Smart TV 101 : Part #3 – Deploying to TV

I’m committing to doing 12 months of “101”s; posts and projects themed at beginning something new (or reasonably new) to me. January was all about node development awesomeness. February is all about Smart TV apps.

Deploying to a TV

Now that we’ve got a basic Smart TV app this post will investigate how to get that app on to the TV itself.

Packaging using the IDE

During the initial installation of the IDE you will have been asked to installed Apache; this is what it’s all been leading up to! You actually just need a web server on your home network somewhere; doesn’t have to be apache, doesn’t have to be on your developer pc.

Prerequisites

Make sure you’ve configured your Server settings within the IDE preferences:
samsung-packaging-server-prefs
samsung-packaging-server-prefs-root

The packaging process will drop a zip file into a Widget/ subdirectory of this directory.

Initiating package creation

As for actually creating the package, if you’re using the Eclipse IDE then you’re spoiled for choice: highlight the project in your project explorer and then either

  1. Click the Samsung App Packaging button
    samsung-app-packaging-1
  2. Click the Samsung Smart TV SDK menu, then click App Packaging
    samsung-smart-sdk-packaging-menu
  3. Right click the project in project explorer, Samsung Smart TV SDK, Packaging
    samsung-sdk-packaging-context-menu

Whichever you do you’ll end up with the same results:
samsung-packaging-dialog
samsung-packaging-confirmation

Results

Assuming you’ve set up the server settings in your preferences then you’ll end up with:

  1. a zip file placed within the SDK installation’s Package/ directory
    samsung-package-sdk-dir
  2. the same zip file placed in a Widget/ subdirectory on your configured server
    samsung-package-widget-dir
  3. a new (or updated) widgetlist.xml file in the root of your configured server’s directory

    samsung-widgetlist-xml

Make sure that you can browse to this file and that Apache is running by opening a browser and putting in http://<your development pc’s IP>/widgetlist.xml

Anatomy of a package and a widgetlist

So what is a package made of? Looking at the image above for the the zip file that’s created you’ll see that it looks almost identical to the contents of your application within the workspace:
samsung-app-workspace

So essentially the packaging step is zipping up your project directory, putting it into a specified web server subdirectory, and updating an XML file. Obviously, you shouldn’t need an IDE or SDK to do this sort of thing and I’ll be getting on to this development & deployment process without using Eclipse or installing Apache in a later post.

Deploying!!

Now that we have a package it’s time to load it on to your Smart TV. For this post I’ll be talking about deploying from the development pc via your home network, and in a later post will be talking about loading in packages externally.

TV setup

Make sure your TV is connected to your network and that your development pc’s Windows Firewall is off (or at least configured to allow local network traffic).

  • Turn on the TV
  • Go to your app hub/Smart Hub
  • Press the Login button
  • Create an account using the username “develop” and set a password

developer account

After you’ve successfully created the develop user you need to

  • Open the Settings menu
  • Open the new Development sub menu
  • Choose Setting server IP and enter the IP of your development PC
  • Choose User application synchronisation to check the apps that are listed in widgetlist.xml and install (or update) them all

download dev app

You should now find your application on the App Hub screen with a little red “user” banner over it; select it to run it, just like any other app.

asos-app-running-on-smart-tv-1

Smart TV 101 : Part #2 – App Development

I’m committing to doing 12 months of “101”s; posts and projects themed at beginning something new (or reasonably new) to me. January was all about node development awesomeness. February is all about Smart TV apps.

SDK

There is a wonderfully detailed SDK document for the current latest version (v4.0) which provides the environment to develop and test apps for the 2011, 2012, and 2013 series of TVs.

This consists of an IDE (a version of Eclipse), a selection of emulators for the three series of TVs it supports, automated test tools, app packaging facilities, and a few other tools.

There are examples and tutorials for projects ranging from gesture recognition, voice recognition, adaptive video streaming, through to advertisment embedding.

Developing gesture recognition apps for the 2013 Smart TV series

IDE – Ecplise

I’ve never been a fan of Eclipse as an IDE, but I’m stuck with it at the moment since it’s part of the Samsung SDK! To be fair, it does integrate into app development process quite well.

