As far as I have understood, if you register a periodic task to deal with your WP7 live tiles, it will not update more than once every half hour. However, I would like to update the data the background agent works on every time the user exits the app.
My scenario is that I have a live tile displaying the first entry in a planner - and depending on what the user does within the app, that planner might get its entries deleted or have a new one up front. To have the live tile present outdated info is not very appealing.
Is this possible - and if so, how to?
I dont know if this is what you are looking for.
My app updates livetiles when the user exits the app. But then I have had problems such as, if the user does not open the app for few days then it does not get updated.
protected override void OnBackKeyPress(System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs e)
{
ShellTile PrimaryTile = ShellTile.ActiveTiles.First();
StandardTileData tile = new StandardTileData();
if (PrimaryTile != null)
{
tile.BackTitle = resMan.GetString("liveTileTitle");
tile.BackBackgroundImage = new Uri("/Background.png", UriKind.Relative);
if (pCycMan.GetStartDate() == pCycMan.GetDefaultDate())
{
tile.Title = resMan.GetString("liveTileNotTrackingStatus");
}
else
{
tile.Title = App.m_liveTileText;
}
PrimaryTile.Update(tile);
}
}
Related
I implemented an IBackgroundTask on Universal Windows 10 and it works like a charm but the problem is that i want to start the app that is associated to that background task if some action occurs. The code is simple:
public sealed class AdvertisementWatcherTask : IBackgroundTask
{
private IBackgroundTaskInstance backgroundTaskInstance;
public void Run(IBackgroundTaskInstance taskInstance)
{
backgroundTaskInstance = taskInstance;
var details = taskInstance.TriggerDetails as BluetoothLEAdvertisementWatcherTriggerDetails;
if (details != null)
{
//Do things
}
}
}
I've seen that you can create a ToastNotification like that:
Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlDocument toastXml = ToastNotificationManager.GetTemplateContent(ToastTemplateType.ToastText01);
Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlNodeList elements = toastXml.GetElementsByTagName("text");
foreach (IXmlNode node in elements)
{
node.InnerText = taskInstance.Task.Name+ " remember to uninstall task if not debugging";
}
ToastNotification notification = new ToastNotification(toastXml);
ToastNotificationManager.CreateToastNotifier().Show(notification);
The notification toast works good. It creates and prompts a notification and if you click it, the app that created this background task starts. This is the behaviour that I want but I want to start the app without having to click any notification. Is there any way to achieve this? Thank you.
TL;DR: I want to start the app that created the background task at some point of the code.
You can not programmatically launch URI or open app from background task. You can however display a reminder or toast notification to let user open your app.
In my Windows Phone app's main page, users can click a button to do some stuff and that will trigger the live tile to update.
The problem I am having is, if the user clicks the button and then hit the phone's Back button really quickly, the live tile sometimes will not render properly. This issue rarely happens, but it does happen and when it happens it just looks bad...
The way I implement the live tile is, create a user control that looks exactly the same as the live tile and then save it to isolated storage. Then retrieve it and store it in a FliptileData object. Finally I call the Update method on the ShellTile. Please see the following piece of code to demonstrate the process.
// the function that saves the user control to isolated storage
public Uri SaveJpegToIsolatedStorage(FrameworkElement tile, string suffix, int tileWidth = 336, int tileHeight = 336)
{
var bmp = new WriteableBitmap(tileWidth, tileHeight);
// Force the content to layout itself properly
tile.Measure(new Size(tileWidth, tileHeight));
tile.Arrange(new Rect(0, 0, tileWidth, tileHeight));
bmp.Render(tile, null);
bmp.Invalidate();
// Obtain the virtual store for the application
IsolatedStorageFile myStore = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication();
using (IsolatedStorageFileStream fileStream = new IsolatedStorageFileStream(IsolatedStorageFileName + suffix, FileMode.Create, myStore))
{
try
{
bmp.SaveJpeg(fileStream, tileWidth, tileHeight, 0, 100);
}
catch (Exception)
{
return null;
}
}
return new Uri("isostore:/" + IsolatedStorageFileName + suffix, UriKind.Absolute);
}
// save the user control to isolated storage and prepare the FlipTileData object
wideFrontTileImage = SaveJpegToIsolatedStorage((UserControl)this.WideFrontTile, "_wide_front", 691);
var flipTileData = new FlipTileData();
flipTileData.WideBackgroundImage = wideFrontTileImage;
return flipTileData;
// update the live tile
var shellTile = ShellTile.ActiveTiles.FirstOrDefault();
shellTile.Update(customTile.GetFlipTileData(data.UndoneMemosCount == "0" && data.TotalMemosCount == "0"));
I think the reason that's causing all this is, when the user clicks the Back button too quickly, the OS terminates all the processes running within the app and the rendering wasn't done at that time. I'm thinking if there's a way to know when the rendering is finished, so I can cancel the Back button and wait until it's finished then manually exit the app. But I simply dunno how...
