Evernote IOS SDK fetchResourceByHashWith throws exception - evernote

Question

Working with Evernote IOS SDK 3.0
I would like to retrieve a specific resource from note using
fetchResourceByHashWith
This is how I am using it. Just for this example, to be 100% sure about the hash being correct I first download the note with a single resource using fetchNote and then request this resource using its unique hash using fetchResourceByHashWith (hash looks correct when I print it)
ENSession.shared.primaryNoteStore()?.fetchNote(withGuid: guid, includingContent: true, resourceOptions: ENResourceFetchOption.includeData, completion: { note, error in
if error != nil {
print(error)
seal.reject(error!)
} else {
let hash = note?.resources[0].data.bodyHash
ENSession.shared.primaryNoteStore()?.fetchResourceByHashWith(guid: guid, contentHash: hash, options: ENResourceFetchOption.includeData, completion: { res, error in
if error != nil {
print(error)
seal.reject(error!)
} else {
print("works")
seal.fulfill(res!)
}})
}
})
Call to fetchResourceByHashWith fails with
Optional(Error Domain=ENErrorDomain Code=0 "Unknown error" UserInfo={EDAMErrorCode=0, NSLocalizedDescription=Unknown error})
The equivalent setup works on Android SDK.
Everything else works so far in IOS SDK (chunkSync, auth, getting notebooks etc.. so this is not an issue with auth tokens)
would be great to know if this is an sdk bug or I am still doing something wrong.
Thanks

Answer 1

This is a bug in the SDK's "EDAM" Thrift client stub code. First the analysis and then your workarounds.
Evernote's underlying API transport uses a Thrift protocol with a documented schema. The SDK framework includes a layer of autogenerated stub code that is supposed to marshal input and output params correctly for each request and response. You are invoking the underlying getResourceByHash API method on the note store, which is defined per the docs to accept a string type for the contentHash argument. But it turns out the client is sending the hash value as a purely binary field. The service is failing to parse the request, so you're seeing a generic error on the client. This could reflect evolution in the API definition, but more likely this has always been broken in the iOS SDK (getResourceByHash probably doesn't see a lot of usage). If you dig into the more recent Python version of the SDK, or indeed also the Java/Android version, you can see a different pattern for this method: it says it's going to write a string-type field, and then actually emits a binary one. Weirdly, this works. And if you hack up the iOS SDK to do the same thing, it will work, too.
Workarounds:
Best advice is to report the bug and just avoid this method on the note store. You can get resource data in different ways: First of all, you actually got all the data you needed in the response to your fetchNote call, i.e. let resourceData = note?.resources[0].data.body and you're good! You can also pull individual resources by their own guid (not their hash), using fetchResource (use note?.resources[0].guid as the param). Of course, you may really want to use the access-by-hash pattern. In that case...
You can hack in the correct protocol behavior. In the SDK files, which you'll need to build as part of your project, find the ObjC file called ENTProtocol.m. Find the method +sendMessage:toProtocol:withArguments.
It has one line like this:
[outProtocol writeFieldBeginWithName:field.name type:field.type fieldID:field.index];
Replace that line with:
[outProtocol writeFieldBeginWithName:field.name type:(field.type == TType_BINARY ? TType_STRING : field.type) fieldID:field.index];
Rebuild the project and you should find that your code snippet works as expected. This is a massive hack however and although I don't think any other note store methods will be impacted adversely by it, it's possible that other internal user store or other calls will suddenly start acting funny. Also you'd have to maintain the hack through updates. Probably better to report the bug and don't use the method until Evernote publishes a proper fix.