Once you’ve downloaded it from the SamsungDForum website and installed it you can create one of three types of application:

  1. Basic – for the less codey-types, using as visual editor. A bit like Visual Studio in design mode.
  2. Javascript – for writing the css, html, and js code yourself; this is the one I’ll be using
  3. Flash – strangely enough, for embedding flash into your app

ecplise-1

Within this flavour of Eclipse is the facility to launch the current application under development directly in an emulator, and also the ability to create a package for deployment (to be covered in the next post).

Emulator

As with any project in which you’re developing an application which will be running on a system that is different to the one on which you’re developing – such as iPhone or Android apps – you’re going to need a solid emulator.

The Samsung ones are actually reasonably good. There are some reasonably advanced debugging and testing facilities built into the SDK but even just having any javascript alert display within a debug window is extremely useful.

Smart TV Emulator

Developing a basic app

Right, let’s get down to business.

  1. Install the SDK
  2. Open up Eclipse
  3. Create a new Javascript app
  4. Make sure you’ve selected the project in the file explorer tab (i.e., not one of the js or html files)
  5. Click the Samsung Smart TV menu and select Open current project in Emulator

aaaaannnnd

samsung-emulator-1

WOW! Nothing!

Ok, let’s make it do something.

Add in a new div, give it an id, and whack in some text. This still won’t actually appear so edit the css and give it a height, width, and garish background colour.

There’s still one thing that you may need to check; I believe that this is now part of the standard base project, but in previous versions of the SDK you had to edit the Main.onLoad event and wire up a call to let the application manager know it was now ok to start showing things:
[js]widgetAPI.sendReadyEvent[/js]

My resulting HTML looks a bit like:
[html highlight=”8,9″]<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>AlrightMate</title>

<!– TODO : Common API –>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="$MANAGER_WIDGET/Common/API/Widget.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="$MANAGER_WIDGET/Common/API/TVKeyValue.js"></script>

<!– TODO : Javascript code –>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="app/javascript/Main.js"></script>

<!– TODO : Style sheets code –>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="app/stylesheets/Main.css" type="text/css">

<!– TODO: Plugins –>

</head>

<body onload="Main.onLoad();" onunload="Main.onUnload();">
<div id="content">Alright mate?</div>

<!– Dummy anchor as focus for key events –>
<a href="javascript:void(0);" id="anchor" onkeydown="Main.keyDown();"></a>

<!– TODO: your code here –>
</body>
</html>[/html]

and the autogenerated Main.js script has this onLoad method:
[js]Main.onLoad = function()
{
// Enable key event processing
this.enableKeys();
widgetAPI.sendReadyEvent();
}[/js]

Notice the $MANAGER_WIDGET files referenced in the head; these files allow access to common object modules and are on the TV itself and installed as part of the SDK.

Try running the emulator again –

samsung-emulator-2

Stonking.

Developing a slightly less basic app

Using the API created in my January posts on nodejs I’m going to create a tv app which will display the results of a product search on the Asos catalogue.

The main.js file now has an updated onload method, which makes a call to the API and then passes the returned data to a new method:
[js]Main.onLoad = function()
{
var URL = "http://rposbo-basic-node-api.apphb.com/products/socks?key=" + api_key;

if (this.XHRObj != null){
this.XHRObj.destroy();
}
this.XHRObj = new XMLHttpRequest();

if (this.XHRObj) {
alert("got XHR");
this.XHRObj.onreadystatechange = function () {
alert("State changed to " + Main.XHRObj.readyState);
if (Main.XHRObj.readyState == 4) {
alert("got data");
Main.recieveData();
}
};
this.XHRObj.open("GET", URL, true);
this.XHRObj.send(null);
}

// Enable key event processing
this.enableKeys();
widgetAPI.sendReadyEvent();
};[/js]

The new recieveData method which loops through the returned product data and creates some basic html elements to display the image and title in a list item:
[js]Main.recieveData = function () {

alert("alerting data…");
var data = JSON.parse(this.XHRObj.responseText);
for(var i=0; i<data.products.length; i++)
{
var product = data.products[i];
alert("adding " + product.title);

// image
var productImg = document.createElement("img");
productImg.setAttribute("src", product.image);

// text
var title = document.createTextNode(product.title);

// link containing both
var link = document.createElement("a");
link.appendChild(productImg);
link.appendChild(title);

// list item containing link
var listItem = document.createElement("li");
listItem.appendChild(link);

document.getElementById(‘listing’).appendChild(listItem);
}
};[/js]

No jQuery here, since I don’t want to have to load it up locally on to the tv and waste precious memory.

