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Upgrade Guides

Portals for iOS 0.11.x → 0.12.0​

  • Portals for iOS version 0.12.0 is compatible with Portals Web Plugin version 0.12.x.
caution

Portals 0.12.0 is a notable update that upgrades the Capacitor dependency to version 7. Care should be taken to update dependencies across your web content and native apps to ensure compatibility.

First review the Capacitor 7 Update Guide for an overview of necessary changes. Some will not be relevant for Portals apps, but this will be a useful reference in case you encounter issues with your upgrade.

This release removes the encodeJSObject and decodeJSObject extension methods for JSONEncoder and JSONDecoder, which had previously been deprecated. Use JSValueEncoder and JSValueDecoder provided by Capacitor as their replacements.

Portals for iOS 0.10.x → 0.11.0​

  • Portals for iOS version 0.11.0 is compatible with Portals Web Plugin version 0.10.x.
caution

Portals 0.11.0 is a notable update that upgrades the Capacitor dependency to version 6. Care should be taken to update dependencies across your web content and native apps to ensure compatibility.

First review the Capacitor 6 Update Guide for an overview of necessary changes. Some will not be relevant for Portals apps, but this will be a useful reference in case you encounter issues with your upgrade.

Portals for iOS 0.9.x → 0.10.0​

  • Portals for iOS version 0.10.0 is compatible with Portals Web Plugin versions 0.8.0 and up.

Differential Live Update Support​

Portals for iOS 0.10.0 introduces support for differential live updates by requiring IonicLiveUpdates 0.5.0 as the minimum supported version. This feature allows for updating only the changed files in a web asset bundle, reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred to the device. This feature is enabled by default. To opt-out, explicitly set the strategy property on the LiveUpdate configured for the Portal to Strategy.zip.

Convenience Live Update API​

Individual Portal Sync​

Portal now has a sync method that allows for triggering a live update sync manually without needing to interact with the LiveUpdate or LiveUpdateManager instance directly.

let portal = Portal(/* ... */)
let result = try await portal.sync()

sync will return a LiveUpdateManager.SyncResult or throw an error if the sync has failed. If the Portal is not configured to use live updates, sync will throw an error.

Multiple Portal Sync​

If you need to sync multiple Portals, you can use the static sync method on Portal:

let portals: [Portal] = [/* ... */]
for await result in Portal.sync(portals) {
    // do something with result
}

There is also an extension on Array that allows for syncing an array of Portals:

let portals: [Portal] = [/* ... */]
for await result in portals.sync() {
    // do something with result
}

Each result is a Result<LiveUpdateManager.SyncResult, any Error> that can be handled as needed. All sync operations are performed in parallel and results are yielded as they complete. This AsyncSequence does not throw to avoid halting the entire operation if one sync fails.

Portals for iOS 0.8.0 → 0.9.0​

  • Portals for iOS version 0.9.0 is compatible with Portals Web Plugin version 0.8.x.

Capacitor Configuration API​

There is a new API available for configuring the Capacitor runtime. Most of the configuration options are the same as those available in the Capacitor configuration file. For more details, see Advanced Configuration.

Dev Mode​

There is a new property devModeEnabled on Portal that controls whether or not the Portal will be in development mode for debug builds. This mode will allow the Portal to be replaced with content from a development server URL to be used in conjunction with the portals serve ios CLI command. This mode is enabled by default and is only available in debug builds. Release modes will always use the content shipped with the application. To turn off development mode for a Portal, set devModeEnabled to false either in the Portal initializer or by setting the property directly.

Portals for iOS 0.7.x → 0.8.0​

  • Portals for iOS version 0.8.0 is compatible with Portals Web Plugin version 0.8.x.

This release requires Xcode 14.1 or higher in accordance with Apple's requirements.

caution

IonicPortals 0.8.0 is a notable update that requires Capacitor 5. Care should be taken to update dependencies across your web content and native apps to ensure compatibility.

First review the Capacitor 5 Update Guide for an overview of necessary changes. Some will not be relevant for Portals apps, but this will be a useful reference in case you encounter issues with your upgrade.

