1. Developing Mobile Applications with Oracle Mobile Application Framework
  2. What's New in This Guide for MAF Release 2.5.1

What's New in This Guide for MAF Release 2.5.1

The following topics introduce the new and changed features of Oracle Mobile Application Development Framework (Oracle MAF) and other significant changes, which are described in this guide.

New and Changed Features for MAF Release 2.5.1

Oracle MAF Release 2.5.1 includes the following new and changed development features, which are described in this guide.

  • This release updates the Cordova engine versions that MAF uses (Android: 7.0.0 and iOS: 4.5.4). For more information about Cordova plugins in MAF applications, see Introduction to Using Plugins in MAF Applications.

  • On iOS and Android platforms, applications can be suspended or terminated by the operating system if they are not foreground applications or when the device is locked. This can stop in-progress activities that should not be suspended, such as network downloads. In this release, we have added APIs to allow background thread processing on the iOS or Android platforms. You can use the new APIs to wrap background tasks so the application is not suspended while the tasks are in operation. For more information, see Allowing Background Thread Processing on iOS and Android Devices.

  • On the Android platform:

    • You must install Android API Level 27 to build and deploy MAF applications to the Android platform. Ensure that you install the Android API Level 27 into the Android SDK Location that you have specified in your MAF preferences, as described in Setting Up Development Tools for the Android Platform.

    • You can specify the CPU type for deployment by configuring the deployment profile. You can choose to deploy to devices using ARM, x86, or both. For more information, see Deploying a MAF Application to the Android Platform.

    • MAF now declares the default hostname verification process as STRICT. You can override this default behavior by passing a value of ALLOW_ALL to the override manager, as described in How to Update Connection Attributes of a Named Connection at Runtime.

    • MAF now removes all session cookies when a user logs out of a MAF application. You can override this default behavior for a named connection by setting the OverrideConstants.REMOVE_ALL_SESSION_COOKIES_NODE to false, as described in How to Update Connection Attributes of a Named Connection at Runtime.

    • MAF now provides a new core plugin, Google Geolocation Play Services. This plugin (cordova-plugin-geolocation-play-services) is the recommended plugin to use to retrieve geolocation information for MAF applications installed on Android devices as it uses the Google Play services location APIs. Enable it from the Plugins page, as described in Introduction to Using Plugins in MAF Applications.

  • On the Universal Windows Platform, the MAF for Windows deployment profile can now invoke a Select Custom Color dialog where you can select a different color to the default color for the splash screen of MAF applications on the Universal Windows Platform. See Deploying a MAF Application to the Universal Windows Platform.

  • Starting with this release, you can specify the languages supported by your MAF application. Only the supported languages you specify for the application are reported on the application stores and upload consoles, such as Apple App Store and Google Play Store. For more information, see Specifying Supported Languages for Your Application.

  • This release introduces the roundingMode attribute for the Convert Number (convertNumber) component. This attribute allows you to specify a rounding behavior for numerical operations. Valid values for this attribute are UP, DOWN, CEILING, FLOOR, HALF_UP, HALF_DOWN, HALF_EVEN. By default, the value is set to HALF_UP. Specifying any other value disables rounding. For more information, see How to Convert Numeric Values.

  • When you create an application-level deployment profile, MAF now no longer automatically creates associated project-level deployment profiles that are configured as dependencies of the deployment profile that you created. You must now specify all dependencies of your newly-created deployment profile. This change enables you to exercise more control over the number of project-level deployment profiles that MAF creates. At application creation time, MAF continues to provide ready-to-use application-level deployment profiles for each mobile platform that it supports and a MAF application for shared library deployment profile. MAF configures the profile dependencies for these ready-to-use deployment profiles to reference project-level deployment profiles. For more information, see Deploying MAF Applications and Deploying a MAF Application for Shared Library.

  • This release removes the amx:inputDate component. We recommend that customers use the <input> elements of type date.

  • MAF now uses a thread pool to manage processing whereas previously it used one static thread per application feature. This change optimizes memory usage by MAF applications.

Other Significant Changes in this Document for MAF Release 2.5.1

This document has been updated in several ways for this release. Following are the sections that have been added or changed.

  • Creating and Configuring a Run Configuration revised to remove information for the iOS version field as it no longer appears in the UI and state that you should select the Use Shared Settings option and not the Use Project Settings option.