Improvements to Clover Android SDK - September 6th, 2018
At Clover, we are always looking to innovate both at the hardware and service levels for third-party developers and merchants.
To provide developers with a future-proof method of building apps across both current and future Clover devices, we are introducing the com.clover.sdk.util.Platform2
class in Clover Android SDK v213. This new class is a partial replacement for the com.clover.sdk.util.Platform
class, which is being deprecated.
NOTE
The new
Platform2
class is a partial replacement because we will deprecate the olderPlatform
class by June 2019. Until that time, both thePlatform2
andPlatform
classes will be available with Clover Android SDK.
Here are the key highlights of the new Platform2
class:
Building device-agnostic apps
In the older Platform class, using functions such as isCloverMini()
and isCloverFlex()
requires developers to write redundant code for building apps across different Clover devices.
In another scenario, Clover Station 2018 can stay alive for a limited time on a battery pack even without abilities such as printing and having an active ethernet connection. Here, decisions based on battery information from Feature.BATTERY
can be problematic.
With the new Platform2
class, we are helping developers to build their solutions in a more device-agnostic manner. Instead of using device-specific functions, developers can simply use Android functions to check for compatible features and dimensions. For instance, here are three sample checks at the Android level:
Feature | Android Level Check |
---|---|
Screen size | android.content.res.Configuration#screenLayout android.content.res.Configuration#smallestScreenWidthDp |
API level | android.os.Build.VERSION#SDK_INT |
Battery level | android.os.PowerManager |
Enabling plug and play across devices
With the older Platform
class, developers are required to recompile their apps for each Clover device. The new Platform2
class removes this requirement. In many cases, the new class is a drop-in replacement class for the Platform
class.
The Android Device Compatibility Overview is a great resource for more information about checking for features compatibility across different Clover devices.
NOTE
Even though we are continuously improving the compatibility of Clover devices with Android functions, since these devices do not use the Google Play Store, Google API, or Google services, they are not compliant with Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS).
For questions and feedback, use community.clover.com.
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Updated about 4 years ago