android-components/components/support/base

Android Components > Support > Base

Base or core component containing building blocks and interfaces for other components.

Usually this component never needs to be added to application projects manually. Other components may have a transitive dependency on some of the classes and interfaces in this component.

Usage

Setting up the dependency

Use Gradle to download the library from maven.mozilla.org (Setup repository):

implementation "org.mozilla.components:support-base:{latest-version}"

Logging

The base component offers helpers for logging for component (and app) code that allows the app to be in control what gets logged and how.

Setup

A log messages are routed through the Log object which doesn't process any logs itself. Instead it forwards the calls to LogSink implementations. The base component includes the AndroidLogSink class which implements LogSink and forwards log messages to Android's system log.

// Forward logs to Android's system log.
// Most apps want to do that at least for debug builds:
Log.addSink(AndroidLogSink())

// A default tag can be set. This tag will be used whenever no tag is provided when logging a message.
Log.addSink(AndroidLogSink("MyAwesomeApp"))

// Log a message (See "Logger" section for more convenient ways to log)
Log.log(tag = "Test", priority = Log.Priority.DEBUG, message = "Hello World!")

// Set the minimum log level. All log messages with a lower level will be ignored.
Log.logLevel = Log.Priority.WARN

An application can add multiple LogSink implementations to save logs to disk, send them to a crash reporting service or display them inside the app.

Logger

The Log class only offers a low-level logging call. The logger sub package contains classes that wrap Log and provide a more convenient API for logging.

class MyClass {
   // All log calls on this instance will use the tag MyClassLogger
   val logger = Logger("MyClassLogger")

   fun doSomething() {
     // Will log a DEBUG message with tag MyClassLogger
     logger.debug("Hello World")
   }

   fun couldThrow() {
     try {
       // ..
     } catch (e: IllegalStateException) {
       // Will log a ERROR message with stack trace and tag MyClassLogger
       logger.error("Oops!", e)
     )
   }

   fun generic() {
     // You can also use the Logger class directly if no custom tag is needed:
     Logger.info("Hello World!")
   }
}

Notifications

Android's APIs require a unique Int id for showing and cancelling notifications. Agreeing on unique ids over multiple components and app code without any conflicts is hard. For this reason this component contains a NotificationIds object that allocates unique, stable ids based on a provided String tag.

// Get a unique id for the provided tag
val id = NotificationIds.getIdForTag(context, "mozac.my.feature")

// Extension methods for showing and cancelling notifications
NotificationManagerCompat
    .from(context)
    .notify(context, "mozac.my.feature", notification)

NotificationManagerCompat
    .from(context)
    .cancel(context, "mozac.my.feature")

Facts

A Fact is a generic "event" that a component emitted.

Facts are not meant to implement application logic based on them. Instead they can be observed as a stream of "user/app events" inside components that can be analyzed or forwarded to external telemetry services.

By default nothing happens with Fact instances. An app needs to register a FactProcessor that will receive all emitted Fact objects.

The base component comes with a LogFactProcessor that will print all emitted Fact instances to a Logger.

// Either install processors on the Facts object:
Facts.registerProcessor(LogFactProcessor())

// Or use the extension method:
LogFactProcessor()
    .register()

License

This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/