Introduces loadURLObject in JitsiMeetView on Android and iOS which
accepts a Bundle and NSDictionary, respectively, similar in structure to
the JS object accepted by the constructor of Web's ExternalAPI. At this
time, only the property url of the bundle/dictionary is supported.
However, it allows the public API of loadURLObject to be consumed. The
property url will be made optional in the future and other properties
will be supported from which a URL will be constructed.
Initializing a new URL/NSURL instance is a chore especially when one
takes into account that the JavaScript side (1) is loading the URL
asynchronously and (2) is capable of parsing strings that may or may not
be represented as URL/NSURL.
The Android method loadURLString(String) may have been called
loadURL(String) to overload loadURL(URL) but I didn't want to do that
because:
1. It would not be compatible with existing source code such as
loadURL(null) which would have become ambiguous.
2. I wanted to achieve better convergence with the iOS API.
On iOS, if the app is closed the startup options are only passed as the
`launchOptions` dictionary of `applicationDidFinishLaunching`. Thus add a helper
method to be called from there by embedding applications so we can copy that
dictionary.
Before, Jitsi Meet (the app) would only link with JitsiMeet.framework, which in
turn embedded WebRTC.framework. While possible, Apple doesn't allow apps with
nested frameworks to be submitted to the store. Now the app will link with
WebRTC.framework directly so there is no framework nesting.
A potential improvement here is to build WebRTC as a static library so it can
then be embedded in JitsiMeet.framework and completely hidden from the app.
The current implementation doesn't use the API and Transport modules. This is
due to the fact that they are too tied to APP at the moment, which is web only.
Once API is refactored and moved into the Redux store this will be adjusted,
though it's unlikely that the lowest level React Native module (ExternalAPI)
changes drastically.
This commit also introduces a stopgap limitation of only allowing a single
instance for JitsiMeetView objects on both Android and iOS. React Native doesn't
really play well with having multiple instances of the same modules on the same
bridge, since they behave a bit like singletons. Even if we were to use multiple
bridges, some features depend on system-level global state, such as the
AVAudioSession mode or Android's immersive mode. Further attempts will be made
at lifting this limitation in the future, though.
1. Aligns the project structure of Jitsi Meet SDK for iOS with that for
Android for better comprehension.
2. The command `react-native run-ios` uses the last Xcode project or
workspace in the list of these sorted in alphabetical order. Which
limits our freedom in naming. Thus having only an Xcode project in
the root directory of the iOS project structure gives us back the
freedom in naming.
3. Allows the Podspec to work for the app project in addition to the sdk
project because we need Crashlytics in the app which is integrated
via Cocoapods as well.
4. Further removes references to JitsiKit in the source code for the
sake of consistent naming.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Jitsi Meet SDK for iOS, the
mobile SDK which powers Jitsi Meet.
The goal is to encapsulate the entire React Native app into a framework / SDK
and offer an API for native (ObjC or Swift) applications to embed the Jitsi
conferencing experience.
While React Native can be embedded in native applications, I don't think it was
designed to be embedded as part of a framework, hidden away from the application
using it. This surfaced as a number of issues which had to be addressed
specifically due to our use-case:
- Universal / deep linking needed to be wrapped to avoid the embedding app from
linking with RN.
- The bundle URL had to be manually constructed, since RN considers that all
resources are in the main bundle, but in case of a framework that is not the
case.
- Custom fonts had to be manually loaded, since UIAppFonts doesn't work on the
framework's Info.plist file.
- The RN packager has to be manually triggered since the React project will no
longer do it for us.
- Custom App Transport Security rules were added since the builtin way to do it
modifies the framework's Info.plist, which is useless in this case.
At this stage, the Jitsi Meet application is just a small single view
application which uses the Jitsi Meet SDK to create a single view which
represents the entire application. Events and external conference handling are
forthcoming.
Saúl Ibarra Corretgé
Lyubo Marinov
Daniel Ornelas