Compatibility issues with cordova-windows and MobileFirst JSONStore Plugin

If you are an on-premise 8.0 customer or Mobile Foundation Service customer, then read further to know about compatibility issues between cordova-plugin-mfp and the other third-party plugins here.

Lately, we are seeing a few issues with the more recent versions of the Cordova for Windows platform. This post is to give you a run down of the issues seen with different versions of cordova-windows and how to overcome them. Below is a list of compatibility issues and their solutions.

Cordova application with JSONStore plugin crashes on Windows platform.

Win32 Exception

On adding the windows platform using the cordova platform add windows command and adding the JSONStore plugin, the JSONStore plugin adds some files that have their Package Action property set to None. This causes the file’s contents not being available to the project which results in this exception. To resolve this, select the mfpclient.properties file in your project, go to properties (select the file in the project in VS and press F12), set the Package Action property to Content and the Copy to Output Directory property to Copy Always. This will ensure that your project picks up the contents of the properties as a stream and makes it available to your project.

Set Properties

“PERSISTENT_STORE_FAILURE” error occurs when initializing a JSONStore collection on cordova-windows.

For cordova-windows v4.4.3 and below, follow the properties setting of the referenced external DLLs (sqlite3 and msvcr110) similar to the workaround mentioned above. Set the Package Action property to Content and the Copy to Output Directory property to Copy Always. This error occurs as the project is unable to pick the DLL’s content if the DLL’s Package Action property is set to None.

Set Properties

UWP JSONStore projects error out during runtime with the following error : “PERSISTENT_STORE_FAILURE” error on JsonStore initialization in release mode.

This is because the dependent DLLs are not referenced in Release mode due to a bug in cordova as the runtime directives file is not added to the project. You can track this issue on Cordova Jira here.

To workaround this issue, you will have to add the “Default.rd.xml” file to the UWP app with the default content that is available for a Windows 10 app which is :

<Directives xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/netfx/2013/01/metadata">
  <Application> 
    <!-- 
      An Assembly element with Name="*Application*" applies to all assemblies in 
      the application package. The asterisks are not wildcards. 
    --> 
    <Assembly Name="*Application*" Dynamic="Required All" /> 
  </Application> 
</Directives> 

This ensures that the dependent DLLs are referenced correctly even in Release mode.

Learn more on runtime directives here : Runtime Directives

JSONStore projects with ARM architecture do not run on Windows Phone due to the runtime error PERSISTENT_STORE_FAILURE.

The root cause for this error is that the DLLs are being picked from the Windows desktop folder of the DLL’s source rather than from the Windows Phone folder of the DLLs. This is due to a bug in the installation of the JSONStore plugin.

To resolve this issue, remove the current DLL added to the project and add the dependent DLLs (namely sqlite3.dll and msvcr.dll) from the wp folder of the ARM arch DLLs from the path <your_jsonstore_cordova_project_root_folder>/plugins/cordova-plugin-mfp-jsonstore/src/windows/buildtarget/wp/ARM/<add_dlls_from_here>. The fix for this will be available in the future iFix releases.

WinPhone DLL Addition

Inclusive terminology note: The Mobile First Platform team is making changes to support the IBM® initiative to replace racially biased and other discriminatory language in our code and content with more inclusive language. While IBM values the use of inclusive language, terms that are outside of IBM's direct influence are sometimes required for the sake of maintaining user understanding. As other industry leaders join IBM in embracing the use of inclusive language, IBM will continue to update the documentation to reflect those changes.
Last modified on May 07, 2018