DEV Community: Ranjith Kumar Nagella

Simplify APNs configuration

Ranjith Kumar Nagella — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 00:47:05 +0000

Do you know we can set up iOS Push Notification using APNs Auth Key (token-based)? If not, keep reading.

This week I was setting up Push Notification for iOS in one of our marketing tools (Responsys) and, I noticed you can choose APNs Auth Key (Token-based) over Certificate-based connection to APNs.

This way, we could use

Same token for multiple providers server
One token to distribute notifications for all your company's app
We don't have to renew the Push notification certificates every year as we do with Certificate-based.

How do you achieve this -

Log in to your Developer Account
Go to Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles
Keys section
Add
Register a New Key
- Enter the key's name
- Select the APNs service
- Go to the next step

When you request a key, Apple gives us the following -

A 10-character string with the Key ID
An authentication token signing key, specified as a text file (with a .p8 file extension)

Note: We need to secure both pieces of information carefully.

You can learn more about this at - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/setting_up_a_remote_notification_server/establishing_a_token-based_connection_to_apns

Clean up untracked files in git repository based on .gitignore

Ranjith Kumar Nagella — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 19:57:41 +0000

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

The other day I had created a new React Native module project and pushed it to the git repository. Then later, I added the file .gitignore. Since we added it later, these files will still exist in our repository index. How can we clean them up?

Commit all your local changes including .gitignore
git commit -am "file changes"
Remove everything from the repository
git rm -r --cached .
# --cached will only remove files from the index.
. Indicates all files will be untracked
or
you can un-track individual files
git rm --cached ios/Pods
Re-add everything
git add --all
Commit the files
git commit -m "cleanup .gitignore files"

Integrate Native module w/o Auto Linking in React Native

Ranjith Kumar Nagella — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 21:48:52 +0000

Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash

This week I had to help one of my engineers understand how to integrate a Native Module that is not enabled by Auto Linking and how it works for iOS and Android. It might happen to one of us who is not familiar with changes that occurred in the React Native ecosystem over the years.

The following are the reasons you might have to use manual linking Native modules for iOS, Android, or both.

There is a 3rd party, and they don't yet support or configured Auto Linking
The 3rd party you are using is creating issues with iOS/Android builds

For example, when adding flipper-plugin-reactotron, you need to add react-native-flipper as a dependency. In this case, the flipper dependency copies the scripts to debug and release targets. As you know already, Flipper only supports in debug scheme. Hence, we need this solution.

Here is how you can achieve it-

Run auto-linking manually
react-native link <module-name>
Review and commit changes for iOS and Android
git commit -am "Add 3rd party module - XYZ"
Disable auto-linking for that particular module such that React Native stops warning or error in your console.
- Create a file react-native.config.js, if not exist, in your project root dir. If not, add to the dependencies object.
Commit the file changes
git commit -am "Ignore React Native auto-linking for react-native-flipper"
https://gist.github.com/rnagella/318c43a2d75e845395a87f581a8e71ab
In case, you need to update to next version. You need to unlink and link it again
- react-native unlink <module-name>
- git commit -am "Unlink <module-name>"
- yarn upgrade --latest
- Comment the dependency within react-native-config.js
- react-native link <module-name>
- git commit -am "Update <module-name> to latest"

App Onboarding - iOS

Ranjith Kumar Nagella — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 23:49:35 +0000

How to Onboard employee for your iOS app

Photo by Yura Fresh on Unsplash

There is a team of Developers, QA, Designers, and Products that works daily. Beyond, there are cross-functional teams, other departments., who want to get access to your apps such as Growth and Marketing.

If you are in a position that helps provide access to your iOS app, then you know how painful it is to manage these requests. You might never think of explaining how this process works to your co-workers who aren't familiar with the iOS ecosystem and new to the app development.

I want to share the below flow diagram, which helps you think about the options available and how to evaluate who belongs to which groups.

I hope this helps you with a clear understanding, and if it finds useful, please leave a comment or suggestion.