I’m using Expo in the managed workflow. The app is coming along and I’ve added the ability for the app to auto-update itself. I’m using the expo-updates library: https://docs.expo.dev/versions/latest/sdk/updates and the implementation is pretty straightforward.
When our app is opened, our app’s App.tsx runs Updates.checkForUpdateAsync() and then Updates.reloadAsync(). We throw up a brief spinner and 9 out of 10 times the update works just fine. But about 1 out of 10 times the app screen goes white. The iOS header bar with time and Wi-Fi is still visible, but everything else is white. The user has to kill the app and re-open it to resume and now they’re running the latest version.
Unfortunately, this is a difficult issue to reproduce. We can’t do updates in development so we are trying to debug this in our staging environment (a mirror of production). Our repro steps are to push a trivial update to Expo, when the build completes, relaunch the app. We have to do it about ~10 times before we’ll get a freeze case.
The key code is: App.tsx runs:
newUpdate = await checkForAppUpdate()
If (newUpdate) await forceUpdate()
And then our library for these two methods is simple:
import * as Updates from 'expo-updates'
import {Platform} from "react-native"
export const checkForAppUpdate = async (): Promise<boolean> => {
if (Platform.OS == "web" || __DEV__) return false
try {
const update = await Updates.checkForUpdateAsync()
return update.isAvailable
} catch (e) {
console.error(e)
return false
}
}
export const forceUpdate = async () => {
try {
const result = await Updates.fetchUpdateAsync()
if (result.isNew) {
await Updates.reloadAsync()
}
} catch (e) {
console.error(e)
}
}
I’m at a loss for how to debug this. Any clues as to what might be going on? I’m assuming a race condition given the sporadic behavior but I’m stuck.
I ended up figuring this out, but it was tricky. I added all sorts of additional logging to try and catch any exception being thrown and there was not one. The issue is that I had a new dependency in my Expo build/bundle which was not yet supported by the binary version of my app I was running. I rebuilt my binary with the latest libraries and this started working again.
So anyone else who might be faced with this issue: do an audit of all library dependencies with your app and roll back to a previous version when updating was working to isolate what changed.
Related
Expo React Native SDK Version: 46
Platforms: Android/iOS
Package concerned : Expo.Updates
Hello everyone, I want to programmatically check for new updates, without using the fallbackToCacheTimeout in app.json that will trigger the check of the new updates when the application is launched because like that I can't put a custom loading page.
So by doing this all by code as follow :
try{
const update = await Updates.checkForUpdateAsync();
if(update.isAvailable){
await Updates.fetchUpdateAsync();
await Updates.reloadAsync();
}else{}
}catch(err){}
But I want to be able to abort all those calls after a certain time (thus, the user that have a bad connection can use the app without waiting a very long time).
I check the documentation and I cannot found any method that allow this.
I dont't think it's possible to cancel a Promise for now in Javascript, or maybe any connection ?
Or does the "fallbackToCacheTimeout" value in the app.json will automatically apply to the fetch updates call of the Expo API?
Do someone have any idea how to do it ? :(
First of all I am assuming you have set updates.checkautomatically field to ON_ERROR_RECOVERY in app.json or app.config.js file. If not, please check the documentation. The reason why you need this is to avoid automatic updates which can also block your app on splash screen.
Updated Solution
Because of the limitation in javascript we can't cancel any external Promise (not created by us or when its reject method is not exposed to us). Also the function fetchUpdateAsync exposed to us is not a promise but rather contains fetch promise and returns its result.
So, here we have two options:
Cancel reloading the app to update after a timeout.
But note that updates will be fetched in background and stored on
the device. Next time whenever user restarts the app, update will
be installed. I think this is just fine as this approach doesn't
block anything for user and also there is a default timeout for http
request clients like fetch and axios so, request will error out in
case of poor/no internet connection.
Here is the code:
try {
const update = await Updates.checkForUpdateAsync();
if (update.isAvailable) {
const updateFetchPromise = Updates.fetchUpdateAsync();
const timeoutInMillis = 10000; // 10 seconds
const timeoutPromise = new Promise((_, reject) => setTimeout(() => reject("timedout"), timeoutInMillis))
// This will return only one Promise
Promise.race([updateFetchPromise, timeoutPromise])
.then(() => Updates.reloadAsync())
.catch((error) => {
if (error === 'timedout') {
// Here you can show some toast as well
console.log("Updates were not cancelled but reload is stopped.")
