what else function have this limitation (namely: readCharacteristic(), readDescriptor(), requestMtu()...)?
And additionally is there interdependency between BluetoothGattServer and BluetoothGatt. So for example when I call BluetoothGattServer.notifyCharacteristicChanged() shall I wait forBluetoothGattServerCallback.onNotificationSent before I can call BluetoothGatt.writeDescriptor() or BluetoothGatt.writeCharacteristic()? (BTW praise for google documentation onNotificationSent() is by luck documented properly. Doc says:
When multiple notifications are to be sent, an application must wait
for this callback to be received before sending additional
notifications.
Lastly having all this questions - I feel that Android BLE API is under-documented. Or am I wrong and there is documented somewhere what are allowed methods calling sequences? If yes can you please point me to such documentation? If not is there some channel we can open issue with google and ask them to add to documentation something? I mean it may not be much text - some function like onNotificationSent() is arleady properly documented. They just need to copy this sentence to other functions.
The documentation lacks information. However you can read the source code to find out the rules, which (currently) are the following:
For each BluetoothGatt object, you can only have one outstanding request at a time, including requestMtu, readCharacteristic, writeCharacteristic, readDescriptor, writeDescriptor and executeReliableWrite. So if you issue a read request you need to wait for the read response before you issue a write request. While they implemented the code that returns false if there is an ongoing operation in BluetoothGatt.java, they forgot to do this for requestMtu, so if you have multiple requests at a time where requestMtu is one of them, you will get random errors sooner or later (in the latest versions at the time of this post).
So yes, every developer has to manually serialize the requests. Note that the Bluetooth stack actually has a queue of requests, but it is limited to only one request per client (i.e. BluetoothGatt object). So if two apps on the same phone talk to the same device simultaneously you will never get "busy" errors. The only exception is if you use Write Without Response for which the current data flow implementation is quite buggy (see https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37121017 which Google seems to have ignored).
You can send notifications at the same time as you write a characteristic, since the server and client roles are separated.
Regarding updating the documentation, you can always try to file an issue at https://issuetracker.google.com (but I get the feeling nobody reads that), or, since Android is open source, send a pull request to https://android-review.googlesource.com/ which updates the Javadoc from which the documentation is generated.

track error dialogs using omniture app measurement

I am not familiar with omniture tracking, so hoping that someone who has worked on that would be able to help. What I want is to track the number of times an error dialog is displayed. For example if my app shows time out error dialog, it should be tracked in site catalyst.. Can anyone tell, how can we do this?
Check out SiteCatalyst's Android AppMeasurement User Guide for general details on implementation methods.
To track error messages, you will want to create a custom variable (a prop or eVar) and dedicate it to error messages. Then, whenever an error message is fired, define that variable and send an image request. It'd probably be a good idea to define other variables at the same time (such as the current page) so you can get additional dimensions on when/how they're firing.
The pageType variable is usually used for error handling in JavaScript tracking libraries, however this has been removed in recent Android libraries.

RestSharp & MonoDroid: Error getting response stream (ReadDone2): ReceiveFailure

I have a similiar situation like this: How do I handle/fix "Error getting response stream (ReadDone2): ReceiveFailure" when using MonoTouch? but I'm only GETing a list, not posting anything in the body.
Furthermore, I'm using RestSharp, and it works in almost all the cases, but every once in a while I receive Error getting response stream (ReadDone2): ReceiveFailure.
What can possibly be the problem?
(ps: the exact same code on Wp7 doesn't cause any errors)
There is a bug report (https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=19673) which appears to have a reproducible example. So, at the least, you could add yourself to the CC list for it.
(BTW, I get the error (also using restsharp) under Linux (Mint/17, Mono 3.2.8), so it is not specific to Android. It is hard to reproduce: for me it is simply happening after between 1000 and 10,000 web service calls, and it always works when restarting. I am not seeing a CPU or memory problem. It could be some buffer build-up, or might simply be a network failure, or even remote server problem?)

IdleConnectionHandler removing a connection that never existed in my android app

My android app keeps logging this warning :
IdleConnectionHandler removing a connection that never existed
What does that mean? Is that a big problem? What should I do to avoid this?
My app makes many http connections in AsyncTask, is that related?
EDIT:
I found that this call was the reason of this message :
httpclient.getConnectionManager().closeIdleConnections(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
So maybe it tries to close some connections that don't exist?
It sounds like there is a logic error in your code. You may be able to track down the problems using this Android tool called ARO. You can find out more about it here http://developer.att.com/developer/legalAgreementPage.jsp?passedItemId=9700312
It will help you to understand more about how your application is using the network and how you can improve that part of your application to make it more efficient.
Is there a reason you need to make many http connections at once?
I got that error too, but my app uses internet only for ad loading. Currently I have no permission that my app can use internet, so that is why it says "Removing a connection that never existed". That may be one of the reason for this warning.

Android Force Close Uncatchable Unreportable

I've released my second game project on the Android Market this week, and immediately had multiple 1-star reports due to force closes. I tested it on many handsets and many emulators with zero issues. I'm completely at a loss for how to proceed and looking for advice.
I use Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler to intercept and report uncaught exceptions, then close gracefully. The people reporting force closes aren't getting to any of that, even though it is the first thing set in the application's main task constructor, and everything is wrapped in try/catches throughout. They are also reporting that there is no "Send Report" option in the force close popup (providing the Developer Console error reports), so I have absolutely no way of knowing what the problem is.
Uses Android 2.0, with android:minSdkVersion="5". Only Permission required is INTERNET.
(on Android market as 'Fortunes of War FREE' if you want to test)
I'm a bit surprised about the missing "Send report" button. What API level did you build the game with? I usually build the level with your minimum API level to make sure you're not using any API calls beyond that, but then switch back to the highest API level so you can use functionality like "install to SD".
I'm sure there's at least one user who wrote you a mail. Can you ask them to install LogCollector and mail you the log?
Btw, in general, I wouldn't use Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler so there IS the option to send a report. (It's ominously missing in your case, but normally, it should be there.)
Btw btw, the exception handler applies to the current thread. If you have an OpenGL app, maybe the crash happens in the GL thread?
I'm not sure if I understood you correctly, but as far as I know Android only shows that report dialog if you use its default UncaughtExceptionHandler.
Try this:
In your UncaughtExceptionHander's constructor, call Thread.getDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler and save the returned object in a variable (let's call it defaultHandler). In your Handler's uncaughtException() do the things you want to do, and then call defaultHandler.uncaughtException() afterwards.
Maybe something you should know:
In my experience, your Context isn't functional anymore at uncaughtException(). So, you can't send broadcasts, etc anymore.
By the way, if you really wrapped everything in try/catch, that could be the reason why error reporting doesn't work as expected? :P
Good luck
Tom
Perhaps the force closes are caused by stalls, rather than exceptions. Users may not notice the difference. This kind of problem can occur more often if users have CPU hogging services running at the same time as your application, which explains why you're not seeing the issue in your testing.
Permission Internet sounds a lot like you try to transfer data from the net, which is very fast in your local LAN, but all of a sudden becomes slow (and time consuming) when people try this over their GSM connections.
If you then do the data transfer in the UI thread, this one is blocked and the system detects the block - but then this should end up in a "Did not respond" -- but then I've seen one user report an error with in the market on my app that was such a slow down cause.

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