Category: "Jamerson Quave"

Pete Barber from C#, C++, Windows & other ramblings

Apple announced tvOS yesterday. Downloading Xcode 7.1 Beta comes with the SDK and simulator for tvOS apps. The official documentation starts to run through how to create a basic app but is doesn't mention where to place and load the JS from and the same for the TVML.

Fortunately and vert quickly Jamerson Quave put together a tutorial.

I followed the Apple docs but checked Jameson's tutorial to verify the missing declaration of

var appController: TVApplicationController?

from AppDelegate and also for the JS and then TVML loading. I don't understand and the docs don't seem to see where the JS & TVML should be loaded from. They seem to suggest it should be remote, i.e. not part of the App Bundle but I don't know why. Anyhow I thought I'd see if I could.

The following assumes you've got to the end of Jameson's tutorial.

Loading the JS file; that then loads the TVML is easy. Add main.js to your application and change the lines within application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions in AppDelegate.swift from:

let jsFilePath = NSURL(string: "http://localhost:8000/main.js") let javascriptURL = jsFilePath! appControllerContext.javaScriptApplicationURL = javascriptURL!

To

guard let jsUrl = NSBundle.mainBundle().URLForResource("main", withExtension: "js") else
{
    return false
}

This just loads the Javascript file (main.js) from the bundle instead. It's not a great improvement but it removes one dependency on the local web server.

I then tried to add hello.tvml to the bundler and modify main.js to create the fetched (via XmlHttpRequest). Unfortunately I couldn't create the Document in the JS. It seems that the normally (I've not done JS in a long time so what do I know) available document object isn't available to more documents and/or elements can't be created.

An attempt to create one, i.e.

var otherDoc = Document()

gives