No Play Services? No Worries!

A lot of our applications depends on the technical bricks provided by the Play Services such as Google Maps, the push notifications by Firebase or even the Play Store for deploying our apps all around the world.

What if you are building apps for a device that does not implement the Play Services. With this talk you will have a glimpse of the tools you can use to build your Android applications without the Play Services such as OpenStreetMap, OpenPush or alternative ways to deploy an APK.

Transcript

1. No Play Services? No worries! DevFest South Africa 2020 Julien Salvi
2. Android addict since Froyo PAUG, Punk & IPA! You can find me at @JulienSalvi Julien Salvi Senior Android Engineer @ Innovorder
3. × Facing the No Play Services × Play Services alternative tools × Code samples in action!
4. Facing the No Play Services
5. Facing the No Play Services How you can end up developing apps without the Play Services! × Supporting a larger set of devices × Build apps for devices that don’t have the Play Services (Huawei, Hardware for B2B… ) × Company’s choices × Trying something new, open-source… Let’s see how we can deal with it
6. Facing the No Play Services Hi I’m Happy! Meet Happy! Happy is a… happy developper! × Using good practices × Building apps with Kotlin × Testing his apps × Doing crazy animations!
7. Facing the No Play Services Let’s do this! Happy has built a new app! × Using Google Map SDK for doing some fancy work × Implementing Firebase messaging to send nice notifications × Setting CI/CD for deploying on the Play Store × Everything’s looking good!
8. Facing the No Play Services Hum… something’s wrong! After a while, apps got a lot of crashes! GooglePlayServicesRepairableException GooglePlayServicesNotAvailableException
9. Facing the No Play Services OMG! Happy learns that the application has been deployed on a lot of devices that don’t have the Play Services installed Sometimes because the app is distributed outside the Play Store or for B2B devices without the Play Services
10. Facing the No Play Services Woop woop! But no worries Happy! Let see what tools and libraries we can use for developing applications without using the Play Services
11. Play services alternative tools
12. Play Services alternative tools Let see some nice alternative libraries to…
13. Play Services alternative tools Is there always an alternative? Short answer… No :(
14. Play Services alternative tools × Now lots of Firebase libraries works without the Play Services × Not required: Firestore, Storage, Crashlytics, InAppMessaging, Database and Config × Still required for Machine Learning libs, auth or push messaging (FCM) Firebase libraries
15. Push notifications
16. Play Services alternative tools × GCM/FCM is tied up to the Play Services for receiving messages × There are many alternatives for sending messages × Let’s see how Pushy, OpenPush or RabbitMQ can be a nice replacement tool! Push notifications
17. Play Services alternative tools × Reliable push notification delivery service × Cross-platform solution (Android, iOS…) × Free plan at first, then premium × Implementation very similar to GCM/FCM × Based on MQTT protocol Pushy
18. Play Services alternative tools MQTT MQTT Broker publish subscribe Client publish subscribe publish
19. Play Services alternative tools override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState) if (getToken() != null) { viewModel.registerPushy() } else { Pushy.listen(context) } }
20. Play Services alternative tools scope.launch(Dispatchers.IO) { val token = Pushy.register(context) // Save in the shared preferences for example saveToken() // send token to your backend sendToken() }
21. Play Services alternative tools class InstallReceiver : BroadcastReceiver() { override fun onReceive(context: Context, intent: Intent) { val msg = intent.getStringExtra("message") // Do amazing stuff here! (Notification, routing...) } }
22. Play Services alternative tools × Open source and free alternative to GCM/FCM × Decentralized and self-hosted implementation of push messages × No developer key required and the use is in control × Need to produce a lot of code on server and client side × More complex than FCM or Pushy APIs OpenPush
23. Play Services alternative tools OpenPush
24. Play Services alternative tools OpenPush OpenPush - A Free, Decentralized Push Messaging Framework for Android by Marcus Hoffman https://f-droid.org/en/2020/02/03/openpush-talk.html
25. Play Services alternative tools × RabbitMQ is an open-source message broker × Originally based on AMQP protocol but now support STOMP or MQTT × Receive AND send messages × Might be a good solution if your application is always on like a kiosk app RabbitMQ for Android
26. Play Services alternative tools RabbitMQ under the hood Consumer/ Subscriber RabbitMQ Server publish publish subscribe subscribe Queue Queue Consumer/ Subscriber
27. Play Services alternative tools // publishing messages private val queue = LinkedBlockingDeque>String>() fun publishMessage(message: String) { try { queue.putLast(message) } catch (e: InterruptedException) { e.printStackTrace() } }
28. Play Services alternative tools // create and setup a connection val factory = ConnectionFactory() factory.setUsername(config.getUsername()) factory.setPassword(config.getPassword()) factory.setVirtualHost(config.getVhost()) factory.setHost(config.getHost()) factory.setPort(config.getPort()) factory.setAutomaticRecoveryEnabled(true)
