Cannot map Q.Promise objects needed for iBeacon plugin

[Ritzlgrmft]

I am trying to create the definition for the iBeacon plugin (see #223). But unfortunately, it doesn't work as expected. As far as I can see, the native method of the plugin gets called, returns also a result, but the promise in my calling code is never resolved.

My plugin definition looks like:

@Plugin({
    plugin: 'cordova-plugin-ibeacon',
    pluginRef: 'cordova.plugins.locationManager'
})
export class IBeacon {
    @Cordova()
    static isBluetoothEnabled(): Promise<boolean> { return; }
}

My call is:

IBeacon.isBluetoothEnabled()
    .then(enabled => { ... })
    .catch(e => { ... });

Neither catch nor then get called.

My suspicion is that the problem is that the iBeacon plugin maps the result in Q.Promise objects. And that there the mapping in ionic-native does not work. But unfortunately, I do not know how to fix it.

[ihadeed]

Hey there,

Thanks for contributing to ionic-native.

Your implementation is invoking the isBluetoothEnabled() function this way:
cordova.plugins.locationManager.isBluetoothEnabled(function(res){ ... }, function(err){ ... });

Reason: that's what the @Cordova() decorator does (with the default options).

---

I just had a look at the docs for that function here.

The iBeacon plugin is relatively odd. They return a Q promise with each function call (not sure about all functions, but this is the case for the one you're working with now).

We can do one of the following:

• Return that promise as-is (use @Cordova({ sync: true }); and it will do that for you, keep return type as Promise). I'm not sure if this will work since we're dealing with different promise libraries here.
• Add a new option to the @Cordova decorator that will convert any promise to the promise type we're using. (ionic-native returns back a promise that is compatible with your environment, ES-6 promise or Angular1 promise).

I would give the first option a shot first, if that doesn't work well in all scenarios then we can look into modifying the @Cordova decorator to work with this plugin.

[Ritzlgrmft]

I just tried @Cordova({ sync: true }). Generally, it works now, the promise gets now resolved. I think it's not too bad, that the promise has a different source, since at least then and catch seem to be quite similar.

However, in my test page, I display the results of the cordova calls. This does not work immediately, since change detection in Angular 2 gets not triggered. So I would really appreciate, if you could add a new option to the @Cordova decorator converting Q.Promise into Promise.

[Ritzlgrmft]

I added a new option @Cordova({ otherPromise: true }). With this option, the plugin is called like with the sync option, and afterwards the promise is wrapped into the promise used by ionic-native.

Could you check the implementation at https://github.com/Ritzlgrmft/ionic-native/blob/master/src/plugins/plugin.ts#L99? If it is fine for you, I will merge it as soon as the plugin is working.

[Ritzlgrmft]

And another question: for startMonitoring (see https://github.com/petermetz/cordova-plugin-ibeacon#start-monitoring-a-single-ibeacon), I need a parameter of type BeaconRegion. In vanilla JavaScript this looks like:

var beaconRegion = new cordova.plugins.locationManager.BeaconRegion(identifier, uuid, major, minor);
cordova.plugins.locationManager.startMonitoringForRegion(beaconRegion);

Using ionic-native, I would like to write

var beaconRegion = new IBeacon.BeaconRegion(identifier, uuid, major, minor);
IBeacon.startMonitoringForRegion(beaconRegion);

The second line is working, but the first line not. For this, I assume I have to define the BeaconRegion also in some way. But I do not know, how?

[ihadeed]

Hey @Ritzlgrmft

Please see this: #270