nativescript-code-push

v2.0.2

Published

2 years ago

Use CodePush to hot deploy updates to your app.

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eddyverbruggen

ecosystem:nativescript NativeScript CodePush Code Push Hot deploy App update

NativeScript plugin for CodePush

A live-update service for your NativeScript apps!

📣 UPDATE May 27 2019: we're most likely renaming this solution before officially launching it. Hold your breath!

A NativeScript app is composed of XML/HTML, CSS and JavaScript files and any accompanying images, which are bundled together by the NativeScript CLI and distributed as part of a platform-specific binary (i.e. an .ipa or .apk file). Once the app is released, updating either the code (e.g. making bug fixes, adding new features) or image assets, requires you to recompile and redistribute the entire binary, which of course, includes any review time associated with the store(s) you are publishing to.

The CodePush plugin helps get product improvements in front of your end users instantly, by keeping your code and images synchronized with updates you release to the CodePush server. This way, your app gets the benefits of an offline mobile experience, as well as the "web-like" agility of side-loading updates as soon as they are available. It's a win-win!

In order to ensure that your end users always have a functioning version of your app, the CodePush plugin maintains a copy of the previous update, so that in the event that you accidentally push an update which includes a crash, it can automatically roll back. This way, you can rest assured that your newfound release agility won't result in users becoming blocked before you have a chance to roll back on the server. It's a win-win-win!

Architectural overview of the solution - you don't need to worry about all of this

What can (and will) be CodePushed?

Anything inside your /app folder.
Anything inside your /node_modules folder.

💁‍♂️ Note that we don't actually use those folders, but the app folder in platforms/ios/<appname>/app and platforms/android/app/src/main/assets/app, the benefit of which is we don't "care" if you use Webpack or Uglify or whatever tools you use to minify or scramble your app's assets.

What can't (and won't):

NativeScript platform updates. Example: bumping tns-android from version 2.5.1 to 2.5.2.
Plugins updates that also require a different version of a native library it depends on.

So as long as you don't change versions of dependencies and tns platforms in your package.json you can push happily. And if you do bump a version of a dependency make sure there are no changed platform libraries.

Getting Started

Globally install the NativeScript CodePush CLI

npm i -g nativescript-code-push-cli

💁‍♂️ This will also add the global nativescript-code-push command to your machine. You can check the currently installed version with nativescript-code-push -v.

Login or register with the service

Check if you're already logged in, and with which email address:

nativescript-code-push whoami

nativescript-code-push login

nativescript-code-push register

This will open a browser where you can provide your credentials, after which you can create an access key that you can paste in the console.

You should now have a .nativescript-code-push.config file in your home folder which will automatically authenticate you with the server on this machine from now on.

Note that you could use a that web interface for managing you apps, but the CLI is much more sophisticated, so it's recommended to use the command line interface.

To log out, you can run nativescript-code-push logout which will also remove the config file.

To perform a headless login (without opening a browser), you can do: nativescript-code-push login --accessKey <access key>.

Register your app with the service

Create an app for each platform you target. That way you can roll out release seperately for iOS and Android.

⚠️ The appname must be unique, and should not contain dashes (-).

nativescript-code-push app add <appname> <platform>

# examples:
nativescript-code-push app add MyAppIOS ios
nativescript-code-push app add MyAppAndroid android

💁‍♂️ This will show you your deployment keys you'll need when connecting to the CodePush server. If you want to list those keys at any later time, use nativescript-code-push deployment ls <appName> --displayKeys.

💁‍♂️ All new apps automatically come with two deployments (Staging and Production) so that you can begin distributing updates to multiple channels. If you need more channels/deployments, simply run: nativescript-code-push deployment add <appName> <deploymentName>.

💁‍♂️ Want to rename your app? At any time, use the command: nativescript-code-push app rename <oldName> <newName>

💁‍♂️ Want to delete an app? At any time, use the command: nativescript-code-push app remove <appName> - this means any apps that have been configured to use it will obviously stop receiving updates.

List your registered apps

nativescript-code-push app ls

Add this plugin to your app

tns plugin add nativescript-code-push

⚠️ If you're restricting access to the internet from within your app, make sure you whitelist our CodePush server (https://nativescript-codepush-server.herokuapp.com) and File server (https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com).

Checking for updates

With the CodePush plugin installed and configured, the only thing left is to add the necessary code to your app to control when it checks for updates.

If an update is available, it will be silently downloaded, and installed.

