Ideas for version 3

At some point, we are going to have to release a BC breaking version in order to fix some inconsistencies in this library. While we’re at it, we might want to rethink the implementation a bit.

Here are some of my findings after having spending some time triaging issues, reviewing pull requests and reading the source code:

Return type inconsistency

Findings:

• getBuildNumber() returns a string on iOS, and a number on Android (#214). Should be a number IMHO
• The windows implementation sometimes returns “not available” when a feature is missing
• Some methods are not implemented at all on a target and causes exceptions when called. Example: getIPAddress()

Proposal:

• No method should throw an exception if not implemented.
• Exception should only be thrown for Android when a permission is missing
• Unimplemented methods should always return undefined.

Namespacing

Findings: The API is getting bigger and deals with a lot of mixed stuff (networking, telephony, calendar, …).

Proposal: I think that introducing some king of namespacing could help keeping it tidy:

DeviceInfo.telephony.getPhoneNumber();
DeviceInfo.network.getMacAddress();
DeviceInfo.network.getIPAddress();
// ...

We would also split the native code files by namespace

Naming

Naming is inconsistent: getDeviceName() vs getBrand().

We should take advantage of namespaces introduction to tidy up names.

Multi SIM

Currently, telephony related functions returns data for the first SIM card. Might be good to introduce multi SIM card support.

Same goes for network informations (#259)

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Feel free to join the conversation and suggest other or better ideas!

[machour]

Ok so here’s a first part of the namespacing/renaming I had in mind. I’m pretty sure it can be perfected:

var DeviceInfo = {
  app: {
    getName: function() {}, // ex getApplicationName()
    getInstallTime: function() {}, // ex getFirstInstallTime()
    getUpdateTime: function() {}, // ex getLastUpdateTime()
    getInstanceId: function() {},
    getBundleId: function() {},
    getBuildNumber: function() {},
    getVersion: function() {},
    getReadableVersion: function() {},
  },
  os: {
    getApiLevel: function() {}, // android only?
    getName: function() {}, // ex getSystemName()
    getVersion: function() {}, // ex getSystemVersion()
  },
  sim: {
    getCarrier: function() {},
  },
  network: {
    getIpAddress: function() {}, // ex getIPAddress
    getMacAddress: function() {}, // ex getMACAddress
  },
  device: {
    getBrand: function() {},
    getId: function() {}, // ex getDeviceId
    getName: function() {}, // ex getDeviceName
    getManufacturer: function() {},
    getMaxMemory: function() {},
    getTotalMemory: function() {},
    getModel: function() {},
    getSerialNumber: function() {},
    getTimezone: function() {},
    getUniqueId: function() {},
    getUserAgent: function() {},
    is24Hour: function() {},
    isEmulator: function() {},
    isTablet: function() {},
    isPinOrFingerprintSet: function() {},
  },
  storage: {
    getFreeSpace: function() {},
    getTotalSpace: function() {},
  }
  screen: {
    getFontScale: function() {},
  },
  dunnoYet: {
    getDeviceCountry: function() {},
    getDeviceLocale: function() {},
  }
};

[mikehardy]

implementation will begin in earnest shortly

• basic source formatting to community standards
• e2e / detox testing in CI with the current code
• namespacing / typing / reorg etc (probably move fully to typescript)
• conversion to promise returns everywhere
• mopup various dependent issues that alter implementation

That’s the general idea anyway