} else if (error === 'someKnownError') {
// Handle error
} else {
// Log error and/or show a toast message
}
})
} else {
// Perform some action when update is not available
}
} catch (err) {
// Handle error
}
Change the expo-updates package just for your app using a patch
Here you can return a cancel method with Updates.fetchUpdateAsync() and use it with setTimeout to cancel the fetch request. I won't be providing any code for this part but if you are curious I can definitely provide some help.
Please refer this section to understand use of fallbackToCacheTimeout in eas updates.
Old solution:
Now, for aborting or bypassing the promise i.e. Updates.fetchUpdateAsync in your case. You can basically throw an Error in setTimeout after whatever time duration you want, so that, catch block will be executed, bypassing the promises.
Here is the old code :
try{
const update = await Updates.checkForUpdateAsync();
if(update.isAvailable){
// Throw error after 10 seconds.
const timeout = setTimeout(() => { throw Error("Unable to fetch updates. Skipping..") }, 10000)
await Updates.fetchUpdateAsync();
// Just cancel the above timeout so, no error is thrown.
clearTimeout(timeout)
await Updates.reloadAsync();
}else{}
}catch(err){}
So I am coding a VueJS and ElectronJS template which can be found here: https://github.com/dev-aethex/electronjstemplate
My code works something like this,
Inside of my Vue component I access a global pre constructed class called MainProcessInterface and when it's constructed it first checks if vue is compiled for running in a development server. If it's in a dev server it will connect to the dev socket which electrons main process will host if electron is in dev mode and not compiled. This method seems to be working great, I had to use a socket because vue dev server is being loaded into electron via loadURL and so vue has no clue what ipcRenderer is. Inside the main process interface, if vue is compiled it will instead use the ipcRenderer.send() method. This is were the problem was born.
As soon as Vue runs thought the TS code, it sees ipcRenderer.send and freaks out while printing an error to the electron window console saying fs.existsSync does not exist or is defined.
I can't find a way around this. I though maybe i'll split MainProcessInterface into 2 peices, one for ipc and the other for websockets. Although it isn't a very good way, so before implementing it, I would like to know if there is a better more proper way of doing such.
I had a similar issue with React. Are you importing the ipcRenderer object somewhere in your build process? You might want to make sure it references the correct variable. I tried to drop this in as a comment but it wouldn't fit:
//index.html (index.ejs) for me... This is in the main HTML entry point
var IPC = null;
try {
IPC = require('electron').ipcRenderer;
console.log('IPC IS: ' + IPC)
} catch (err) {
console.log('CRICITCAL ERROR: IPC NOT ENABLED')
console.log(err)
IPC = null;
}
Then I initialize off that context in React with a startup here:
setTimeout(()=>{
console.log('----------------HACK FIRED POST REHYDRATE')
window.REDUX_STORE.dispatch(
(dispatch, getState) => {
const _state = getState()
if(window.IPC) {
if(_state.osc && _state.osc.on) {
dispatch( reconnectToEos() )
} else {
dispatch( updateStatus('[OSC Startup: DISCONNECTED]', ))
}
console.log('\t------------ELECTRON')
} else {
//Shut off OSC
dispatch( updateOscKey('on', false) )
dispatch( updateStatus('[WebApp, OSC disabled]', ))
console.log('\t------------WEB')
}
}
)
}, 1000)
Basically I'm using a global variable (window.IPC) to initialize my app so I don't import a bad variable in my build process. I have a fair number of Electron APIs where this alleviates the issues with building via Webpack.
I hope this helps!
I have a logout Button that binds to the following method.
async onLogoutButtonPress() {
await AsyncStorage.removeItem('accessToken');
await AsyncStorage.removeItem('mobileNumber');
await AsyncStorage.removeItem("businessId");
await AsyncStorage.clear();
this.props.navigation.navigate('Login');
}
I understand that AsyncStorage.removeItem is an asynchronous operation and it returns a Promise. However notice that I am using await that waits for Promise to resolve before navigating to Login.
I also tried the alternate then syntax
AsyncStorage.removeItem(('accessToken')).then(() => {console.log('resolved') },
() => { console.log('rejected') })
And all of them show as resolved in the console, but some how the items persist unless I close and restart the app. I am seeing this behavior on Android.
Why aren't the items getting removed until I restart the app ?
I am using expo for the build, if that matters.
I am using
import { AsyncStorage} from 'react-native';
Here's the react-native version.
