Update Cordova Project after Upgrading to Android Studio 3
After I upgraded my Android Studio to version 3 which also updates the Gradle build system to version 4, my Sencha mobile app (with Cordova) suddenly stops building with the following errors:
ExtJs: Simple way to setup ‘All’ checkbox to reflect other checkboxes status across the row in a Grid Panel
Suppose you have a number of checkboxes (checkcolumn) for each row in a GridPanel and an ‘All’ checkbox to control & reflect the status of other checkboxes in the row, i.e.
- Uncheck any box will also uncheck the ‘All’ checkbox
- When all the checkboxes are checked, the ‘All’ checkbox is automatically checked
Passing data from SiriKit Intent Extension to Cordova
I have a mobile app built with Cordova and Sencha Modern Framework and I have also integrated the app with SiriKit workout domain. So if I speak to my iPhone,
Hey Siri, run a test with MYAPP.
Siri will launch my mobile app and run the test service. In order to do that, I need to be able to pass additional data from my Siri workout Intent handler. So that my Cordova app knows which service to start. For details how to create a SiriKit Intent extension, see this.
CSS Smiley Infinite Animation – Added Furious Face
In Coffee Steam, it shows a cool CSS animated effect of steam from a coffee. I have copied the CSS code and integrated with my recent modified work on smiley face. A new emotion after the angry face, furious, which is basically angry face and steam together. Here is the demo.
Adding Infinite Loop to the Cool CSS Smiley Animation
There is a very cool pure CSS smiley animation created by Tiago Alexandre Lopes. The animation begins as soon as one of the smiley radio buttons is checked. However, the nice animation doesn’t repeat. It would be nice to have the animation repeated every 5 seconds.
TL;DR Here is the demo.
pthread_cancel and blocking I/O in Android NDK
We have a multi-threaded program that has one thread sitting in a while loop blocking from recvfrom system call on a socket. I need to run this C program on mobile. Unfortunately, in the networking side of mobile development, IP address changes all the time and the socket descriptor becomes invalid. Hence we need to break the loop and reconnect the socket.
First approach is to destroy the thread the recreate it again when IP address is changed. So the thread can go through closing the old socket gracefully, creates a new socket with the new IP address and enters the while loop of receiving packets. Quick and simple. However, if you are porting a multi-threaded C/C++ program for Android, perhaps this may not be a smooth ride. This is because pthread_cancel is not available in the Android NDK. So we can’t kill the thread and we need a way to signal blocking I/O recvfrom call.
Second approach is to close the socket descriptor and the recvfrom should return with error. However, this doesn’t happen in Android. The recvfrom continues to block.
Third approach is to set non-blocking I/O option in socket and handles the errno returning from recvfrom.
struct time tv; tv.tv_sec = 1; setsockopt(socketfd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_RCVTIMEO, &tv, sizeof(tv));
Another surprise in Android, it won’t let you do that.
I am running out of magic 8-ball. Luckily, the shutdown system call on socket lets you terminate the blocking I/O.
At the time of writing, I’m using API level 24.
Using Semaphores on Android
If you plan to use semaphores on Android, then don’t. This is because the sem_open, sem_close and sem_unlink are not implemented. If you call sem_open on Android, you will get EACCESS error regardlessly.
This is what is defined in the /usr/include/semaphore.h in NDK’s sysroot directory.
int sem_destroy(sem_t*); int sem_getvalue(sem_t*, int*); int sem_init(sem_t*, int, unsigned int); int sem_post(sem_t*); int sem_timedwait(sem_t*, const struct timespec*); int sem_trywait(sem_t*); int sem_wait(sem_t*); /* These aren't actually implemented. */ sem_t* sem_open(const char*, int, ...); int sem_close(sem_t*); int sem_unlink(const char*); __END_DECLS #endif /* _SEMAPHORE_H */
The only workaround is to use mutex and conditional variable. Fortunately, there are many online helps on how to do it. Here is an example.
ICMP Identifier field in UDP between Linux and OSX
Ping packet is traditionally created as a raw packet and formatted into ICMP ECHO REQUEST. The problem with creating a raw socket requires root privilege. It is alright if the program is running as part of the system service under root anyway. However, running as a non privilege user, the program requires extra care by configuring the setuid bit which poses security risks e.g. the program may have memory leak which can be hijacked with shellcode.
Read more 
Sencha ExtJs Modern: How to Switch Off Compression in ‘Build & Emulate’
Although in Sencha Cmd, we can easily switch off compression by doing a Testing build. In ExtJs Modern framework, when we do a ‘Build & Emulate’, it compresses all the JS code anyway and there is no option to switch it off (Well, at least in Sencha Architect). This makes it hard to debug mobile applications when runs it on an Android emulator, especially using Chrome developer console to remote attach to the emulator.
I contacted the support, here is how you switch the compression off by adding highlighted lines to app.json as shown belown:
"native": {
"packager": "cordova",
"compressor": null,
"properties": {
"build.compression": "",
"enable.resource.compression": false
},
"cordova": {
"config": {
"id": "com.domain.MyApp",
"name": "MyApp",
"platforms": "android"
}
}
}
After that, do a ‘Build & Emulate’ again. When you reconnect the Chrome developer console, you should see your own source code as well as ExtJs source.
Joe Kuan Defunct Code 