Any help on this one will be greatly appreciated!
I have ran into similar issue in my WP8 app. The problem was that I was updating my Tile in ApplicationDeactivated event handler. The thing is you should not update your tiles there, but rather in your MainPage.OnNavigatedFrom override. Once I changed this, it works just fine.
I have a project which includes many pages. I want to import information to my database periodically whatever the situation of my application is.
I tried to put my code inside App.xaml.cs but it is only saves data for once (I put it inside launching and tried in Constructor. My method is getting device id's location which is like
void watcher_PositionChanged(object sender, GeoPositionChangedEventArgs<GeoCoordinate> e)
{
Location loc = new GeoCoordinate(e.Position.Location.Latitude, e.Position.Location.Longitude);
//Send Data to Database
dclient.CreateUserLocationCompleted += new EventHandler<System.ComponentModel.AsyncCompletedEventArgs>(dclient_CreateUserLocationCompleted);
dclient.CreateUserLocationAsync(1, loc.Latitude, loc.Longitude);
}
and my watcher position changed is inside the constructor.
if (watcher == null)
{
watcher = new GeoCoordinateWatcher(GeoPositionAccuracy.High)
}
MovementThreshold = getSelectedDeviceLocationFrequencyFromInternalFolder();
watcher.PositionChanged += new EventHandler<GeoPositionChangedEventArgs<GeoCoordinate>>(watcher_PositionChanged);
watcher.Start();
and defined globally inside the App.xaml.cs
How can I run this periodically all the time while program runs ? Any other way ? Thanks (To sum up I want to insert the location data periodically to my database.)
You will need to launch a thread when the app launches that sleeps for whatever time it wants to (or wake up on a signal from the app - when the new value is received) and writes the data to your data store inside it.
I have a background agent that i would like to be executed in Mango for updating the live tile.
The problem is that it is never executed.
Here is the code that i used:
//start background agent
PeriodicTask periodicTask = new PeriodicTask("BruceWpAgent");
periodicTask.Description = "BruceWp periodic live task";
periodicTask.ExpirationTime = System.DateTime.Now.AddDays(10);
// If the agent is already registered with the system,
if (ScheduledActionService.Find(periodicTask.Name) != null)
{
ScheduledActionService.Remove("BruceWpAgent");
}
ScheduledActionService.Add(periodicTask);
I've found my app name between that Apps that use background jobs but the task is never invoked.
What am i doing wrong?
This code may help you..
string periodicTaskName = "PeriodicAgent";
public bool agentsAreEnabled = true;
private void StartBackgroundAgent()
{
// Variable for tracking enabled status of background agents for this app.
agentsAreEnabled = true;
// Obtain a reference to the period task, if one exists
periodicTask = ScheduledActionService.Find(periodicTaskName) as PeriodicTask;
// If the task already exists and background agents are enabled for the
// application, you must remove the task and then add it again to update
// the schedule
if (periodicTask != null)
{
RemoveAgent(periodicTaskName);
}
periodicTask = new PeriodicTask(periodicTaskName);
// The description is required for periodic agents. This is the string that the user
// will see in the background services Settings page on the device.
periodicTask.Description = "Task to update the Economic times tile.";
// Place the call to Add in a try block in case the user has disabled agents
try
{
ScheduledActionService.Add(periodicTask);
// If debugging is enabled, use LaunchForTest to launch the agent in one minute.
ScheduledActionService.LaunchForTest(periodicTaskName, TimeSpan.FromMinutes(2));
}
catch (InvalidOperationException exception)
{
if (exception.Message.Contains("BNS Error: The action is disabled"))
{
MessageBox.Show("Background agents for this application have been disabled by the user.");
agentsAreEnabled = false;
}
}
}
Check out this hands on lab for Adding Multitasking to Your Application in Windows Phone 7.5, that should cover it.
When data is entered, it ultimately needs to be saved remotely on a server. I do want the app to work if there is no data connection at the time also, so I need to save everything locally on the phone too. The app can then sync with the server when it gets a connection.
This brings up a little issue. I'm used to saving everything on the server and then getting the records back with id's generated from the server for them. If there is no connection, the app will save locally to the phone but not the server. When syncing with the server, I don't see a way for the phone to know when a record comes back which locally record it's associated with. There isn't enough unique data to figure this out.