The single html file now looks like
index.html
[html highlight=”12″]<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>rposboBasicTvApp</title>

<!– TODO : Common API –>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="$MANAGER_WIDGET/Common/API/Widget.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="$MANAGER_WIDGET/Common/API/TVKeyValue.js"></script>

<!– TODO : Javascript code –>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="app/javascript/key.js"></script>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="app/javascript/Main.js"></script>

<!– TODO : Style sheets code –>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="app/stylesheets/Main.css" type="text/css">

<!– TODO: Plugins –>

</head>

<body onload="Main.onLoad();" onunload="Main.onUnload();">

<div id="listing"></div>

<!– Dummy anchor as focus for key events –>
<a href="javascript:void(0);" id="anchor" onkeydown="Main.keyDown();"></a>

<!– TODO: your code here –>
</body>
</html>[/html]
The highlighted line is just where I define my API key and refer to it in Main.js.

This subtly changed code now looks something like:
asos-tv-emulator

Next up – deploying to a TV

We’ve got a basic app, now it’s time to get it on to the TV!

The code from this post is available on github

Year of 101s: February – Samsung Smart TV

Part #1 – Intro

I’m committing to doing 12 months of “101”s; posts and projects themed at beginning something new (or reasonably new) to me. January was all about node development awesomeness

February is going to be all about developing applications for the Samsung Smart TV.

So what’s a Smart TV?

smart-tv-1

“Smart TV” is a term used to describe a reasonably new series of internet connected televisions introduced over the past 3 or 4 years which have the facility to install applications; these can range from media streaming (e.g., free stuff from iPlayer, ITV Player, Demand 5, youtube and premium content from the likes of BlinkBox, LoveFilm, NetFlix, Curzon OD) to video chat and VOIP (e.g., Skype), and games, facebook, twitter, TED.

There are hundreds of such applications to choose from: even a pretend log fire. Srsly.

They will also stream media from your local network (DLNA or UPNP) or from USB attached devices, and some can use a USB HDD to make it a PVR.

Samsung?

Yeah, just because I have one. They started making clever TVs back in 2007 so have it working pretty well now. I also have a Samsung phone which makes streaming content to the TV (over DLNA) really easy. It’s great to take a few photos or videos on my phone and then promptly have them appear as a slideshow on the TV.

Apps

The apps that run on the Samsung TV are basically HTML pages; the app hub itself is an html page. They can be made interactive by using either javascript or flash (yes! FLASH! Who knew that was still useful for something?!).

They can be downloaded directly from the TV’s “Smart Hub” but can also be browsed online – the array and extent of what’s been made is fascinating; this is stuff you can install on your frikkin television! This is not like the TV I grew up with..
80s-tv-set-1

The apps can be developed using an SDK downloadable from Samsung, which I’ll go into detail about in the next post.

Interactivity

So wait, how can you create an interactive app using Javascript, but browsing a local html file? Everyone knows that you can’t make a cross domain ajax request, so how on earth can you get dynamic data into the page?

Well, here’s the interesting thing. If you run Fiddler you’ll see that running a cross domain ajax request from a local html file actually does the request just fine and the data is returned; it’s your browser’s security configuration that says “hell no, budday.”

local html making remote ajax call:
[html]<html>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
$.ajax({
url: "http://rposbo-basic-node-api.apphb.com/products/socks?key={snipped API key}",
success: function(data) {
$(‘#category’).html(‘<h1>’ + data.category + ‘</h1>’);
}
})
});
</script>
<body>
<div id="category" />
</body>
</html>[/html]

Chrome says no
remote-ajax-chrome-block

Fiddler says yes!
remote-ajax-fiddler-allows

App Engine

The Samsung Smart TV (at time of writing) runs a specific browser called App Engine 6.0 – from the blurb in the development documentation:

When an application is displayed and behaves on the screen, its image and text generation should be controlled and managed. For Samsung TVs with Samsung Smart TV installed, it is App Engine that performs such work. An application’s behaviors and displays are made by App Engine. While Internet Explorer and Firefox are PC-based browsers, App Engine is Samsung TV-based browser.

