myBrickset Android App

Kev17

Hi there, my app recently updated but now it is showing no collection. I have tried doing force refresh but doesn't work. 

I am using a Samsung galaxy 6 android version 7 if that helps.

Any ideas?

Many thanks 

RikTheVeggie

Hi @Kev17
Sorry to hear that, it's certainly not something that should be happening.  All of your data is still safe on brickset.com though so don't worry:)

Can you try logging out & back in?  Or quitting the app and restarting?  This shouldn't be necessary, but there's no harm in trying.

If that doesn't help can you send me the logs please (main screen | menu | send logs), they'll hopefully show what's going on.

Thanks!

Kev17

Thanks Rik, yeah I use the website most days so have seen it's still there😁 . I have tried all the above but no sucess 

Is there an email address or somewhere  I need to sent the logs too?

RikTheVeggie

Just hit Send Logs and it'll auto-create an email with the address filled in and the logs attached.
If that doesn't work, drop me a mail at [email protected] and I'll follow up from there.

Kev17

Thanks, that's the logs sent

RikTheVeggie

All - can you please let me know whether the set highlighting is working for you in the latest release?  The new setting "Result Highlighting" should default to "Full", so that list entries are filled green, red or yellow as appropriate.

I've had a few reports that it isn't working, so would like to find out if it's isolated to an OS version or two, or whether it's affecting everyone.  It's working fine on my personal device and all of the emulators I've tried (from Android 6.0 (aka API 23 aka Marshmallow) and up).

Legogram

There are no colors on my Android 9

RikTheVeggie

@Legogram thanks for the feedback.  It sounds like I may have an issue with the upgrade process.  :(

If you look at the "Result Highlighting" setting, what does it currently show?  It should show "Full" - but then it should also be working!  Try changing it to any other value and then back again, that should fix the colours.

Legogram

@RikTheVeggie Thanks so much!  Such a simple fix, even I could manage it.  :)

RikTheVeggie

Was hoping to ship a fix tonight for the colours but was busy investigating other issues :(  Hopefully tomorrow night!

sid3windr

I saw some discussion in this thread and was hoping it was about having no hilighting at all in the list view... it seems to work now, so either after an update or because I just checked the setting's value and went back...

Either way good job ;-)

RikTheVeggie

@sid3windr highlighting wasn't working because of an upgrade issue - the default value for the new setting wasn't being applied.  This was resolved a couple of releases back, and you can now even choose which style you want - none, full (but grid still only gets a border) or border.

Glad to hear it's working for you :)

RikTheVeggie

Hi everyone, it's been a while :)

I'd like to ask how many people use the ACM from within myBrickset, and how useful it is.  API constraints mean it's read only, which reduces a lot of the functionality IMO.  And I didn't do a very good job of displaying the data either!  This is an area where I think the experience is a lot better directly on brickset.com, tho' I haven't tried it on a phone sized screen.

Also, does anyone actively take advantage of myBrickset's "offline" functionality?  eg being able to browse the database, or update your sets, even without an internet connection?  WiFi has become a lot more prevalent since I rolled out version 1.0 many years ago, and pretty much everyone seems to have a data plan now. 

I don't have any immediate plans to remove the offline functionality, but doing so would reduce a lot of the complexity present in the app (frankly this is the scariest part of the code as if I get it wrong everyone's data could quite easily become out of sync with brickset.com, or overwrite data it shouldn't).

sid3windr

I regularly use it offline because in most stores I'm in there's little to no 3G/4G/LTE reception and going onto WiFi, if there is any, means accepting ToS and stuff so is not automatic.

The million dollar question is, if one is online, why not use brickset.com instead of mybrickset? ;-) The app is loads faster for me and has very useful links, so obviously I'd keep using it - also offline.

I sometimes already have issues when it thinks it's online while it's actually not (because the data is not getting through) which means it takes like a full minute to start...

I probably would miss it being able to update the "I own" as soon as I put something in my cart, even when offline, but I'd very terribly miss the "current status" when offline, at least.

RikTheVeggie

Thanks for the info @sid3windr

There are no immediate plans to remove the ability to update owned status whilst offline, but even if this was done I'd still want to try and retain the ability to view the current collection.  I think offline access is one of myBrickset's big "selling points" over other apps, so would only remove it if either no-one used it or it became harder to support.

ACM will be removed from the next release, as the API no longer supports it.

When launching the app, if you're logged in then it verifies that your user token from brickset.com is still valid.  If there's no active internet connection then it skips this check so you can still access your collection (but may not be able to sync any changes when a connection becomes available). 

