Meaning of implementation project(':urbanairship-fcm')

Question

I was reading https://github.com/urbanairship/android-library and I found this:

dependencies {
    ...
    // Urban Airship SDK - FCM
    implementation 'com.urbanairship.android:urbanairship-fcm:9.7.1'
}

In the sample project at https://github.com/urbanairship/android-library, they are using this:

dependencies {
    ...
    // Urban Airship - FCM
    implementation project(':urbanairship-fcm')
    ...
}

I was expecting the sample project to have implementation 'com.urbanairship.android:urbanairship-fcm:9.7.1' and not implementation project(':urbanairship-fcm'). Is 'project(:urbanairship-fcm') referring to a folder that contains the urbanairship-fcm library/code? Is it referring to this folder?: https://github.com/urbanairship/android-library/tree/master/urbanairship-fcm

Thank you.

UPDATE 1: Basically, I am familiar with this syntax: implementation 'com.urbanairship.android:urbanairship-fcm:9.7.1'. I am not familiar with this syntax: implementation project(':urbanairship-fcm'). If I understand it correctly, implementation project(':urbanairship-fcm') means that there is a folder called urbanairship-fcm that contains the source code with the com.urbanairship.android:urbanairship-fcm library. Is that correct?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 14 '19 at 16:19

2

When you see implementation project(':urbanairship-fcm') that means it's pulling it from a local module instead of remote package. The sample is setup to use the library source so we can use the sample app to test our development changes.

answered May 14 '19 at 16:19

ralepinski

1,756
8
15

Thank you Ralepinski. Wouldn't have been better to use in https://github.com/urbanairship/android-library, something like this?: `implementation 'com.urbanairship.android:urbanairship-fcm:9.7.1'`. I wonder what version of Airship `implementation project(':urbanairship-fcm')` is using. Hopefully not an old version, since I wanted to test my project using Version 9.7.1, one of the latest versions available today, if not the latest. – Jaime Montoya May 14 '19 at 16:53
1

If you are pulling from the repo, its always using the latest release - https://github.com/urbanairship/android-library/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#version-971---march-14-2019. Version 9.7.1 is the latest. – ralepinski May 14 '19 at 17:08
Awesome! Thanks. – Jaime Montoya May 14 '19 at 17:16

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered May 06 '19 at 18:35

The sample project at https://github.com/urbanairship/android-library/tree/master/sample is outdated. For example, the Autopilot at https://github.com/urbanairship/android-library/blob/master/sample/src/main/java/com/urbanairship/sample/SampleAutopilot.java was last updated on Jan 29, 2018. It does not incorporate the following code that Airship mentions at https://docs.airship.com/platform/android/getting-started/#sdk-installation:

// Android O
  if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 26) {
      Context context = UAirship.getApplicationContext();
      NotificationManager notificationManager = (NotificationManager) context.getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);

      NotificationChannel channel = new NotificationChannel("customChannel",
              context.getString(R.string.custom_channel_name,
              NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_DEFAULT);

      notificationManager.createNotificationChannel(channel);
  }

So I better contacted Airship support to request an updated version of the sample project or a follow-up because I cannot use a sample project that is extremely old as a reference. In fact, looking at https://github.com/urbanairship/android-library/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md, on January 28, 2019, the latest Urban Airship SDK available back then was "Version 8.9.7 - January 22, 2018". I do not see how that project could incorporate the latest google-services, play-services and Firebase versions available today.

The sample project is current and works fine. The UA SDK defines a default channel, so you do not have it defined. I see how the documentation is confusing around that so I will update it. — ralepinski, May 14 '19 at 16:17

Meaning of implementation project(':urbanairship-fcm')

2 Answers2