In the google App Engine usage history, I just noticed the field "Datastore Mobile Writes". This is in addition of the usual "Datastore Writes", does anyone have any information on what this is? There's also "Datastore Mobile Reads" and "Small Datastore Mobile Operations".
Datastore Mobile Writes
$0.60/Million Ops 0.00 0.05 0.00 $0.00
It was a test SKU that was published, but not wired up to anything.
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I want to:
play videos in my Xamarin Forms app (iOS + Android + UWP)
follow best practices and use maintained code
be able to secure my content (subscription based access)
if possible, style the transport controls to have a the same look and feel as my app
I found multiple ways that are possible, but not sure what is to be advised given my scenario:
Azure Media player
I found this talk that implied that it is best to use Azure Media Services to transcode your video to different qualities / formats so you can do Adaptive Bitrate Streaming, which means that depending on the quality of the connection and the device type, you will always have the "best possible" video on every type of device with the lowest bandwith usage. According to this talk this requires a "smart player" with the logic to do the switching between quality levels. In the talk the azure media player is mentioned as the go-to video player because it has support for Adaptive Bitrate Streaming (ABS) from azure media services.
It does not mention other players with ABS compatibility.
The transcoded video in the sample is played with Azure Media Player, which is hosted in a WebView. And since this talk was from 2018 and in a very recent release of Xamarin Forms (5.0) they have removed support for UIWebView and replaced it with WKWebView and I'm not sure if the WebView (and thus the video player) used in the sample is still supported / advised.
Custom Renderer
The Xamarin Forms documentation has a section "implementing a video player" where they give you a sample video player in the form of a custom renderer. I like that they allow you to style the transport controls yourself.
It is not mentioned if this video player has the same "smart switching" like the azure media player.
Use vimeo
With a paid subscription you can apperently secure the access your content. The styling of the player is limited, but maybe enough for my purposes. They do the content encoding / smart switching in the player for you. You pay a monthly fee, and have a limit on how many video minutes you can add each month, but no other bandwith / storage costs (as far as I can see).
Quick and dirty (naive?)
I can upload an mp4 to azure blob storage and use the customer renderer sample to playback the video directly from the blob.
This however would mean that there is no dynamic switching of video quality on the client and they would always consume "full bandwidth".
I am new to video transcoding / streaming.
Am I missing something in my analysis?
I would definitely go with option 2 because:
It's recommended by Xamarin and Microsoft.
It's free!
Taking adventage of the native implementation, you would be using the full potential of each platform and you can display videos from any source, local videos from the phone or the project or from YouTube, Vimeo, etc (as long as they are public videos).
Easy to use.
It's easy to customize because you handle the native code, that means you are in charge and not some WebView or someone else library.
I would discard the other options because:
Option 1 might be a good option, but you're consuming Azure and eventually it will cost you or your client money and use a WebView to display a video it's not very friendly from the UX point of view.
Options 3: I would definitely discard a paid solution if I have other options, specially if the other options are free.
Option 4 as same as before, you would be consuming Azure time and process, that lead you to lose money, if you want to upload a public video always upload to YouTube or some similar service, but as you said, consume the video from a native video player is the best option.
And by last, check this official sample, is more updated than the docs.
P.D: it's, custom renderer, not customer renderer ;-)
When an online client (a desktop) and an offline client (a phone) both enter data, and the phone is brought back online, the phone does not receive the data posted on the desktop during the offline period.
To duplicate, in an empty directory, run firebase bootstrap, enter the name of your app, and choose the react template. Then do firebase deploy and firebase open to visit the page in the desktop browser. Then visit the same page in the phone browser.
Begin entering data alternately in the React + Plain Firebase pane of the desktop and phone browsers. Enter '1' on the desktop, '2' on the phone, '3' on the desktop, etc. So far the series displays 1 2 3 on both browsers as expected. Then put the phone in airplane mode and continue entering numbers alternately. Now the desktop shows only the odd numbers that are being added, and the phone shows only the even. This is also expected.
Now bring the phone back online. The phone will push its data to firebase and the even numbers will show up on the desktop (although oddly in a different order in the React + Plain Firebase pane and the React + ReactFire pane).
