Android Stuff

See other tutorials in menu under “Basic Quickstart / Tutorials”

So far we’ve been mostly talking about vanilla Java code translation. While this can certainly be useful, the original purpose of Doppl and the origin of this Gradle plugin is focused on sharing architecture.

Android and iOS are very, very similar platforms below the UI. This sounds like a crazy statement, but it’s true. They’re both Unix-y systems, with threads, networking, local files, SQLite, etc. Fault tolerant, testable, mobile architecture is not platform specific. The Android community has tended to focus on MVP, MVVM, MVI, and the iOS community seems to favor VIPER, but nothing about these architectures is specific to the platforms outside of community preference.

The Doppl project includes several structures from Android AOSP that facilitate sharing of both logic and architecture. This includes the SQLite stack, Shared Preference, Android threading, local file access, and a few classes that aren’t used on iOS but help compatibility (Bundle, Parcelable, etc).

Adding this base of Android architecture also allows us to add a number of popular libraries on top, including Android Architecture Components, Retrofit, RxJava/RxAndroid, etc.

You can find more Doppl samples in the Doppl Project, but we’ll add some Shared Preference storage to the sample app to go over the basics.

Configure Project

Add Doppl dependencies.

j2objc "co.doppl.lib:androidbase:0.9.0.0"

You should only add the j2objc dependency because ‘androidbase’ includes classes already defined in “Android”. If you are building a separate Java module, add the implementation dependency as well.

In future releases we’ll be splitting out the separate service dependencies, but for now, all of the additional Android “stuff” is in one project: core-doppl.

After running ‘./gradlew j2objcBuild’ you’ll need to run ‘pod install’ again because androidbase defines a few C++ files that Xcode needs to know about.

Init Doppl Runtime

Open AppDelegate.swift and add DopplRuntime.start()

import UIKit
import j2objclib

@UIApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate {

    func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplicationLaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {
        DopplRuntime.start()
        return true
    }
    ...
}

To use shared preferences we need to create a Context instance then pass it to the AppPrefs object. In a full app you should only create 1 Context instance. Just FYI.

let context = AndroidContentIOSContext()!
let prefs = SHAppPrefs(androidAppApplication: context)!

A special Context class ‘android.content.IOSContext’ that extends ‘android.app.Application’ exists to be used as an Android context instance on iOS.

After that, use the AppPrefs like any other shared object.

let dog = SHDog()!

dog.setNameWith("Binky")
dog.setAgeWith(9)
dog.setLikesBelliesWithBoolean(true)

prefs.setFavoriteDogWith(dog)

let dog2 = prefs.getFavoriteDog()!

print(SHDogFactory.fromDog(with: dog2))
print(dog2.getName())

The android.content.SharedPreferences implementation works the same as Android. It is actually using Android AOSP code to implement the Android features.