FAQ.md

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is the Android Lint error 'InvalidPackage' considered a warning?
2. Why do I need to declare Manifest Placeholders for the Auth0 domain and scheme?
3. Is the Web Authentication module setup optional?

1. Why is the Android Lint error 'InvalidPackage' considered a warning?

When building the project with build, an error appeared regarding an invalid package on the okio dependency. This snippet is in the build.gradle file so that the build runs fine:

android {
    //...
    lintOptions {
       warning 'InvalidPackage'
    }
}

ref: square/okio#58 (comment)

2. Why do I need to declare Manifest Placeholders for the Auth0 domain and scheme?

The library internally declares a RedirectActivity in its Android Manifest file. While this approach prevents the developer from adding an activity declaration to their application's Android Manifest file, it requires the use of Manifest Placeholders.

Alternatively, you can re-declare the RedirectActivity in the AndroidManifest.xml file with your own intent-filter so it overrides the library's default. If you do this then the manifestPlaceholders don't need to be set as long as the activity contains the tools:node="replace" like in the snippet below.

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    package="your.app.package">
    <application android:theme="@style/AppTheme">

        <!-- ... -->

        <activity
            android:name="com.auth0.android.provider.RedirectActivity"
            tools:node="replace">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />

                <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />

                <data
                    android:host="@string/com_auth0_domain"
                    android:pathPrefix="/android/${applicationId}/callback"
                    android:scheme="https" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>

        <!-- ... -->

    </application>
</manifest>

Recall that if you request a different scheme, you must replace the above android:scheme property value and initialize the provider with the new scheme. Read this section to learn more.

3. Is the Web Authentication module setup optional?

If you don't plan to use the Web Authentication feature, you will notice that the compiler will still prompt you to provide the manifestPlaceholders values, since the RedirectActivity included in this library will require them, and the Gradle tasks won't be able to run without them.

Re-declare the activity manually with tools:node="remove" in your app's Android Manifest in order to make the manifest merger remove it from the final manifest file. Additionally, one more unused activity can be removed from the final APK by using the same process. A complete snippet to achieve this is:

<activity
    android:name="com.auth0.android.provider.AuthenticationActivity"
    tools:node="remove"/>
    <!-- Optional: Remove RedirectActivity -->
<activity
android:name="com.auth0.android.provider.RedirectActivity"
tools:node="remove"/>