But the odd numbers do not show up on the phone, until the app is reloaded. Is this expected? Is there a way to force a complete resync in when a client goes online?
UPDATE: Other questions I have seen on firebase offline usage have been about detecting presence, user auth or other more complicated scenarios. My case is simpler. The docs say:
Once connectivity is reestablished, we'll receive the appropriate set of events so that the client "catches up" with the current server state, without having to write any custom code.
To me, this means that syncing should "just work" without the necessity of the app "knowing" whether or not it is online or doing anything special when it goes online.
I was also assuming that firebase offline data storage is persistent, but Kato's recent comment to this question indicates that it is not. So I guess the answer is that Firebase's offline storage implementation is incomplete, and its limitations are not well documented.
Does anyone know of an AIR Native Extension (ANE) that allows you to access the device's notification sound(s)? OR, a method to query if the device is in "silent" or "vibrate" mode?
I've set up Push Notifications, but no sound plays on my (Android) device.
I know I can play my own sounds, but I want to use the native notification sound (the same as an SMS or email alert sound) and I don't want the sound to play if it shouldn't (viz. silent mode / vibrate mode).
I've been looking for hours and there's a "Vibrate ANE," and others looking for the same type of capability, but I haven't found anything usable for native sound notifications.
I believe that iOS automatically will play a notification sound when it receives a push notification (I think), but Android just flashes the "shade title" & shows the app's icon for the notification.
Maybe someone else has stumbled across a solution??? =)
Many Thanks!
Todd =D
I think you might have to be careful attempt to access the built in sounds on iOS.
We definitely could write an extension that played any of the system sounds. However I believe these sounds are copyrighted, and my understanding of the Apple ToS is that your application may get rejected from the AppStore if you use them directly.
This is why things like a notifications extension only use a "default notification" value to access system sounds that are set by the user. These sounds are played on certain system events.
The sounds are all accessed via undocumented IDs: http://iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/AudioServices
So yeah we’ve been very cautious of writing anything that could put developers in trouble with the AppStore. You have enough problems getting apps through as is. But if you read otherwise let me know.
I've looked all over and found nothing about this topic - For people making mobile app games and want to sell levels or potions or whatnot from within the app, is this supported on Flex mobile apps? Are there plans to introduce it? I've found info about advertisement implementation... is this a possible next step? Do you have to use something like PayPal instead of Android Market?
Sorry if this has been asked, but I haven't found anything yet.
Thanks!
I know Adobe said at GDC Conference they are in the process of analyzing requirements to make in-app purchases available via Flash Player API. It's almost a year so far since that announcement but there has not been any further news. The work around/the way most client-server implement these business rule is on the server-side where they implement an entitlements model.
Yes, there are several native extensions that implement this functionality.
I have been using the ones from Milkman Games with good results, and the support is fantastic. No financial association, just a very satisfied user.
There is also a free iOS Storekit ANE as well, although in my experience with it there are still some bugs, notably with blank receipt values for restored transactions: http://code.google.com/p/in-app-purchase-air-ios/
Note: implementing your own entitlements is ill-advised for various reasons:
Apple doesn't allow using anything other than their own in-app
purchase API on iOS.
The various store implementations (well, Apple's
and Amazon's at least, Google Play is another story) handle all of
the details of international purchases and localized pricing for
you.
The store implementations handle payments, subscriptions, durable purchases, and a host
of other details that you will spend a lot of time getting right on your own.
We have an mobile web (ASP.NET + MS-SQL 2008) website that stores users' "personal" data. We are now developing an iPhone & Android apps that would sync mobile data periodically to the same backend. What is the best way of going about it for hosting in the cloud? My requirements in no particular order:
Speed/Performance
Security (we bcrypt the data etc.), but the database needs to be
secure, since a hint of database being "hacked" can affect perception
Availability: need HA
Finally $ - want to maintain costs low.
Some I have looked at are: Google data-store (problem: no RESTful API), Amazon SimpleDB (the cost seems quite prohibitive, has a WTF small 10GB "limit").
Any recommendations on how best to architect this solution?
We decided to go with Amazon RDS https://aws.amazon.com/rds/. It is still in beta and seems price reasonable. Hope this helps someone.