It sounds like your phone is reporting there's a connection when there isn't, so the app has to wait for the connection to time out.  Don't know if there's anything I can do about this, but I'll go over the code to see if the API's got any improved mechanisms for checking for a connection.

sid3windr

Yeah, I don't think it's your fault - the LTE icon is up with barely a signal, and it's stubbornly trying to hang on to it, but data isn't actually working. It's perfectly logical that myBrickset tries to connect! A shorter timeout may be nice but it's something I can definitely live with.

Thanks again for the great app :-)

RikTheVeggie

I'll be pushing a new beta soon as part of switching over to the new API, so I'll tweak the connection timeouts a little too and see if that helps :)

RikTheVeggie

The app has been converted to Brickset's latest API, and I tweaked the connection timeouts too.  Everything looks to be working ok.
http://otissoft.co.uk/mybrickset/bin/myBrickset-347.apk

I've got a couple of minor bugs to look at (unrelated to the API changes) then I'll push out a beta release to Google Play.

RikTheVeggie

^ Please do not install the above release at this time, Huw has to make some breaking changes to the v3 API.

If you had downloaded the Beta from the Play Store, I've pushed out a new version that reverts it back to v2.

I hope to be able to publish a new v3 release next week.

Huw

Sorry for messing everyone around!

sid3windr

Ah, I was going to report today that I could no longer log in... :-)

RikTheVeggie

@sid3windr I don't think that's one of the APIs being changed, but it's possible it is or the entire API was taken offline for a while.. just in case, can you send me your logs please (unless you've gone back to the v2 release)?  I'll see if there's anything I need to worry about.

sid3windr

I haven't reverted anything, but I can log in again today. Still need the logs?

RikTheVeggie

Must've just been a temporary API outage then.  Please send the logs anyway, I'd like to see if it detected and handled the issue correctly.

RikTheVeggie

Have just pushed a beta release with the latest v3 API (JSON).  It all looks good on my side, please take it for a run and tell me what you think :D

bennok79

Have updated to 3.1.3 & it's generally working fine. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but changing the sorting parameters in sets doesn't seem to do anything (it remains sorted by name). Any ideas?

RikTheVeggie

Oops, sorry about that!  I was doing a little bit of cleanup unrelated to the API changes and accidentally broke it.  I'll include the fix in the next release (likely later today).

bennok79

Cool, thanks! Seems to be working well again now. 

RikTheVeggie

There appear to be issues with the latest Beta release, where people are unable to login.  This should be affecting everyone, I'd be very surprised if it isn't.

It's related the new JSON parsing library I'm using, and the optimiser being a bit too heavy handed and removing information that's needed at runtime (as the parser relies on reflection).

A user reached out to me over email about the issue and I think I have a fix now - once it's confirmed I'll push out a new Beta.

bennok79

Weird. I had previously logged in fine (and was able to continue accessing). Logged out just now & can't log back in.

RikTheVeggie

@bennok79 can you try with this please?  It should resolve the issue for you.

http://www.otissoft.co.uk/mybrickset/bin/myBrickset-355.apk  [6.95MB] 

I used to have code that would allow a user to access the app via auto-login even if Brickset gave an error, so the user wouldn't be blocked if there was an API issue.  It's possible this is now being a bit too lenient now there's an API with better error handling, and I need to look at tightening it back up. 

This would perhaps explain how people were able to use the latest version even with the bug tho'.

bennok79

@RikTheVeggie yep, that fixed it. I was able to log in and everything seems to be working fine.

RikTheVeggie

Great, thanks for letting me know.
I've pushed the fix out to the Play Store.

RikTheVeggie

There was a short-lived issue today where if you changed any data for a set, it would mark it as wanted on brickset.com.  A fix for the issue is now live in the Play Store.

The integrity of user data is paramount and I feel awful for having such a bug slip through.  I sincerely apologise for this.

If you have changed any data through myBrickset today, please double-check on brickset.com that the wanted state is set correctly.

RikTheVeggie

Further analysis from the ongoing investigation shows that this issue only affected sets not currently in your collection, so not as bad as I feared (but still bad).

Huw

Is that due to an anomaly with the API I should address?

RikTheVeggie

@Huw nope, the API's been doing exactly what it's supposed to - it was my own stupid mistake I introduced when refactoring the code as part of switching to the new API. 

I had `>=` rather than `=` :facepalm:.  Normally it wouldn't be a problem but I had another legacy bug where I was marking the wanted state as dirty when creating a record for a new set, which made it try and needlessly send the state over the API rather than just ignore it.  That's where it stumbled into the comparison bug and sent wanted=1 rather than wanted=0.