Then based on the provided InstallMode the plugin either waits until the next cold start (InstallMode.ON_NEXT_RESTART), warm restart (InstallMode.ON_NEXT_RESUME), or a positive response to a user prompt (InstallMode.IMMEDIATE).

Note that Apple doesn't want you to prompt the user to restart your app, so use InstallMode.IMMEDIATE on iOS only for Enterprise-distributed apps (or when testing your app through TestFlight for instance).

💁‍♂️ Check out the demo for a solid example.

// import the main plugin classes
import { CodePush } from "nativescript-code-push";

// and at some point in your app:
CodePush.sync({
  deploymentKey: "your-deployment-key" // note that this key depends on the platform you're running on (see the example below)
});

There's a few things you can configure - this TypeScript example has all the possible options:

import { CodePush, InstallMode, SyncStatus } from "nativescript-code-push";
import { isIOS } from "tns-core-modules/platform";

CodePush.sync({
    deploymentKey: isIOS ? "your-ios-deployment-key" : "your-android-deployment-key",
    installMode: InstallMode.ON_NEXT_RESTART, // this is the default install mode; the app updates upon the next cold boot (unless the --mandatory flag was specified while pushing the update) 
    mandatoryInstallMode: isIOS ? InstallMode.ON_NEXT_RESUME : InstallMode.IMMEDIATE, // the default is InstallMode.ON_NEXT_RESUME which doesn't bother the user as long as the app is in the foreground. InstallMode.IMMEDIATE shows an installation prompt. Don't use that for iOS AppStore distributions because Apple doesn't want you to, but if you have an Enterprise-distributed app, go right ahead!
    updateDialog: { // only used for InstallMode.IMMEDIATE
      updateTitle: "Please restart the app", // an optional title shown in the update dialog 
      optionalUpdateMessage: "Optional update msg",   // a message shown for non-"--mandatory" releases 
      mandatoryUpdateMessage: "Mandatory update msg", // a message shown for "--mandatory" releases
      optionalIgnoreButtonLabel: "Later", // if a user wants to continue their session, the update will be installed on next resume
      mandatoryContinueButtonLabel: isIOS ? "Exit now" : "Restart now", // On Android we can kill and restart the app, but on iOS that's not possible so the user has to manually restart it. That's why we provide a different label in this example.
      appendReleaseDescription: true // appends the description you (optionally) provided when releasing a new version to CodePush
    }
  }, (syncStatus: SyncStatus): void => {
    console.log("CodePush syncStatus: " + syncStatus);
    if (syncStatus === SyncStatus.UP_TO_DATE) {
      console.log("CodePush: no pending updates; you're running the latest version!");
    } else if (syncStatus === SyncStatus.UPDATE_INSTALLED) {
      console.log("CodePush: update installed - it will be activated upon next cold boot");
    }
});

var CodePush = require("nativescript-code-push").CodePush;
var InstallMode = require("nativescript-code-push").InstallMode;
var SyncStatus = require("nativescript-code-push").SyncStatus;
var platform = require("tns-core-modules/platform");

CodePush.sync({
    deploymentKey: platform.isIOS ? "your-ios-deployment-key" : "your-android-deployment-key",
    installMode: InstallMode.ON_NEXT_RESTART,
    mandatoryInstallMode: platform.isIOS ? InstallMode.ON_NEXT_RESUME : InstallMode.IMMEDIATE,
    updateDialog: {
      optionalUpdateMessage: "Optional update msg",
      updateTitle: "Please restart the app",
      mandatoryUpdateMessage: "Mandatory update msg",
      optionalIgnoreButtonLabel: "Later",
      mandatoryContinueButtonLabel: platform.isIOS ? "Exit now" : "Restart now",
      appendReleaseDescription: true // appends the description you (optionally) provided when releasing a new version to CodePush
    }
}, function (syncStatus) {
    if (syncStatus === SyncStatus.UP_TO_DATE) {
      console.log("CodePush: no pending updates; you're running the latest version!");
    } else if (syncStatus === SyncStatus.UPDATE_INSTALLED) {
      console.log("CodePush: update installed - it will be activated upon next cold boot");
    }
});

When should this check run?

