Auto sync of read articles

[Mark Otway]

Hey Mariano,

How do you handle the scenario where the user is reading articles and then stops, but when the 5-min sync to update GR with the read articles runs, the device has no connectivity? I had that scenario today - I read 100 articles on the train, but because of the Android bug #2845 the connection didn't re-aquire for 45 minutes (when I forced it by toggling Airplane mode).

Unfortunately, this seems to mean that the auto update never happened; once I did a manual refresh GR was up to date.

Are you able to set a notification on 'connection available' so that if the phone is offline when the article sync is attempted it'll retry as soon as a connection is available?

Posted here because I don't even know if it's possible; let me know if you want it put on Uservoice.

[Mariano Kamp]

Hi Mark,

NewsRob stores the state for each article individually. When a state changes an upload-only-sync is scheduled. When it runs and their is no connectivity it will not schedule another try. 

The state that an article needs syncing will remain though until this successfully happened. This will be then during an ordinary sync or another upload-only-sync that get scheduled when you change another state.

I can't say how easy it is to implement what you propose without further investigation.

I believe to remember that I could register for a Network-Is-Up event, but couldn't find it quickly now. 

But even if that would be the case I wouldn't know how long the new connection is available and I always fear in those retry-scenarios that I run down the battery, so I would need to add some more complexity like a retry count or an escalating schedule interval or something similar.

So, yes, add it to uservoice and I will investigate it when it's voted up.

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[Henrik Heimbuerger]

I'll post this here because it seems related to me, although I may have misunderstood what you are talking about.

I've recently had wi-fi turned off for a while in the system and my full sync is configured to run only over wi-fi. Ever since then (and I haven't rebooted), I feel like NR has stopped doing full-syncs. Is it possible that an unsuccessful full sync doesn't start the timer again, so no more syncs are scheduled?

Uploading changes still works as intended, it's just the sync with the downloading of new articles that I believe doesn't run anymore.

Pretty inconclusive testing so far, I know. So far it's mostly a gut feeling. It's not a huge issue anyway (definitely not a stopper for the 3.4.0 release) and if it really exists, it sure has been for quite a while.
I'm sure rebooting or *really* restarting the NR task (i.e. not bringing an active NR task back to the front) would fix it, too.

[Mariano Kamp]

The log would help. We could then check for ourselves if the sync ran or not?!

How do you know that there wasn't a full sync?

[Henrik Heimbuerger]

Simply because new articles didn't appear overnight.

I'll perform more detailed tests, hopefully this year.

[Mariano Kamp]

Could it be that after installing the latest version you did not open newsrob for a couple of hours, say not until you next wanted to check for new articles?

Written on a mobile device

On Dec 23, 2009 2:18 PM, "Henrik Heimbuerger" <hheimb...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Simply because new articles didn't appear overnight.

I'll perform more detailed tests, hopefully this year.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Mariano Kamp <marian...@gmail.com> wrote: > > The log would he...

[Henrik Heimbuerger]

Unlikely, but I can't really tell anymore.

Didn't find the time to run some tests, so it will have to wait until mid January. (I guess if this doesn't immediately remind you of something you forgot, it was probably just a broken test anyway. :))

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[Mariano Kamp]

Yes, it did remind me of an issue that I was chasing in the beginning. 

For the OS an upgrade is like an uninstall/install and as part of the uninstall process scheduled alarms are removed and not re-established in the install process.

To handle that I always check if my alarms are scheduled when NewsRob is launched or the phone is booted, but after an install the user may not launch NewsRob directly.

I did a little research in February last year, but at the time there was no solution.

After reading your issue I was doing some research again and with Android 1.5 a new broadcast was added, so that with NewsRob 3.5 it now takes care of re-scheduling after a package upgrade.

Thanks for reminding me ;-)