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.
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.
Dames en heren, welcome to Jitsi Meet SDK for Android, the Jitsi Meet library
for Android.
The Jitsi Meet SDK encapsulates React Native and all the dependencies Jitsi
Meet has so other aopplications can integrate it easily.
Unlike iOS, creating "fat" libraries is not allways (if at all) possible on
Android, however, effort was put into making the integration as easy as
possible.
While React Native can be embedded in native applications, I don't think it was
designed to be embedded as part of an Android library, 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:
- Activity lifecycle methods must be linked with the React Native engine, so the
library provides wrapper methods.
- Custom fonts have to be manually added as assets, since the provided gradle
script doesn't work properly in a library target.
- The RN packager has to be manually triggered since the gradle script will no
longer do it for us.
At this stage, the Jitsi Meet application is just a small single activity
application which uses the Jitsi Meet SDK to create a single activity which
represents the entire application. Events and external conference handling are
forthcoming.
PS: Yours truly would like to add that it was a lot more fun to work on the iOS
side of things.
Lyubo Marinov
Saúl Ibarra Corretgé