It's recommended to check for updates more than once in a cold boot cycle, so it may be easiest to tie this check to the resume event (which usually also runs on app startup):

import * as application from "tns-core-modules/application";
import { CodePush } from "nativescript-code-push";

// add this in some central place that's executed once in a lifecycle
application.on(application.resumeEvent, () => {
  CodePush.sync(...);
});

var application = require("tns-core-modules/application");

application.on(application.resumeEvent, function () {
  // call the sync function
});

Releasing an update

Once your app has been configured and distributed to your users, and you've made some code and/or asset changes, it's time to instantly unleash those changes onto your users!

⚠️ Make sure to create a release build first, so use the same command that you'd use for app store distribution, just don't send it to the AppStore. You can even Webpack and Uglify your app, it's all transparent to this plugin.

💁‍♂️ When releasing updates to CodePush, you do not need to bump your app's version since you aren't modifying the app store version at all. CodePush will automatically generate a "label" for each release you make (e.g. v3) in order to help identify it within your release history.

The easiest way to do this is to use the release command in our CodePush CLI. Its (most relevant) options are:

|param|alias|default|description |---|---|---|--- |deploymentName|d|"Staging"|Deploy to either "Staging" or "Production". |description|des|not set|Description of the changes made to the app with this release. |targetBinaryVersion|t|App_Resources|Semver expression that specifies the binary app version(s) this release is targeting (e.g. 1.1.0, ~1.2.3). The default is the exact version in App_Resources/iOS/Info.plist or App_Resources/Android/AndroidManifest.xml. |mandatory|m|not set|This specifies whether or not the update should be considered "urgent" (e.g. it includes a critical security fix). This attribute is simply round tripped to the client, who can then decide if and how they would like to enforce it. If this flag is not set, the update is considered "not urgent" so you may choose to wait for the next cold boot of the app.

Have a few examples for both platforms:

iOS

nativescript-code-push release <codepush-ios-appname> ios # deploy to Staging
nativescript-code-push release <codepush-ios-appname> ios --d Production # deploy to Production (default: Staging)
nativescript-code-push release <codepush-ios-appname> ios --targetBinaryVersion ~1.0.0 # release to users running any 1.x version (default: the exact version in Info.plist)
nativescript-code-push release <codepush-ios-appname> ios --mandatory --description "My mandatory iOS version" # a release for iOS that needs to be applied ASAP.

Android

nativescript-code-push release <codepush-android-appname> android # deploy to Staging
nativescript-code-push release <codepush-android-appname> android --d Production # deploy to Production (default: Staging)
nativescript-code-push release <codepush-android-appname> android --targetBinaryVersion ~1.0.0 # release to users running any 1.x version (default: the exact version in AndroidManifest.xml)

If a user is running an older binary version, it's possible that there are breaking changes in the CodePush update that wouldn't be compatible with what they're running.
If a user is running a newer binary version, then it's presumed that what they are running is newer (and potentially incompatible) with the CodePush update.

If you ever want an update to target multiple versions of the app store binary, we also allow you to specify the parameter as a semver range expression. That way, any client device running a version of the binary that satisfies the range expression (i.e. semver.satisfies(version, range) returns true) will get the update. Examples of valid semver range expressions are as follows:

| Range Expression | Who gets the update | |------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 1.2.3 | Only devices running the specific binary app store version 1.2.3 of your app | | * | Any device configured to consume updates from your CodePush app | | 1.2.x | Devices running major version 1, minor version 2 and any patch version of your app | | 1.2.3 - 1.2.7 | Devices running any binary version between 1.2.3 (inclusive) and 1.2.7 (inclusive) | | >=1.2.3 <1.2.7 | Devices running any binary version between 1.2.3 (inclusive) and 1.2.7 (exclusive) | | 1.2 | Equivalent to >=1.2.0 <1.3.0 | | ~1.2.3 | Equivalent to >=1.2.3 <1.3.0 | | ^1.2.3 | Equivalent to >=1.2.3 <2.0.0 |

*NOTE: If your semver expression starts with a special shell character or operator such as >, ^, or ** , the command may not execute correctly if you do not wrap the value in quotes as the shell will not supply the right values to our CLI process. Therefore, it is best to wrap your targetBinaryVersion parameter in double quotes when calling the release command, e.g. code-push release MyApp-iOS updateContents ">1.2.3".

NOTE: As defined in the semver spec, ranges only work for non pre-release versions: https://github.com/npm/node-semver#prerelease-tags. If you want to update a version with pre-release tags, then you need to write the exact version you want to update (1.2.3-beta for example).

