Following on Delegated authentication for Discourse Mobile app, we have been working on a new version of the DiscourseHub app for iOS. This new version includes several under-the-hood changes that fix some longstanding issues with the iOS app. You can try out this new version right now, by opening the link below in your iOS device and installing the app via TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/NkdBQgmg New version notes There are two major changes in the new version of the app: the app uses Safari for authentication SafariViewController has now been replaced by a webview The first change means that authentication in the app is now easier and better integrated with iOS. Users will now be able to leverage saved passwords, existing SSO sessions or login via email when authenticating a site in the app. But this change also means that users will need to login again to all the sites they’ve already configured in their app. This is a one-time requirement. (If the user is already logged in in Safari, then he/she will only need to authorize the app’s API access.) The second change, the new webview browser, allows for a better, faster UI experience in the app and fixes several issues we’ve had with SafariViewController. A few other improvements included in this beta version: push notification handling has been strengthened: users will now see notification badges when receiving a push notification while the app is in the foreground sessions from the app are now correctly identified as such in Discourse under the “Recently Used Devices” section of the user’s profile in the webview, we have introduced a new navigation bar. On iPhones, this bar is at the bottom and auto-hides (like Safari’s nav bar), on iPads it is static and placed at the top of the viewport. The bar’s styling will automatically use the color scheme of the active theme. the app will now check for changes to a site’s API version and logo regularly, thus making sure changes in branding and Discourse API updates are reflected in the app (and it also fixes an issue with disappearing logos) To test these new features, your Discourse sites must be on the latest tests-passed branch or on the latest beta (v2.3.0.beta9). Any sites that haven’t been updated recently will fall back to the legacy authentication and SafariViewController in the app.

One immediate thing I’ve noticed is that while the new app got straight into Meta after re-authorizing, a bunch of sites on b9+7 needed me to reauthenticate.

Odd display issue on xsmax. The app “back” rendering is cutoff on left side of notch.

[image] It’s minor, and no issue when displaying normal layout, only when previous app link is displayed

I think I see what you mean (but I’m not sure), the button to go back to TestFlight is halfway between the two background colors. In the app, we have added some logic to change the background color behind the status bar in the iOS app. It will follow the background of your Discourse header. For example, here is how the header would look on the Fakebook theme: [image] On your site you have a custom header above the Discourse header, with a different background color (blue). I will look to find a way to cover these cases as well, but it might be a tiny bit tricky, there are multiple ways to add a custom header above the Discourse header.

Is there another caveat for preserving credentials beyond beta 9?

Credentials from SafariViewController can’t be preserved. SVC runs in an isolated context, the app has no access to any of the sessions/cookies in it. So, this one-time re-authentication is necessary for all users that have no sessions in Safari. I think in your case, you had a Safari session for meta, but not for the other sites in the app.

Not sure if this might be fixable or not, but I just tried this and mostly works great but the login / authentication was slightly roundabout for sites w/ SSO using WP Discourse. After logging in through the WordPress site I’m taken back to the forum, but not the authentication page for the app. So I click “cancel”, go back to the app home screen, then click back to the forum and (since I’m now logged in) hit the screen where I can authorize access. Not a big issue but perhaps there’s a way to save a step here.

[image] bts: After logging in through the WordPress site I’m taken back to the forum, but not the authentication page for the app. I’ll look into why this is, it should redirect back to the authorization screen. Thanks for the report.

New iOS mobile app beta available for testing

Development

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) April 25, 2019, 1:40am 2

Awesome work on this @pmusaraj and @sam, major improvements!

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New iOS mobile app beta available for testing

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