Seriously Adobe! Fix SharedObject issue .. it's been 2 years!

Report · May 26, 2016

@Adobe .. This one is extremely frustrating.

my SharedObject's stop working and throw an error when the users available storage on iOS drops below approx 960 MB. This is a HUGE problem as most of my games target demographic is kids. Majority of these kids are on 16GB iPad Mini's... Majority of these kids are fighting for space on them. Most have to delete apps to add apps. This renders my games useless on their devices as they will get the error messages that they need to free up space.. even if they have 900 MB free.

Why can't this be fixed? Why has this been ignored for 2 years?

Report · May 26, 2016

Hi Jonathon Pitman,

Have you raised a bug/ forum post regarding this before to us. If yes can you refer us to the same?

We are happy to help you out.

-Roshan

Adobe AIR

Report · May 26, 2016

I believe he was referring to my bug report from 27 months ago:

Bug#3711301 - sharedobjects fail when available storage is low

Report · May 26, 2016

Yes.. Look at how many people are having this issue. It replicates across every device I own.

Report · May 28, 2016

Why is this issue not being taken seriously? ... This seems to be getting worse as well. It used to do this at around 400mb .. now its doing it at 900mb free space.

Report · May 31, 2016

Yes I'm having many complaints that my game doesn't work until users free some space. At least some users are reporting that their users get an error message about space... mine does not. When a user launches my game without enough space they get a black screen and I get a bad review.

Report · May 31, 2016

Hi All.

We tested this bug on all iOS 7,8,9 by leaving below 100 Mb space but the bug is not reproducible.

However, when we filled the memory to "Available 0 bytes" the below error message showed up which I think is expected.

Error: Error #2130: Unable to flush SharedObject.

Anyone, who has an app that reproduces this issue when less than 400 MB free can mail me @ chhetri AT adobe DOT com or paste the Dropbox link here.

Adobe is happy to fix the issue.

-Roshan

Report · May 31, 2016

The problem is that it's device specific, not app specific. When we had a Connect session about this two years, my very simple test case would go wrong for me every time on my iPhone 5, but you couldn't reproduce it on iPhone 5s. I also couldn't reproduce it on iPad. Perhaps you have an iPhone 5 now?

Report · May 31, 2016

Thanks for the info.

I have tried on iPhone 4s and iPads but not iPhone 5. I can give it a try on iPhone5 as you suggested.

-Roshan

Adobe AIR

Report · May 31, 2016

Not sure if it helps, but I have a co-worker that cant run my app on his iPhone 6S until he frees space.

Report · May 31, 2016

Hi R C,

Which app is that. Is it available on App store?

-Roshan

Adobe AIR.

Report · May 31, 2016

Yes Frenchie Quest on the App Store compiled with AIR 19.

Report · May 31, 2016

Hi RC,

I could play the game with 89Mb free space in my iPhone 6S.

-Roshan

Report · Jun 01, 2016

Hi, Roshan Chhetri,

As Applauz78 mentions in this thread https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2160826, the problem might be related to having iCloud Photos turned on with the automatic freeing up of space when device storage gets low.

Report · Jun 01, 2016

I'm sure I wasn't using iCloud photos 27 months ago when I logged the bug. But maybe part of your point is that Roshan has more space than he thinks he does?

I'll try the game on my iPhone 5, and also retest my very simple test case on my 6s.

Report · Jun 01, 2016

Hi Colin Holgate.

Thanks for trying this out. Trying few things at our end and also look forward to your test results.

It is becoming tricky to reproduce this so far but we are still trying things at our end.

-Roshan

Report · Jun 03, 2016

We'll that sucks because my co-worker can't unless he frees up around 1.2GBs of space.

Report · Jun 03, 2016

The cut off for my iPhone 5 was predictably 400 MB. I just happened to be down to 145 MB after installing lots of apps.

BTW, the Objective-C test didn't show an error, which means that the way it was writing the file is different to how sharedobject writes files. I feel hopeful that the test will give the AIR team some ideas on how to fix the problem.

Report · Jun 04, 2016

Do you guys know if using something like SQL lite would be better?

Report · Jun 05, 2016

I haven't tried sql in particular, but I tried other ways to write data, and that failed too.

Report · May 31, 2016

We've been having the same problem for years as well, but frustratingly it's not even consistent when using the same type of device, and seems to be happening to some users and not for others.

We've had users who had this issue on an iPad 2 with < 900MB of free space, and when we try to duplicate it on our own iPad 2 (same iOS version, only leaving 100MB of free space, etc.) we couldn't duplicate it. And meanwhile there are plenty of iPad 2 users who don't have a problem with the SharedObjects -- but there are a bunch who do. Same goes for other iOS devices, some people have problems with iPhone 5 and some don't, some had trouble with iPad Mini and some don't. We haven't been able to duplicate it on any of our own devices, but plenty of our users have had this problem.

Once we advise them to make some free space it will start working again, but the amount of free space they need also doesn't seem consistent. Some users get it to work around 500MB of free space, other users keep having the problem until they clear 1.5GB of free space. It's very frustrating, and even more frustrating that it's so hard to reproduce!

Report · Jun 01, 2016

Hi

Does this affect EncryptedLocalStore and/or other databases as well, or only ShareObjects?

Can anyone please confirm?

Thanks

Report · Jun 01, 2016

I tested other ways of writing data under the same conditions, and yes, the other ways of writing files also fail.

Report · Jun 02, 2016

Hi Colin Holgate ,

Can you try running this Native Objective C code in your iPhone with issue?

NSLog(@"Start");

NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains

(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);

NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];

//make a file name to write the data to using the documents directory:

NSString *fileName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/filename.txt",

documentsDirectory];

NSString *content = @"This is a TEST!!";

[content writeToFile:fileName

atomically:NO

encoding:NSStringEncodingConversionAllowLossy

error:nil];

NSLog(@"Done");

Create a new Xcode Objective C project and put the above code in the function: applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication)

It should create a file filename.txt in the app's Document directory with the content "This is a TEST!!"

Let us know if you see any abnormal behavior.

-Roshan

Report · Jun 03, 2016

It took a while to fill up my iPhone 5. I tried my original simple test:

var s:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal("anything");

s.data.value = "value";

s.flush();

when I was down to 145MB of space. As before it gave this:

Waiting for Player to connect...

[SWF] sharedobjecttest.swf - 161 bytes after decompression

Error: Error #2130: Unable to flush SharedObject.

at sharedobjecttest_fla::MainTimeline/frame1()[sharedobjecttest_fla.MainTimeline::frame1:3]

at sharedobjecttest_fla::MainTimeline/frame1()

Debug session terminated.

I tried your Objective-C code, and "start" and "done" were logged, and nothing else was logged, so I guess it worked.