Not working with Scenes

[gavrichards]

I've had to convert my AppDelegate to Swift, because my radio station app uses react-native-carplay, which now requires use of iOS Scenes which in turns requires a Swift AppDelegate.

Everything is working fine except for react-native-siri-shortcut (it was working fine before this).

I can add a shortcut still, but when I say "Hey Siri, play [name of station]" - the app opens, but getInitialShortcut returns null. Same goes for using addShortcutListener while the app is open - the event is never triggered.

Here's what AppDelegate.swift looks like. I used Swiftify to convert react-native-siri-shortcut's bit (and others) to Swift.

import UIKit
import CarPlay
import React

...

@UIApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate, RCTBridgeDelegate, UNUserNotificationCenterDelegate {

  var window: UIWindow?
  var bridge: RCTBridge?;
  var rootView: RCTRootView?;

  static var shared: AppDelegate { return UIApplication.shared.delegate as! AppDelegate }

  func sourceURL(for bridge: RCTBridge!) -> URL! {
    #if DEBUG
    return RCTBundleURLProvider.sharedSettings().jsBundleURL(forBundleRoot: "index");
    #else
    return Bundle.main.url(forResource:"main", withExtension:"jsbundle")
    #endif
  }

  func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {
    
    ...
    
    self.bridge = RCTBridge(delegate: self, launchOptions: launchOptions)

    let rootView = RCTRootView(bridge: self.bridge!, moduleName: "aiirmobile", initialProperties: nil)
    
    if #available(iOS 13.0, *) {
        rootView.backgroundColor = UIColor.systemBackground
    } else {
        rootView.backgroundColor = UIColor.white
    }
    
    self.rootView = rootView

    ...

    return true
  }

  func application(_ application: UIApplication, configurationForConnecting connectingSceneSession: UISceneSession, options: UIScene.ConnectionOptions) -> UISceneConfiguration {
    if (connectingSceneSession.role == UISceneSession.Role.carTemplateApplication) {
      let scene =  UISceneConfiguration(name: "CarPlay", sessionRole: connectingSceneSession.role)
      scene.delegateClass = CarSceneDelegate.self
      return scene
    } else {
      let scene =  UISceneConfiguration(name: "Phone", sessionRole: connectingSceneSession.role)
      scene.delegateClass = PhoneSceneDelegate.self
      return scene
    }
  }

  func application(_ application: UIApplication, didDiscardSceneSessions sceneSessions: Set<UISceneSession>) {
  }

  ...

  // Added for react-native-siri-shortcut
  func application(
      _ application: UIApplication,
      continue userActivity: NSUserActivity,
      restorationHandler: @escaping ([UIUserActivityRestoring]?) -> Void
  ) -> Bool {
      return RNSSSiriShortcuts.application(application, continue: userActivity, restorationHandler: restorationHandler)
  }
}

Then in myapp-Bridging-Header.h I have:

#import <React/RCTBridge.h>
#import <React/RCTRootView.h>
#import <React/RCTBundleURLProvider.h>
#import <React/RCTAppSetupUtils.h>

#import <RNSiriShortcuts/RNSiriShortcuts.h>
#import "RNCarPlay.h"

Any thoughts or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

[Gustash]

Is there any data inside func application( _ application: UIApplication, continue userActivity: NSUserActivity, restorationHandler: @escaping ([UIUserActivityRestoring]?) -> Void ) at all?

[gavrichards]

So when I do getInitialShortcut I just get null. Is that what you mean?

[Gustash]

Can you replicate on a clean project and link it here? This is a tricky one to debug

[gavrichards]

Yes. I have just tried to set up the example project, but when I do npm install I receive this error:

example % npm install
chruby: unknown Ruby: 2.7.4
npm ERR! code EUNSUPPORTEDPROTOCOL
npm ERR! Unsupported URL Type "link:": link:..

I can see in package.json it has "react-native-siri-shortcut": "link:.." so I presume this is the reason.
Any ideas what to do here?

[Gustash]

It should work out of the box, seems like a possible issue with your dev environment

[Gustash]

Try yarn instead of npm

[gavrichards]

Ok yarn worked, thanks.

[gavrichards]

Ok I'm trying to run the example in the simulator now. I've done yarn install and pod install, but I'm getting this:

[gavrichards]

Update - I got this running, by deleting and cloning from scratch, and this time not doing yarn install in the root of the project, only in the example directory.

I then converted the AppDelegate to Swift.

And what do you know, it just works still.

Flip back to my app, and it doesn't. So I'm baffled, and now on a mission to compare the two.

[Gustash]

Seems like a specific issue with your app, unfortunately. I'll leave this open for now, but if/when you find a solution, it would be very appreciated if you could add a comment with it in case other people have the same issue you're having in the future :)

[gavrichards]

Thanks for leaving it open, I will definitely give an update once I land on the reason.

[gavrichards]

Ok I have landed on the cause through a process of elimination, but I don't yet understand why it's happening.

It stops working at the point you introduce "scenes" to AppDelegate.

In order to support CarPlay, you have to have separate scenes for Phone versus CarPlay.

If you delete the CarPlay scene and move the code from the Phone scene back into the main AppDelegate, Siri Shortcuts start working again - getInitialShortcut returns an object of info rather than null.

Is that enough information to investigate with? Are there any known incompatibiltiy issues with Scenes for this package?

[Gustash]

I don't know, that's a very specific use case that's arguably out of the scope of this package. I would rather not blow up the scope of this package in order to support another third party package.

If you do figure out the root cause, and a solution, then a PR detailing the why and how would be appreciated. I don't currently have the time to modify the library for that use case, so that would be something you'd need to figure out on your own and possibly send upstream here for other people.