29. Play Services alternative tools // Create publish channel val connection = factory.newConnection() val channel = connection.createChannel() channel.confirmSelect() // Publish messages added to the queue transactionsQueue.add(Message(comment)) while (!transactionsQueue.isEmpty()) { val message = transactionsQueue.get() val exchange = "amqp.direct.app.messages" val routingKey = "comment_v1" channel.basicPublish(exchange, routingKey, null, message.getBytes()) channel.waitForConfirms() }
30. Play Services alternative tools // Create subscriber/consumer val connection = factory.newConnection() val channel = connection.createChannel() val q = channel.queueDeclare() channel.queueBind(q.getQueue(), "amqp.direct.app.messages", "chat") val consumer = QueueingConsumer(channel) channel.basicConsume(q.getQueue(), true, consumer) while (true) { val delivery = consumer.nextDelivery() val message = new String(delivery.getBody()) // Handle the data received }
31. Maps
32. Maps × Free, open-source map and a collaborative map project × Provides many features such as maps, routing, geocoding address but not as much as Google Map × Used by Facebook, Uber, Foursquare, Microsoft… × Loading map tiles is not smooth as Google Map × Adds a huge dependency to your application OpenStreetMap SDK
33. Play Services alternative tools <org.osmdroid.views.MapView android:id="@+id/map" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" /> binding.map.setTileSource(TileSourceFactory.MAPNIK) binding.map.zoomController.setVisibility(Visibility. SHOW_AND_FADEOUT) binding.map.setMultiTouchControls(true) // Enable pinch-to-zoom and set center to our city binding.map.controller.apply { setZoom(10.0) setCenter(GeoPoint(-26.2041028, 28.0473051)) }
34. Maps × Map SDK since 2012 × Provides many features such vector maps, navigation, 3D buildings... Free or paid plans depends on your needs × API very similar to Google Maps and good documentation so the migration can be very smooth × Adds a huge dependency to your application HERE map SDK
35. Play Services alternative tools <com.here.sdk.mapview.MapView android:id="@+id/map" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent"/> binding.map.setOnReadyListener { binding.map.setCenter(GeoCoordinate(-26.2041028, 28.0473051, 0.0), Map.Animation.NONE) binding.map.setZoomLevel(8); val mapImage = MapImageFactory.fromResource(resources, R.drawable.pin) val anchor2D = new Anchor2D(0.5f, 1) val mapMarker = new MapMarker(geoCoordinates, mapImage, anchor2D) binding.map.getMapScene().addMapMarker(mapMarker) }
36. App distribution
37. Maps × F-Droid for distributing your free and open-source applications to mass market × Community maintained since 2010 × APK Mirror very similar to the Play Store F-Droid or APK Mirror
38. Maps × Build your own solution or use existing solution in the market (AppCenter, TinyMDM) × Mostly used for enterprise applications or B2B × Let see how we can build our own MDM Mobile Device Management
39. Maps When choosing a store or a MDM? If your app target mass market and want something similar as the Play Store go for… If you want to target enterprise applications or you have the control of the device fleet go for…
40. Play Services alternative tools MDM conception SDK Web Service Yes! Have a new version? Download and install the new version Database Storage
41. Play Services alternative tools val packageInstaller = context.packageManager.packageInstaller val apkUri = uriFromFile(context, file) context.contentResolver.openInputStream(apkUri)?.use { src -> val length = DocumentFile.fromSingleUri(context, apkUri)?.length() ?: -1 val params = PackageInstaller.SessionParams(PackageInstaller.SessionParams.MODE_FULL_INSTALL) val sessionId = packageInstaller.createSession(params) val session = packageInstaller.openSession(sessionId) session.openWrite("app", 0, length).use { dest -> src.copyTo(dest) session.fsync(dest) } val intent = Intent(context, InstallReceiver::class.java) val pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(context, INSTALL_CODE, intent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT) session.commit(pendingIntent.intentSender) session.close() }
42. Play Services alternative tools <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" /> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES" /> <application> <provider android:name="androidx.core.content.FileProvider" android:authorities="${applicationId}.myapp.provider" android:exported="false" android:grantUriPermissions="true"> <meta-data android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS" android:resource="@xml/iostore_provider_path" /> </provider> <receiver android:name=".InstallReceiver" /> </application>
43. WebView
44. Maps × Developed and maintained by Firefox × Suitable for displaying web content in an application or building your own browser × Standalone library, adding a huge dependency inside your application × Standards compliant with an excellent support for modern web standards GeckoView
45. Play Services alternative tools val session = GeckoSession().apply { progressDelegate = progressDelegate() settings.useTrackingProtection = true } geckoRuntime = GeckoRuntime.create(requireContext()) session.open(geckoRuntime) binding.geckoView.setSession(session) session.loadUri("https://www.devfest-south-africa.com/")
46. Code sample in action!
47. Code sample in action! × Let’s build our first app without Play Services × Using OpenStreetMap SDK and GeckoView × Seeing the similarities between Google Map SDK and OSM Map application
48. DEMO
49. Thanks! Have fun! Julien Salvi