Ty Smith, Twitter (ex-Evernote) @tsmith
- e.g. Samsung Note S Note app — locally synced with S Note grouping in built-in Evernote
- tapping on a note in Evernote, opens it in S Note; then back button goes back to Evernote
intents
- when sharing content to another activity, need to provide URI permission
- when offering edit, you shouldn’t send your original file
- the third party might crash, corrupt, etc
- also can’t rely on setResult
- user might hit back and think their changes will be saved
- set last modified — when activity returns can check to see if changed — then offer user to save if they want
content providers
- can provide temporary permissions to access provider in an intent
- can pass through file handles
account manager
- see an example in the open source github app
- can request an authenticated token
- makes accounts visible to user in a standard place
- can do OAuth1 or 2
- has method to refresh OAuth2 token automatically
sync adapter
- does a lot of management for you automatically (network, battery)
- again, can expose to third parties
- can be scheduled & started with cloud messaging
- requires content provider & account manager
- but watch out for all the syncs coming at once
- especially as networks often send out heartbeats on the hour every hour
- devices wake up and think: I might as well sync now…
- Evernote received DDoS load spikes…
- so add a jitter to the sync period (random 1hr -> 1hr5min)
- also add a “wait until” in the sync adapter — do your own checking
bound service
- much stronger contract than others
- other apps need to include your AIDL source code
- example: plugins for DashClock
tips
- testing is hard
- use mock integrations
- hard to debug integrations
- add analytics to the lower level components so you know what’s going on
- might want to consider rate limiting
- use crash reporting (plug for crashlytics, now owned by twitter)