Breaking Changes​

Pub/Sub​

PortalsPubSub is now a class with a shared singleton available instead of an enum with static functions. This change allows for providing a custom instance of PortalsPubSub to PortalsPlugin to limit visibility of events that are published to a given portal. PortalsPlugin will default to using PortalsPubSub.shared.

PortalsPubSub.subscribe no longer has an overload that returns an Int and PortalsPubSub.unsubscribe has been removed entirely. Unsubscribing will occur via an AnyCancellable returned by the subscribe methods whenever it's cancel method is called or on deinit.

Plugin Registration​

There is no longer a PluginRegistrationStrategy on Portal. All plugins must be explicitly registered on the Portal. In certain cases, automatic registration can cause unexpected crashes in applications.

Portals for iOS 0.6.x → 0.7.0​

  • Portals for iOS version 0.7.0 is compatible with Portals Web Plugin version 0.7.x.
caution

Portals 0.7.0 is a notable update that requires Capacitor 4. Care should be taken to update dependencies across your web content and native apps to ensure compatibility.

First review the Capacitor 4 Update Guide for an overview of necessary changes. Some will not be relevant for Portals apps, but this will be a useful reference in case you encounter issues with your upgrade.

Updating Web Content​

Update the Portals Plugin in your web content to 0.7.0. Then, follow the Capacitor 4 Update Guide CLI migration steps to update your web content that uses Capacitor.

Update Native Projects​

Dependency Version Alignment​

The only necessary steps to use Portals version 0.7.0 should be to update dependencies. IonicPortals for iOS version 0.7.0 is compatible with Live Updates 0.2.2 and Official Capacitor Plugins over version 4.0.

InitialContext Update​

A default InitialContext is now always passed to the web content running in a Portal context such that the Portal name will always be accessible.

Before:

export interface InitialContext<T> {
  name: string;
  value: T;
}

After:

export interface InitialContext<T> {
  name: string;
  value: T | undefined;
}

Portals for iOS 0.6.0 → 0.6.1​

  • Portals for iOS version 0.6.1 is compatible with Portals Web Plugin version 0.5.x.

Swift Package Manager Support​

Add https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-portals-ios in the Xcode "Swift Package Dependencies" tab in the project configuration. The suggested version range is "Up to Next Minor Version" to prevent auto-updating to a breaking version before Ionic Portals iOS reaches version 1.0

iOS 13.0 Support​

The 0.5.x versions of Ionic Portals iOS required iOS 14.0. In this release we have included support for iOS 13.0 and up. To support iOS 13.0 in your app, you should update your target to support the OS.

Portals for iOS 0.5.x → 0.6.0​

  • Portals for iOS version 0.6.0 is compatible with Portals Web Plugin version 0.5.x.

PortalManager & PortalBuilder Removal​

PortalManager → PortalsRegistrationManager​

PortalManager has been removed. It's registration functionality has been replaced with PortalsRegistrationManager.

Before

PortalManager.register("YOUR_KEY")

After

PortalsRegistrationManager.shared.register(key: "YOUR_KEY")

Creating and Managing Portals​

There is no need to add or register Portals with PortalManager. Just create an instance of Portal directly:

Before

PortalManager.newPortal("name")
    .setStartDir("startDir")
    .create()

// elsewhere in your application

let portal = try! PortalManager.getPortal("name")

After

let portal = Portal(
    name: "appname",
    startDir: "startDir",
    initialContext: ["someKey": "someValue"]
)

let portalView = PortalUIView(portal: portal)

The primary benefit of this approach is getting rid of a throwing API that is not necessary and eliminating a required and inflexible way of managing Portals. The Portal struct is simply configuration data for the view to determine what web assets to render and what data to provide it. If you find that you need to use the Portals in multiple places in your application, the preferred approach is extending Portal with static properties or methods:

extension Portal {
    static let checkout = Portal(
        name: "checkout",
        startDir: "portals/checkout",
        initialContext: ["someKey": "someValue"]
    )

    static func help(initialRoute: String) -> Portal {
        Portal(
          name: "help",
          startDir: "portals/help",
          initialContext: ["initialRoute": initialRoute]
        )
    }
}

// Where you use the Portal
PortalUIView(portal: .checkout)
PortalUIView(portal: .help(initialRoute: "/faq"))

Your situation may require something different, but version 0.6.0 gives you the flexibility to take any approach you prefer.

