1102019 - [User Story] [NFC] Making NFC APIs privileged so 3rd party apps can use them

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: NFC, defect)

Description

[Sandip Kamat]

Summary: 

As a developer, I would like to use NFC APIs for my 3rd party apps.

Details: 

Currently (upto release v2.1) the NFC APIs are "certified APIs" i.e. available for certified apps only. We would like to make these APIs available to 3rd party developer apps, so these need to be made into "privileged APIs".

Comment 1

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

Hi Yoshi,
Can you attach dependent bugs here?
This is the user story for making "Read/write NFC tag" API privileged.

Comment 2

[Yoshi Cheng-Hao Huang [:allstars.chh][:allstarschh][:yoshi]]

I think for this bug, what FirefoxOS needs is
"3rd party apps can use NFC feature", and not just using "NFC API".
Also in the User Story it already mentions "a use case like Android Beam", which definitely already involves Gaia part, and not just Gecko.

To use NFC feature, I'll divide it into several parts.

A. An app just wants to share data through NFC, like current Gallery, Contacts app.
* A-1, we need to have a nfc_share.js, and could be imported by Gaia apps, so app could simply include this JS library and implement some callbacks for passing data should be sent.

* A-2, we provide a MozActivity nfc-share, so when those apps could use this MozActivity to share the content.

* A-3, this is a follow-up for A-1 and A-2, we let another 3rd party app could implement the NFC-sharing UX, for example, implement/override nfc_share.js or nfc-share MozActivity.

B. An app wants to manipulate on the tag or override the Handover by itself.
* B-1: this mostly depends on Bug 1042851 and Bug 1082453.
* B-2: App could get the Tag/NDEF from MozActivity nfc-ndef-discovered, nfc-tag-discovered.
* B-3: Handling different Tag Technology. Bug 1082992.

If you plan to have A-1, A-2 and A-3 feature, we will also need input from UX and Gaia.
Otherwise please update User Story because our API doesn't involve UX feature like 'Android Beam'.

Comment 3

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

(In reply to Yoshi Huang[:allstars.chh] from comment #2)
> I think for this bug, what FirefoxOS needs is
> "3rd party apps can use NFC feature", and not just using "NFC API".
> Also in the User Story it already mentions "a use case like Android Beam",
> which definitely already involves Gaia part, and not just Gecko.
> 
> To use NFC feature, I'll divide it into several parts.
> 
> A. An app just wants to share data through NFC, like current Gallery,
> Contacts app.
> * A-1, we need to have a nfc_share.js, and could be imported by Gaia apps,
> so app could simply include this JS library and implement some callbacks for
> passing data should be sent.
> 
> * A-2, we provide a MozActivity nfc-share, so when those apps could use this
> MozActivity to share the content.
> 
> * A-3, this is a follow-up for A-1 and A-2, we let another 3rd party app
> could implement the NFC-sharing UX, for example, implement/override
> nfc_share.js or nfc-share MozActivity.
> 
> B. An app wants to manipulate on the tag or override the Handover by itself.
> * B-1: this mostly depends on Bug 1042851 and Bug 1082453.
> * B-2: App could get the Tag/NDEF from MozActivity nfc-ndef-discovered,
> nfc-tag-discovered.
> * B-3: Handling different Tag Technology. Bug 1082992.
> 
> If you plan to have A-1, A-2 and A-3 feature, we will also need input from
> UX and Gaia.
> Otherwise please update User Story because our API doesn't involve UX
> feature like 'Android Beam'.
If I understand correctly, for the new 2.2 scope we'll need to cover only B1, B2, B3.
Sandip, can you reconfirm and update user story accordingly? 
Looks like the modification will be to separate "1)" to an independent user story.

Comment 4

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

(to elaborate based on comment 2 and comment 3)
Correction: Scope of new v2.2 covers only B1 and B2.
I left comments in user story description to avoid misleading.

Comment 5

[Yoshi Cheng-Hao Huang [:allstars.chh][:allstarschh][:yoshi]]

(In reply to Yoshi Huang[:allstars.chh] from comment #2)
> B. An app wants to manipulate on the tag or override the Handover by itself.
> * B-1: this mostly depends on Bug 1042851 and Bug 1082453.
Bug 1082453 shouldn't be related to this.

Comment 6

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

Accidentally cleared the NI. 
Set again to seek confirmation from Sandip.

Comment 7

[Kai-Chih Hu [:khu]]

Should Sandip, or Wesley, or Vincent to own this user story bug? Thanks.

Comment 8

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

I presume Vincent as EM will be the best fit.
Existing dependencies are being handled in his team.

Comment 9

[Alison Shiue]

https://moztrap.mozilla.org/manage/cases/?pagenumber=1&pagesize=100&sortfield=created_on&sortdirection=desc&filter-tag=3095&filter-productversion=217

Comment 10

[Vincent Chang[:vchang][changyihsin]]

The engineering bug is closed, let's close this user story.

Comment 11

[Vincent Chang[:vchang][changyihsin]]

I believe most of the engineering bugs are fixed in Bug 1042851. Let's close this one after Bug 1042851 is closed.

Comment 12

[Vincent Chang[:vchang][changyihsin]]

Mark this as fixed.

Comment 13

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

@codingfree was trying this out on his own build and it wasn't working.

1. are there end-to-end automated tests for this?

2. are there any gonk changes that would require update of base build for this to work?

Comment 14

[Vincent Chang[:vchang][changyihsin]]

Yoshi, Dimi, can you help to check Dietrich's comment?

Comment 15

[Yoshi Cheng-Hao Huang [:allstars.chh][:allstarschh][:yoshi]]

(In reply to Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich) from comment #13)
> @codingfree was trying this out on his own build and it wasn't working.
> 
> 1. are there end-to-end automated tests for this?
> 
What do you mean by end-to-end?
Or you are refering sending NDEF to a NFC device and read/write NDEF to a NFC Tag, now it depends on Bug 964697.

> 2. are there any gonk changes that would require update of base build for
> this to work?

Generally you need system/bin/nfcd, with libnfc-nci.so,
and possibly some configuration files, the conf files depend on the OEM and the version of Android (KK or L)