How does watchOS find the main storyboard file? - watchkit

I would like to have two storyboard files for feature flag reasons. Only one will be used at a time, but I want to have two files for switching back and forth between builds. However, I cannot find where watchOS determines which storyboard file to load.
iOS has a key UIMainStoryboardFile in Info.plist. But watchOS has no such key.
When I check our current Watch Extension and Watch App targets in both the General and Info sections, I see no mention of storyboard files.
Note that watchOS does have WKExtensionDelegateClassName key for Info.plist, which will also serve my feature flag purpose. However, no code in my WKExtensionDelegate specifies a particular storyboard.
In Xcode, when I look at the current watch storyboard file in the File Inspector right pane, I see no special indicator marking for initial storyboard. Just in case it was listed there.
The App Programming Guide for watchOS does not explain how the connection is made either.
Any ideas?

So after much experimenting:
Conclusion:
I cannot have mutually exclusive Storyboards in watchOS.
watchOS seems to merge all storyboards into one thing.
So when you reference a WKInterface​Controller by name, watchOS just picks the right storyboard.
To feature flag storyboard scenes, just make sure you don't load the wrong one.
Evidence
Building watchOS app extension fails with errors if more than one interface controller is designated "Is Initial Controller" across multiple storyboards. The error is:
Multiple main entry points were specified. Please designate a single interface controller as the entry point of your watch application.
I devised the following scenario and it worked:
Main.storyboard with interface controller identifier "Bobby".
Main2.storyboard with interface controller identifier "Sue".
Main2.storyboard interface controller Sue "Is Initial Controller".
Bobby has button which calls WKInterfaceController.reloadRootControllers(withNames: ["Sue"], contexts: nil)
Button works as expected and loads Sue interface controller scene from Bobby.

Related

Intent Extension for Siri Shortcuts works in Sample App not in existing project

I am trying to use Intents Extension in my existing Obj-C project for conversational shortcuts in iOS 13. I have followed all the steps and the procedures work fine in a sample app.
But when I try it out in my existing application the intents fail to launch and it is automatically redirected to my parent app.
The console error is as follows
[Intents] -[INCache cacheableObjectForIdentifier:] Unable to find cacheable object with identifier intents-remote-image-proxy:?proxyIdentifier=2A439A9B-6D95-BFB2-FCE4-31408D1E677F.png&storageServiceIdentifier=com.apple.Intents.INImageServiceConnection in cache.
Has anyone faced such an issue with intents? Please share your thoughts on this.
Additional Info:
The intent is registered. Have implemented the 'handle' 'resolve' methods and have also declared them in the interface.
Have the extension's min deployment target same as the parent (which created an issue that I had missed previously).
The issue was created due to setting up 'Copy only when installing' boolean as 'true' in 'Embed App Extensions' under 'Build Phases'. It was resolved once the check was made 'false'.

how to implement Exif.PCL in xamarin forms?

I am trying to create a project in which picture is taken to upload from mobile camera, but when it is taken with front camera it rotates upside down (especially Android). I have read suggestions to use Exif.PCL nuget package but dont know how to implement the same. Can anybody help me out with this ?
Thanks
Background
I had the same problem in one of my apps. After trying different approaches I've found several problems with current implementations. Generally I use XLabs, which has media picking capabilities.
Issues
First of all it lacked support for scaling and autorotating images after they are taken. That's your question. So, first of all I had to implement some after-processing as soon as the image was picked.
Second, there are problems with Android and Xamarin.Forms due do how Activities are handled in Android. The way it works on Android is you launch CameraActivity or PhotoGalleryActivity which are actually hosted in a different application. Those Activities use substential amount of system memory, and due to this operating system will try to kill non-forground processes, including your app :) Workarround for this was completely implementing photo taking flow inside of my application by creating photo taking activities from scratch. Thus, I will never leave my app, and Android runtime will never kill my application.
Solution
Taking account all of this, I've implement my own flow of Image capturing. You can find the source code HERE. The basic architecture is following:
I've created IImageService, which has methods for picking images from camera or library.
public interface IImageService
{
Task<IImage> GetImageFromLibrary();
Task<IImage> GetImageFromCamera();
}
Then I've implemented this for iOS and Android separately and used dependency injection. For iOS I use XLabs implementation, cause it works as it should there are no problems with it. For Android I've created several activities to support picking images from Camera and Library: CameraActivity, PhotoGaleryActivity, which basically replace the native image picking activities.
After I pick the image I do scaling and rotating procedure. For iOS I've created UIImageToolbox static class which has GetScaledAndRotatedImage method. For Android it's BitmapToolbox static class which has GetScaledAndRotatedBitmap method.
In my sample application I've created ImageViewModel and ImagePage to demonstrate the usage of IImageService. It should be straightforward.
How to use the sample app?
Let me give a small remark. You can use only XLabs implementation for both iOS and Android and just use BitmapToolbox and UIImageToolbox to implement the scaling and rotation. And this is answer to your question. However, if you want your app to be stable on Android you need to go a little bit dipper.
Install all the necessary nuget packages to your Forms, Droid and iOS projects. You can find the packages that are used by sample application in packages.config file of each project
I use MvvmCross Messenger plugin for broadcast messaging, if you have alternative you can easily replace it. But if you want to use it, don't forget to register dependencies in your AppDelegate and MainActivity
DependencyService.Register();
Add necessary classes to your Forms, iOS and Android projects from sample application. You can use Resharper to fix namespaces for you.
For xaml files, if you drug and drop to forms project default build action and Custom Tool are set to wrong values. Thus click the xaml file, select properties set Build Action to Embedded Resource, and Custom Tool to MSBuild:UpdateDesignTimeXaml
For android project add necessary resources from drawable, drawable-xxhdpi, layout and values folders.
In grid_cell_photo_galery_item.axml file fix namespaces. Replace ImageSample.Droid.Views.SquareRelativeLayout by your namespace.
For Android, right click Android project, select properties, go to Android Manifest and add CAMERA, READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permissions.
For Android, right click Android project, select properties, go to Advanced and set Max Heap Size to something like 1G, this is needed because PhotoGalaryActivity uses substantial amount of memory to display images and we need an increased heap size.
For iOS, don't forget to add dependency injection for MediaPicker in AppDelegate - DependencyService.Register<MediaPicker>();
That's all.