Portal interface changes​

initialContext

The initialContext property on Portal has changed from [String: Any] -> JSObject. JSObject is a typealias from Capacitor for [String: JSValue]. JSValue is a protocol defined in Capacitor that the following types conform to:

  • String
  • Bool
  • Int
  • Float
  • Double
  • NSNumber
  • NSNull
  • Data
  • Array where Element: JSValue
  • Dictionary where Key == String && Value == JSValue

This change is breaking only in that this was an undocumented requirement when sending data to a Portal as data would be coerced to those types. However, any data that did not conform to those types would be lost. This change makes that requirement explicit.

ExpressibleByStringLiteral

Portal now has conformance for ExpressibleByStringLiteral for simple use-cases where the Portal name and start directory are the same.

// This creates a `Portal` with name and startDir as "checkout"
// with no intialContext or liveUpdateConfig set.
let portalView = PortalUIView(portal: "checkout")

PortalWebView → PortalUIView & PortalUIWebView → PortalView​

The PortalWebView (the UIKit class) name has been changed to PortalUIView. PortalUIWebView (the SwiftUI struct) name as been changed to PortalView. All other functionality remains the same.

PortalsPlugin and Native PubSub separated​

In an effort to make the PortalsPlugin more focused on simply exposing native behavior to the Web, a new enum PortalsPubSub has taken the role of brokering the actual messages, with PortalsPlugin providing a small plugin interface wrapping calls to PortalsPubSub for Capacitor. PortalsPlugin is no longer publicly accessible, but is exposed to the Objective-C runtime for Capacitor to load.

Before

let subscriptionRef = PortalsPlugin.subscribe("topic") { result in
    // do something with result
}

PortalsPlugin.publish("topic", "data")
PortalsPlugin.unsubscribe("topic", subscriptionRef)

After

let subscriptionRef = PortalsPubSub.subscribe("topic") { result in
    // do something with result
}

PortalsPubSub.publish("data", to: "topic")
PortalsPubSub.unsubscribe(from: "topic", subscriptionRef: subscriptionRef)

Improvements and API Changes to PubSub Interface​

A subscribe(to:) Method that returns an AnyCancellable​

Having to manually manage unsubscribing from a PortalsPubSub subscription can be error prone and must occur to prevent a closure from being retained indefinitely, which could lead to memory issues. An AnyCancellable will run it's cancel method on deinit or when explicitly called. IonicPortals provides the AnyCancellable with the unsubscribe logic so you don't have to juggle managing a subscription counter that has no semantic value for your application.

import UIKit
import Combine // Needed for AnyCancellable visibility
import IonicPortals

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    var cancellable: AnyCancellable?

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        cancellable = PortalsPubSub.subscribe(to: "topic") { result in
            // Do something with result
        }

        super.viewDidLoad()
    }
}

Combine Support​

IonicPortals has support for emitting SubscriptionResult through a Combine Publisher:

import Combine
import IonicPortals

// Emits `SubscriptionResult` downstream
let publisher = PortalsPubSub.publisher(for: "topic")

// Extracts the `data` value from SubscriptionResult
let dataPublisher = PortalsPubSub.publisher(for: "topic")
    .data()

// Attempts to cast the `data` value from SubscriptionResult,
// returning nil on failure
let dataAsPublisher = PortalsPubSub.publisher(for: "topic")
    .data(as: String.self)

// Attempts to cast the `data` value from SubscriptionResult,
// returning an error on failure.
let tryDataAsPublisher = PortalsPubSub.publisher(for: "topic")
    .tryData(as: String.self)

// Attempts to decode the `JSObject` to any type conforming
// to `Decodable`
let decodeDataPublisher = PortalsPubSub.publisher(for: "topic")
    .decodeData(MyDecodableType.self, decoder: JSONDecoder())

Swift Concurrency Support​

only available for Swift 5.6 +

Added a subscribe(to:) method that returns an AsyncStream<SubscriptionResult>:

import IonicPortals

let task = Task {
    for await result in PortalsPubSub.subscribe(to: "topic") {
        // do something with result
    }
}

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