What is the best way to handle this?
One way I've been thinking is to change the id of the records to a GUID and let the phone set the id. This way, all records will have an id locally, and when saving to the server, it should still be a unique id.
I'd like to know what other people have been doing, and what works and what doesn't from experience.
This is how we done with a first windows phone 7 app finished few days ago with my friend.
It might not be the best solution but 'till additional refactoring it works just fine.
It's an application for a web app like a mint.com called slamarica.
If we have feature like save transaction, we first check if we have connection to internet.
// Check if application is in online or in offline mode
if (NetworkDetector.IsOnline)
{
// Save through REST API
_transactionBl.AddTransaction(_currentTransaction);
}
else
{
// Save to phone database
SaveTransactionToPhone(_currentTransaction);
}
If transaction is successfully saved via REST, it responses with transaction object and than we save it to local database. If REST save failed we save data to local database.
private void OnTransactionSaveCompleted(bool isSuccessful, string message, Transaction savedTransaction)
{
MessageBox.Show(message);
if(isSuccessful)
{
// save new transaction to local database
DatabaseBl.Save(savedTransaction);
// save to observable collection Transactions in MainViewModel
App.ViewModel.Transactions.Add(App.ViewModel.TransactionToTransactionViewModel(savedTransaction));
App.ViewModel.SortTransactionList();
// Go back to Transaction List
NavigationService.GoBack();
}
else
{
// if REST is failed save unsent transaction to Phone database
SaveTransactionToPhone(_currentTransaction);
// save to observable collection Transactions in MainViewModel
App.ViewModel.Transactions.Add(App.ViewModel.TransactionToTransactionViewModel(_currentTransaction));
App.ViewModel.SortTransactionList();
}
}
Every Transaction object has IsInSync property. It is set to false by default until we got confirmation from REST API that it's saved successful on the server.
User has ability to refresh transactions. User can click on a button Refresh to fetch new data from the server. We do the syncing in the background like this:
private void RefreshTransactions(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
if (NetworkDetector.IsOnline)
{
var notSyncTransactions = DatabaseBl.GetData<Transaction>().Where(x => x.IsInSync == false).ToList();
if(notSyncTransactions.Count > 0)
{
// we must Sync all transactions
_isAllInSync = true;
_transactionSyncCount = notSyncTransactions.Count;
_transactionBl.AddTransactionCompleted += OnSyncTransactionCompleted;
if (_progress == null)
{
_progress = new ProgressIndicator();
}
foreach (var notSyncTransaction in notSyncTransactions)
{
_transactionBl.AddTransaction(notSyncTransaction);
}
_progress.Show();
}
else
{
// just refresh transactions
DoTransactionRefresh();
}
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show(ApplicationStrings.NETWORK_OFFLINE);
}
}
private void DoTransactionRefresh()
{
if (_progress == null)
{
_progress = new ProgressIndicator();
}
// after all data is sent do full reload
App.ViewModel.LoadMore = true;
App.ViewModel.ShowButton = false;
ApplicationBl<Transaction>.GetDataLoadingCompleted += OnTransactionsRefreshCompleted;
ApplicationBl<Transaction>.GetData(0, 10);
_progress.Show();
}
OnTransactionRefreshCompleted we delete all transaction data in local database and get the latest 10 transactions. We don't need all the data, and this way user have synced data. He can always load more data by taping load more at the end of transaction list. It's something similar like those twitter apps.
private void OnTransactionsRefreshCompleted(object entities)
{
if (entities is IList<Transaction>)
{
// save transactions
var transactions = (IList<Transaction>)entities;
DatabaseBl.TruncateTable<Transaction>();
DatabaseBl.Save(transactions);
((MainViewModel) DataContext).Transactions.Clear();
//reset offset
_offset = 1;
//update list with new transactions
App.ViewModel.LoadDataForTransactions(transactions);
App.ViewModel.LoadMore = false;
App.ViewModel.ShowButton = true;
}
if (entities == null)
{
App.ViewModel.ShowButton = false;
App.ViewModel.LoadMore = false;
}
// hide progress
_progress.Hide();
// remove event handler
ApplicationBl<Transaction>.GetDataLoadingCompleted -= OnTransactionsRefreshCompleted;
}
Caveat - I haven't tried this with windows phone development but use of GUID identities is something I usually do when faced with similar situations - eg creating records when I only have a one-way connection to the database - such as via a message bus or queue.
It works fine, albeit with a minor penalty in record sizes, and can also cause less performant indexes. I suggest you just give it a shot.