How to update Watch app with updates in core data?

We support iOS 7, so I am not using a framework. The app is mostly objective-c, and the watchkit extension mostly in swift. The AppDelegate manages the Core Data objects.
Our app allows the user to choose a configuration to change what they see. They can switch to a different configuration. When they switch, we remove most everything from NSDefaults and we remove the sqlite database and recreate it. When they switch, its basically starting over.
On the watch side, I have a swift class that has a lazy loaded Singleton of an object that manages the core data objects. But when the app resets its data, how can we report this out to the watch extension? I am guessing that I have to reset the managed object context that the extension created.
You can use MMWormHole to send messages from your iPhone app to your WatchKit extension. In your WatchKit extension you can set the stalenessInterval for your Core Data database to something really short and you will also probably want to refresh your NSManagedObjects.

Tridion 2011 SP1 HR1 - which extension to use?

We have a requirement that on a page publish, we need to:
Find a component presentation that has a component based upon a particular schema.
Extract certain field vales from that component and store them in a custom database table that's available to our .NET application (on the Content Delivery side).
I think this is a good candidate for either a Deployer extension or a Storage extension - but I'm a little unclear which and why having never written either?
I've ruled out the Event System as this kind of code would be located on the CM, which seems like the wrong "side" to me - my focus is on extending what happens on the CD-side after a page is published.
Read a few articles on Tridion World (this, this, this and this) and I think a storage extension would be the better choice?
Mihai's article seems to be very close to what we need, where he uses a new item type mapping:
<ItemTypes defaultStorageId="brokerdb" cached="true">
<Item typeMapping="PublishAction" cached="false" storageId="searchdb" /></ItemTypes>
But how does Tridion "know" to use this new item type when content is published, (its not one of the defined TYPE_NAMEs, which is kind of the point)?
I should clarify I'm a .NET/C# dev not a Java dev so this is probably really obvious to Java people - apologies if it is!
Cheers
Tridion will not know by default how to deploy your new entity. My advise is to create a Deployer Module (your links should give you enough information about how you can do that) that executes in post-processing phase (of the deployment process), that processes all components from the deployment/transport package, extracts the needed information and uses a custom Storage Extension to store the needed information.
Be careful: you need to set-up in config your new type but you also need to use it yourself from that Deployer Module.
Hope this helps.

Debugging SDL Tridion 2011 Custom Resolvers and the GetListPublishItems() method

In one of my C# Template Building Blocks I have the following line of code
publication.GetListPublishItems(uriTarget, false, false,
TDSDefinesInterop.ListColumnFilter.XMLListDefault, listRowFilter);
Before implementing a Custom Resolver, this code executed very quickly. Now that my resolver is implemented for the Publication ItemType the code executes really slowly. From this I conclude that the new Resolver is being called behind the scenes by the GetListPublishItems() method (which makes sense). I assume I need to modify the resolver somehow. However I can't seem to hit a break point in my resolver when the method is called.
I normally attach to the 'TcmTemplateDebugHost' when debugging a template or directly to the publisher process when debugging the resolver. My Resolver only seems to get hit when I first press Publish and not when the GetListPublishItems() method is called.
So this question is twofold:
Do Resolvers get called when the GetListPublishItems() method is used?
Assuming they are called, which process should I attach to when I need to debug it in this scenario?
I don't know for certain, but I can't imagine a sane scenario where a custom resolver wouldn't be involved in GetListPublishItems(). Your evidence seems to back this up, but of course, if we can answer the second part of your question, we'll know it for certain.
I imagine that any normal assumptions you've made about the hosting process are probably correct, so for example, if you are invoking your template during a publish, then the TcmPublisher will be the process. Alternatively, if you were to open up the publish dialog for the publication in the GUI and hit "Show Items To Publish", then it would probably be the COM Surrogate process (dllhost.exe)... and so on. One way to find out for sure, though, is to use Sysinternals Process Explorer, which has a very handy feature that will allow you to search for which processes have a given dll loaded. (Look in the Find menu)
One likely cause for a breakpoint failing to bite is that Visual Studio isn't able to load the symbols correctly. When you're debugging a template building block, Tridion explicitly loads the symbols from a known location, which you can configure (tridion.templating/debugging/#pdbdirectory in the CM config), which is where the template uploader places the PDBs. When the publisher process loads the custom resolver, I doubt if there's any such special mechanism to locate the symbols, so you'll have to fall back to standard .NET methods. The first thing I'd try is to ensure your symbols for the custom resolver class are located in the same place as the assembly (i.e. your bin directory). Failing that you could perhaps configure a symbols path in Visual studio.
The first thing to do is to watch the debug output in Visual Studio. If you start the process and then attach to it, you will see the various assemblies being loaded. If Visual Studio can find the symbols, you will see that the output says "Symbols Loaded".

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