The following table outlines the version value that CodePush expects your update's semver range to satisfy for each respective app type:

| Platform | Source of app store version | |------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | NativeScript (iOS) | The CFBundleShortVersionString key in the App_Resources/iOS/Info.plist file | | NativeScript (Android) | The android:versionName key in the App_Resources/Android/AndroidManifest.xml file |

NOTE: If the app store version in the metadata files are missing a patch version, e.g. 2.0, it will be treated as having a patch version of 0, i.e. 2.0 -> 2.0.0. The same is true for app store version equal to plain integer number, 1 will be treated as 1.0.0 in this case.

Gaining insight in past releases

Here are a few CodePush CLI commands you may find useful:

Which releases did I create and what are the install metrics?

Using a command like this will tell you how many apps have the update installed:

nativescript-code-push deployment history <codepush-appname> Staging

Which produces something like this:

|Label|Release Time|App Version|Mandatory|Description|Install Metrics |---|---|---|---|---|--- |v2|an hour ago|1.0.0|Yes|Mandatory iOS version!|Active: 11% (2 of 19) ||||||Total: 2| |v1|2 hours ago|1.0.0|No|Awesome iOS version!|Active: 26% (5 of 19) ||||||Total: 5|

Give me the details of the current release!

This dumps the details of the most recent release for both the Staging and Production environments of your app:

nativescript-code-push deployment ls <codepush-appname>

And if you want to dump your deployment keys as well, use:

nativescript-code-push deployment ls <codepush-appname> --displayKeys

Which produces something like this:

|Name|Deployment Key|Update Metadata|Install Metrics |---|---|---|--- |Production|r1DVaLfKjc0Y5d6BzqX4..|No updates released|No installs recorded |Staging|YTmVMy0GLCknVu3GVIyn..|Label: v5|Active: 11% (2 of 19) | | |App Version: 1.0.0|Total: 2 | | |Mandatory: Yes| | | |Release Time: an hour ago| | | |Released By: [email protected]| | | |Description: Mandatory iOS version!|

Clearing the release history

This won't roll back any releases, but it cleans up the history metadata (of the Staging app, in this case):

nativescript-code-push deployment clear <codepush-appname> Staging

Advanced topics

Testing CodePush packages during development

You may want to play with CodePush before using it in production (smart move!). Perform these steps once you've pushed an update and added the sync command to your app:

$ tns run <platform>. On an iOS device add the --release flag so LiveSync doesn't interfere.
kill and restart the app after the update is installed

Running the demo app

You may also play with CodePush by using its demo app. Here are the steps you need to perform in order to observe an app update:

register with the service (nativescript-code-push register) and add the demo app to your account (nativescript-code-push app add <appname> <platform> nativescript)
once the app is registered you will see its deployment keys in the console, use them to update the ones in the demo
go to src and run npm run preparedemo - this will build the plugin and add a reference to the demo app
prepare an app that will be used as an "update version" (for example, uncomment one of the CODEPUSH labels and comment the APPSTORE label), then run tns build <platform>
release the update (nativescript-code-push release <appname> <platform>)
you can ensure it appears in the list with updates (nativescript-code-push deployment history <appname> Staging)
prepare an app that will be used as an "official release version" (for example, comment the CODEPUSH label and uncomment the APPSTORE label), then run tns run <platform>
when the app is deployed on the device, you should see the "official release version" along with information about an installed update
close the app (and remove it from device's recent apps to ensure its next start will be a cold start) and run it again - you should now see the "update version" of the app

Patching Update Metadata

After releasing an update, there may be scenarios where you need to modify one or more of the metadata attributes associated with it (e.g. you forgot to mark a critical bug fix as mandatory.

You can update metadata by running the following command:

nativescript-code-push patch <appName> <deploymentName>
[--label <releaseLabel>]
[--mandatory <isMandatory>]
[--description <description>]
[--targetBinaryVersion <targetBinaryVersion>]

⚠️ This command doesn't allow modifying the actual update contents of a release. If you need to respond to a release that has been identified as being broken, you should use the rollback command to immediately roll it back, and then if necessary, release a new update with the approrpriate fix when it is available.

Aside from the appName and deploymentName, all parameters are optional, and therefore, you can use this command to update just a single attribute or all of them at once. Calling the patch command without specifying any attribute flag will result in a no-op.