Lesson learned - more unit tests and less late night coding after work!

deusxanime

Some weirdness this morning...

Trying to add a few sets through myBrickset by searching. I search the number, it brings it up, I add 1 to owned, and back out back to the search page and it seems all is well. But if I go back into it, it's missing and back to 0 owned and wanted for that set.

I've also tried adding by just searching for a theme (a couple new Dots sets my daughter wanted that I bought) and I see the list of sets. I go into one, add it, and back out to the list and I see it is green like it added it. Then I go into another set, add it, and go back out to the list and that new set is green, but the other goes back to white/not added. I go into it and it is zeroed out. So I add, go back to the list, and then notice the other is back to 0. Argh! The odd thing though is that I go to brickset.com and look, and I can see those sets have been added according to the website, so it seems to have recognized it in a way.

Also tried to just add a different set through brickset.com website and then force a sync on myBrickset. When I search for the set after that, it still is zeroed out in the app so isn't seeming to recognize the addition done that way either. 

Have tried the sync button in the app and even get the "Sync Complete" toast message letting me know it "worked". I've also tried force closing the app and restarting it. Also rebooting the entire phone.

Now tried just checking the sets owned and wanted from the main screen and those are both showing 0 sets. Nothing there.

Tried logging off and back on again in case there was a weird account issue, but that seemed to work fine (no login errors), but still showing 0 of everything. 

This is on a Pixel 3 with latest Android. I checked Play Store and it says there are no updates, so believe I'm running the latest version of myBrickset.

Stuff like this really worries me that it is going to sync the 0 of everything to the website and wipe out my collection someday... Time to back it up to csv again...

RikTheVeggie

@deusxanime
There are API issues atm, nothing is syncing to or from brickset.com as we've blown through the max number of allowed daily requests.

Occasionally data will be synced as you've seen, as Huw temporarily increases the limit.  But this only lasts a short while before it's exceeded again.

I'm working on it with Huw atm but am limited to how much I can do as I'm meant to be at my day job!  A new version has been released which will limit the number of calls each installation makes and will hopefully improve things once everyone has updated.

I'll be doing more investigations tonight after work, but that won't be for at least another 6 hours.

myBrickset will only ever send "dirty" data to brickset.com, ie data you've explicitly changed in the app.  

RikTheVeggie

Version 3.1.8 is rolling out now which should resolve everything.

Please let me know if you continue to experience issues.

deusxanime

Thanks for the info on what is going on! It's just a bit scary to see 0 things in the app but it is still saying it is syncing and think what could happen if that gets pushed to Brickset as "gold" and things are wiped out. Hopefully it will resolve with the new version and I have my updated CSVs now just in case too. =)

RikTheVeggie

Hopefully this will be a very rare scenario in the v3 API, simply because in general it provides much better error information than v2 did and the app can abort the sync rather than just removing all data. 

In this case though, the API was returning "success" but not sending any data back - and the app was unable to distinguish this from a user simply not having any data.

RikTheVeggie

I'd like to thank @Huw for his assistance in tracking down the issue, and fast action in implementing changes on his side to alleviate things whilst I could push out a fix.

NickF22

I'm getting an overlap of text on the links at the bottom of a set: 
(I'm on the beta version)

RikTheVeggie

Thanks @NickF22, this is something I broke recently - it only affects certain screen sizes.  I'll have it fixed for the next release (will make the change in 1 min before I forget again).

sid3windr

You may want to consider allowing - (dash) on the set number entry in Search; it's on the keyboard already so shouldn't be a big ask; useful for sets with double numbers, i-e currently cannot search 720-2.

Obvious workarounds include:

- Searching for 720 and selecting the right one

- Changing to ABC entry and typing it in

Buttttt it can go on the  "if it's not too much trouble, it would be nice" pile :D

RikTheVeggie

That's surprisingly not as easy as it sounds.. Android has a concept of a "numeric" input, which displays the number keypad with the - sign.  But it's expecting a valid number, so only allows - at the start..

I've figured out a solution that seems to work, but now it highlights that I'm only searching for the set number (720) and not the variant (2).

There are a couple of ways I could go about supporting this.. I'll have a think and try to get something in for the next release.

sid3windr

Ahaha, see there's the assumption making an.. well, you know. I thought it'd be an easy fix. It's not super important, sorry for adding more work ;-)

RikTheVeggie

np, change already implemented and rolled out to the Beta channel.  Thanks for the suggestion, I'd honestly never considered adding variants to the search before.

sid3windr

Indeed, it works well! :-) Thanks!