"react-native": "https://github.com/expo/react-native/archive/sdk-34.0.0.tar.gz",
I have updated my app on app and play store and I want to force my app users to update the new version of app in App store and playstore.
You can check for the App Store / Play Store version of your app by using this library
react-native-appstore-version-checker.
In expo app you can get the current bundle version using Constants.nativeAppVersion. docs.
Now in your root react native component, you can add an event listener to detect app state change. Every time the app transitions from background to foreground, you can run your logic to determine the current version and the latest version and prompt the user to update the app.
import { AppState } from 'react-native';
class Root extends Component {
componentDidMount() {
AppState.addEventListener('change', this._handleAppStateChange);
}
_handleAppStateChange = (nextState) => {
if (nextState === 'active') {
/**
Add code to check for the remote app version.
Compare it with the local version. If they differ, i.e.,
(remote version) !== (local version), then you can show a screen,
with some UI asking for the user to update. (You can probably show
a button, which on press takes the user directly to the store)
*/
}
}
componentWillUnmount() {
AppState.removeEventListener('change', this._handleAppStateChange);
}
}
import VersionCheck from 'react-native-version-check';
i have used version check lib for this purpose and approach i used is below. if version is lower i'm opening a modal on which an update button appears, and that button redirects to app store/google play
componentDidMount() {
this.checkAppUpdate();
}
checkAppUpdate() {
VersionCheck.needUpdate().then(res => {
if (res.isNeeded) {
setTimeout(() => {
this.setState({openModal: true});
});
}
});
}
updateApp = () => {
VersionCheck.getStoreUrl({
appID: 'com.showassist.showassist',
appName,
})
.then(url => {
Linking.canOpenURL(url)
.then(supported => {
if (!supported) {
} else {
return Linking.openURL(url);
}
})
.catch(err => console.error('An error occurred', err));
})
.catch(err => {
console.log(`error is: ${err}`);
});
};
For future readers.
If you are using Expo managed workflow, install this package react-native-version-check-expo using yarn add react-native-version-check-expo or npm install react-native-version-check-expo.
Consult the package documentation on Github for usage guidelines.
I'm using react-native-version-check-expo library to achieve this. Working fine for me.
if you are looking for an easy to integrate built in solution. You can use App Upgrade https://appupgrade.dev/ service to force update your mobile apps.
Create new version entry for your app version that you want to update in the app upgrade service and select whether you want to force it or just want to let users know that new version is available.
Integrate your app with App Upgrade using available SDK. Official SDK are available for React Native, Flutter, Expo, Android and iOS(Swift).
The SDK will take care of the rest.
Whenever you want to force upgrade a version just create a version entry in app upgrade dashboard.
You can also integrate using API. Just call the appupgrade api from your app with the required details such as your app version, platform, environment and app name.
The API will return you the details.. that this app needs to be updated or not.
Based on the response you can show popup in your app.You can call this API when app starts or periodically to check for the update. You can even provide a custom message.
API response:
See the response has force update true. So handle in the app by showing popup.
You can find the complete user documentation here. https://appupgrade.dev/docs
Thanks.
I am using redux-persist in a react native project, that runs just fine in a broad number of devices except Android 7. I am trying to debug the problem on why my local storage is nor persisting and found this:
The following code executes inside React Native component lifecycle's
componentDidMount() {
attachObservables(store)
setInterval(async () => {
console.log('Inside setInterval')
const data = await AsyncStorage.getAllKeys()
console.log('inside the getAllKeys')
data.forEach(async k => {
const value = await AsyncStorage.getItem(k)
console.group(k)
console.log(value)
console.groupEnd()
})
}, 3000)
}
Code after 'Inside setInterval' is never called. It only runs once if outside the setInterval. If I call once the code outside the setInterval it appears to run just fine. I also tried callback format vs async / await version but it does not seem to matter.
Same problem I had using firebase js library (callbacks never return after the first one). I am now looking for alternatives to workaround the problem.
Any ideas?
As of React Native 0.51 in some Android versions, the runtime can get blocked by other native modules, impeding the resolution of the mentioned methods.
It can be fixed via https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/14101#issuecomment-345563563, ensuring this methods use a free thread from the thread pool.
A PR has been submitted and I hope that will be released in future versions. If you want it to use this fix right now, it is available here https://github.com/netbeast/react-native
EDIT:
I am not experiencing this anymore on real devices over react-native#0.53, anyhow others have also reported, so the issue is still open.