# Mark the latest production release as mandatory
nativescript-code-push patch MyAppiOS Production -m

# Add a "mina and max binary version" to an existing release
nativescript-code-push patch MyAppiOS Staging -t "1.0.0 - 1.0.5"

Promoting Updates

Once you've tested an update against a specific deployment (e.g. Staging), and you want to promote it (e.g. dev->staging, staging->production), you can simply use the following command to copy the release from one deployment to another:

nativescript-code-push promote <appName> <sourceDeploymentName> <destDeploymentName>
[--description <description>]
[--label <label>]
[--mandatory]
[--targetBinaryVersion <targetBinaryVersion]

# example
nativescript-code-push promote CodePushDemoIOS Staging Production --description 'Promoted from Staging to Production'

The promote command will create a new release for the destination deployment, which includes the exact code and metadata (description, mandatory and target binary version) from the latest release of the source deployment. While you could use the release command to "manually" migrate an update from one environment to another, the promote command has the following benefits:

It's quicker, since you don't need to reassemble the release assets you want to publish or remember the description/app store version that are associated with the source deployment's release.
It's less error-prone, since the promote operation ensures that the exact thing that you already tested in the source deployment (e.g. Staging) will become active in the destination deployment (e.g. Production).

💁‍♂️ Unless you need to make changes to your code, the recommended workflow is taking advantage of the automatically created Staging and Production environments, and do all releases directly to Staging, and then perform a promote from Staging to Production after performing the appropriate testing.

Rolling Back Updates

A deployment's release history is immutable, so you cannot delete or remove individual updates once they have been released without deleting all of the deployment's release history. However, if you release an update that is broken or contains unintended features, it is easy to roll it back using the rollback command:

nativescript-code-push rollback <appName> <deploymentName>

#example
nativescript-code-push rollback MyAppiOS Production

This has the effect of creating a new release for the deployment that includes the exact same code and metadata as the version prior to the latest one. For example, imagine that you released the following updates to your app:

| Release | Description | Mandatory | |---------|-------------------|-----------| | v1 | Initial release! | Yes | | v2 | Added new feature | No | | v3 | Bug fixes | Yes |

If you ran the rollback command on that deployment, a new release (v4) would be created that included the contents of the v2 release.

| Release | Description | Mandatory | |-----------------------------|-------------------|-----------| | v1 | Initial release! | Yes | | v2 | Added new feature | No | | v3 | Bug fixes | Yes | | v4 (Rollback from v3 to v2) | Added new feature | No |

End-users that had already acquired v3 would now be "moved back" to v2 when the app performs an update check. Additionally, any users that were still running v2, and therefore, had never acquired v3, wouldn't receive an update since they are already running the latest release (this is why our update check uses the package hash in addition to the release label).

If you would like to rollback a deployment to a release other than the previous (e.g. v3 -> v2), you can specify the optional --targetRelease parameter:

nativescript-code-push rollback MyAppiOS Production --targetRelease v34

⚠️ This rolls back the release to the previous CodePush version, NOT the AppStore version (if there was one in between).

💁‍♂️ The release produced by a rollback will be annotated in the output of the deployment history command to help identify them more easily.

App Collaboration

If you will be working with other developers on the same CodePush app, you can add them as collaborators using the following command:

nativescript-code-push collaborator add <appName> <collaboratorEmail>

NOTE: This expects the developer to have already registered with CodePush using the specified e-mail address, so ensure that they have done that before attempting to share the app with them.

Once added, all collaborators will immediately have the following permissions with regards to the newly shared app:

View the app, its collaborators, deployments and release history.
Release updates to any of the app's deployments.
Rollback any of the app's deployments

Inversely, that means that an app collaborator cannot do any of the following:

Rename or delete the app
Create, rename or delete new deployments within the app
Clear a deployment's release history
Add or remove collaborators from the app (although a developer can remove themself as a collaborator from an app that was shared with them).

Over time, if someone is no longer working on an app with you, you can remove them as a collaborator using the following command:

nativescript-code-push collaborator rm <appName> <collaboratorEmail>

If at any time you want to list all collaborators that have been added to an app, you can simply run the following command:

nativescript-code-push collaborator ls <appName>

Using CodePush behind a proxy

nativescript-code-push login --noProxy

I'd you like to explicitly specify a proxy server that the CLI should use, without relying on system-wide settings, you can instead pass the --proxy parameter when logging in:

nativescript-code-push login --proxy https://foo.com:3454

Once you've logged in, any inferred and/or specified proxy settings are persisted along with your user session. This allows you to continue using the CLI without needing to re-authenticate or re-specify your preferred proxy. If at any time you want to start or stop using a proxy, simply logout, and then log back in with the newly desired settings.