Appcelerator with expansion files - appcelerator

Has anyone successfully used expansion files with appcelerator? I have found the module that is supposed to let us work with them, however I am running into the problem of the .obb file being downloaded directly from the play store and then being downloaded again with the module. Aside from that I can't seem to get access to any of the files contained within the .obb using the module.
I have heard all of the woes of having a big app, so please don't just tell me to make a smaller app, my client has a large "library" that they want installed directly on the app. It consists of html files that call javascript files and images through relative paths.
Are expansion files even the way to go with this? Should I simply zip up my files and download them after, unpack them, and access them using the file system? I am just looking for a way to get these large files onto the device and access them as if they were in the resources directory of the app.
Any help would be appreciated. thanks!

I have an app that needs over 300 PNG images and text files (to populate a database with) and could not get the app small enough to put up on the Play Store. What I ended up doing was create a barebones app (enough to get the user started) then I download the files on start up. I didn't mess with zipping everything (the data is constantly being updated), but if the information you have is pretty static, you could zip it. Once the download successfully finishes and installs the data, it sets an app property (Ti.App.Properties.setInt) 0 is never ran, 1 is partial download and 2 is download is installed (you can do this however you want, but that's what I did).

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Is there a way to have multiple files with same backing data in macOS FileProvider extension?

I'm creating a macOS FileProviderExtension for the remote Document Storage System (kind of like GoogleDrive), where it is possible to share a single document with multiple folders.
For example, Document1.pdf can simultaneously exist in Folder A and Folder B because it's shared with both folders. In my FileProvider extension, this would mean that file should be accessible in both folders:
Folder A/Document1.pdf
Folder B/Document1.pdf
But the file provider extension will treat those as two completely separate files. I.e., if you download one of them, and then try to open the other one, it will redownload the other one, effectively doubling the used space on user's disk and consuming network connection.
I'm looking for a way to tell the FileProviderItem what is the backing data for the given file, and thus solve problems such as:
If user downloads a file in one location, ideally I would tell the FileProvider extension that the same document in all the other locations is also now downloaded (cloud icon should disappear from all files).
Some approaches I considered:
I thought of using symbolic links as part of solution, but I don't really think that's possible
When user tries to open non-downloaded file, fetchContents(for itemIdentifier) callback is invoked. Once file is downloaded, I would ideally now notify all the other files of the same document that they are downloaded, i.e. by updating the isDownloaded property in NSFileProviderItem, but that doesn't seem to work. Also, even if I do that, I still can't say to file, what his backing data file should be.
By turning off the Sandbox capability, I guess I could, when user tries to download/open the file which has already been downloaded in other location, immediately report that file has been downloaded and provide the copy of already downloaded file as data for the requested file, but there are two drawbacks here:
3.1. I would have to turn off the Sandbox capability because I want to access the file in FileProvider path directly
3.2 System would still use disk space for each file. So, if I have same document in multiple folders, extension would keep all those copies in the system, without the option to tell it that for all those files, there is same backing data file somewhere in extension's Container.

Unzip .app file without it turning into folders

A company I work with have an issue where a zipped .app file is resolving into its bundled folders once unzipped.
What is the best way to compress an .app so that it can be decompressed without that it resolves into folders, that is the want it to remain a single .app file?
Use another format than zip? Compress it in binary?
Thanks in advance
You shouldn't be having any problems with this. As I'L'I points out, an application on the Mac is a bundle of folders. It's just that the Finder presents it to the user as a single entity.
Zipping and unzipping the bundle won't change this. The Finder recognises the .app extension and acts accordingly. It is not necessary to set what used to be called the 'bundle' bit on the top-level folder. That would get lost by round-tripping the app through a .zip file, but that's not important anymore.
So the real question is, how are you inspecting the unzipped copy of your app? If it's via the command line, or some other tool that doesn't know (or care) that apps are really bundles then you will indeed get the behaviour you describe, even with the original.
I couldn't find any way to break the Finder's 'single entity' view of an app, even if I deliberately damaged it but maybe you have found a way. If so, I'd be interested to know how you did it.

How does Firefox generate the hash values when installing extensions

I wrote some code that manually takes a XPI that was already installed from one Firefox profile, and set's up the xpi to be manually set up on a different profile or computer entirely.
So the I set everything up fine within the extensions.sqlite Database that is within the user profile folder. I can even rename the extension on the fly when I move the xpi itself into the extension folder.
Here's my question: When I extract the XPI, there is a file called 'harness-options.json'. Within that file there are two variables, docsSHA256 and jsSHA256.
These to hash variables must be based on the extension in some way, but I am not sure how exactly.
Could anyone point me in the right direction as to how firefox generates these hash codes?
Thanks.
Firefox does not generate these hashes at all. It is the Add-on SDK which does. The Firefox extension manager does not care about harness-options.json at all. The SDK loader in turn, does care about harness-options.json a bit, but doesn't do anything with jsSHA256 or docsSHA256 at the moment. Other tools, such as the validator that runs when you upload something to addons.mozilla.org, do care about jsSHA256 at least.
It should be noted that add-ons not using the SDK do not (normally) contain a harness-options.json file at all.
There will be one jsSHA256 per module lib/, e.g. one for main.js and so on.
docsSHA256 for main.js will be generated from README.md when the SDK builds the XPI. Apparantly, README.md is not packed into the XPI. For all other modules it appears docsSHA256 appears to be null.
The code in question lives in manifest.py.
In the end you shouldn't mess with the XPI (other than repacking an unpacked extension) and/or extensions.sqlite at all. Especially the latter isn't meant to be modified externally.
Just drop the your XPIs files in the corresponding extensions/ folder of the profile and the Add-on manager will automatically pick them up the next time you start the browser.

Fastest way to move files within remote computer from Cocoa application?

I have files stored in a shared directory on one computer and a Cocoa Application running on another computer on the same LAN.
I want the application to move files within the shared directory.
I’m using -NSFileManager copyItemAtPath: toPath: error:. But sometimes it seems extremely slow, regardless of file size. Why would that operation be much longer than doing it directly on the shared directory’s computer?
I'd guess, I don't know for sure, that NSFileManager first downloads the file to copy and then reuploads the downloaded file under a different name. The last thing it does is removing the original file. Of course the downloading and uploading take some time.
The reason for this procedure is that most protocols don't have a 'copy' command. So the client will have to do all the work itself with the explained procedure.

Deploying Files to IsolatedStorage in Windows Phone 7

Hi everyone
I would like to know if it's possible to deploy my app assets directly to Isolated Storage once the app get deployed.
I'm currently extracting them from code but this make the app's first launch too slow and it will be declined once it's submitted to the marketplace.
I'm wondering if there is a nice trick to make the process faster
Thanks
There's no way to automatically deploy to IsolatedStorage on app installation.
There are a few things you can do to try and avoid a delay on first start up though:
Refer to files directly in the XAP where possible.
Split the assets into multiple dlls so that only those needed are loaded into memory.
Load content to IS in the background and prioritize this so that the resources are loaded as needed.
You should not need to load image or video files into IS just to view them.
You should only need to copy the XML files if they're going to be updated. If you just want to read some data this doesn't need to be done. Also, if the XML files just hold initial data/state this could be loaded from the assembly directed and only saved to IS when first persisted.

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