Supported web standards
* HTML4.01, XHTML1.0, XML1.0 Markup language specifications
* HTTP1.0/1.1
* CSS1, CSS2, CSS TV Profile 1.0
* DOM1, DOM2
* JavaScript 1.6

So, the interesting part is that the cross domain ajax request security feature isn’t enabled in App Engine, which means you can execute ajax calls from the local html page to your external service and use the returned data quite happily!

Next up – App development

I’ll cover the IDE and creating a basic app.

AppHarbor, Heroku, Git, and the Sweet, Sweet CI Process

The background: I thought that my Mobile TFL Bus Countdown site might be suddenly very popular for a very short time (for about a weekend perhaps) and didn’t want to pay for the potential sudden jolt in hosting costs from my own servers. As such, I developed it locally using git as VCS, pushed it to my newly acquired Appharbor account, and just saw it suddenly available to browse at rposbo.apphb.com

The pitch: For your own small website/app you probably edit it locally on your PC, maybe you even have source control like a good dev, you’ll compile the code and then you’ll copy it to your hosting provider, probably using FTP/ via a web interface/ SCP/ SSH.

Then at work you’re probably shouting about how awesome CI builds are and how to introduce continuous deployment as part of a branching and build strategy.

You might even use Azure or EC2 at work, maybe for your own little home projects too. Maybe you’ve learned a bit of git but your office uses TFS (ugh) or SVN (meh).

So why not do this for your own stuff? For free? In the cloud?

Imagine the ideal workflow: make some code changes –> commit them to (D)VCS –> push them to a (remote) repo –> the push kicks off a build the committed project (git hook) –> run any associated tests, then if they pass –> deploy the app to the cloud.

That’s exactly what Appharbor and Heroku do! Let’s start with the pretty one:

Heroku

Heroku says it’s a “cloud application platform” for running scalable Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, and Java sites/apps. To create and deploy a new site is, apparently, as easy as:

[code gutter=”off”]$ heroku create
Created sushi.herokuapp.com | [email protected]:sushi.git

$ git push heroku master
—–&gt; Heroku receiving push
—–&gt; Rails app detected
—–&gt; Compiled slug size is 8.0MB
—–&gt; Launching… done, v1
http://sushi.herokuapp.com deployed to Heroku[/code]

So here the flow is: write some code –> commit to git –> push to Heroku –> code is built –> code is deployed. Done.

heroku homepage

The Heroku website is fantastically full of all the information you’d want to get started, and their pictorial representation of how their solution works and the various levels of databases you can buy are geek-awesome:

heroku databases

“This app needs a BAKU DATABASE!! GRRAARRRR!!” Go and have a look and bask in the beautiful piccies and animations. No wonder this is (apparently) the place to go to write and deploy cloud hosted Facebook apps.

Thanks to Heroku I’m finally beaing pushed to learn Ruby, but haven’t managed anything quite yet, hence no demo of the Heroku flow – wait a few more posts and I’ll have something Ruby-fied and certainly some Node.js as I’ve been meaning to get into that for a while, possibly even Clojure (sounds fun) and Java (old school!).

Next up is one for the .net crowd:

appharbor

Appharbor sells itself as “Azure done right” which confused me. The website itself is verrrry low on information so I just assumed it would deploy my app to Azure. Turns out I was wrong:

appharbor chat on twitter

Despite my being pedantic over their homepage tagline I took the dive and just signed up. Only once you’ve done this do you get to see the money shot – the intro video; a new MVC app in Visual Studio to EC2 cloud via git + appharbor in a matter of minutes:

Now I have my account and I have a great intro vid I just hop into my code directory;

[code gutter=”off”]git init
git add .
git commit –m "init"
git remote add appharbor <git repo url appharbor gave me>
git push appharbor master[/code]

And that’s it. Committed code is checked out on their servers, built, any associated tests are executed, if everything passes then it gets deployed – and you can see all this from your Appharbor account:

appharbor deployment

(mine didn’t actually have anything to build, as it was a single html page and that really basic asmx web proxy I wrote).

In conclusion; you now have absolutely no excuse to not write and deploy whatever applications you feel like writing. There is no hosting to worry about, no build server – it just works. Use Appharbor for your .Net and use Heroku as an excuse to look at their pretty pictures and learn something that’s not .Net.

I know I will.

Comments appreciated.