Amazon has updated the Web Services Mobile SDK with support for iOS, Android and Fire OS. It also introduces several new tools such as Cognito, Mobile Analytics, Kinesis Recorder and S3 Transfer Manager in addition to enhancements and bug fixes.
Amazon Cognito enable developers to identify a unique user, retrieve temporary, limited-privilege AWS credentials and also offers data synchronization services. It is developed to interact with major identity providers such as Amazon, Facebook and Google.
In order to work with Cognito, you need to follow the steps mentioned below
- Register for an AWS account
- Register your app on the identity provider's console
- Get App ID or token
- Creation of Cognito identity pool in the Management Console
- Intergrate the AWS Mobile SDK
- Store and sync data
"The Amazon Cognito Free Tier provides you with 10 GB of sync store and 1,000,000 sync operations per month for the first 12 months of usage. Beyond that, sync store costs $0.15 per GB of storage per month and $0.15 for each 10,000 sync operations," says Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist, Amazon Web Services.
Amazon Mobile Analytics provides an ability to keep track of usage and improve the performance of your app based on user feedback. It automatically calculates and updates the following parameters
- Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), and New Users
- Sticky Factor (DAU divided by MAU)
- Session Count and Average Sessions per Daily Active User
- Average Revenue per Daily Active User (ARPDAU)
- Average Revenue per Paying Daily Active User (ARPPDAU)
- Day 1, 3, and 7 Retention
- Week 1, 2, and 3 Retention
- Custom Events
With the help of Amazon Kinesis Recorder, developers will be able to record data to an Amazon Kinesis data stream directly from the mobile app. It automatically works in such a way that events are recorded in batches to handle potential network disconnections even when the device is offline. Moreover, it is also possible to send data to a variety of other services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon DynamoDB or Amazon Redshift.
The Amazon S3 Transfer Manager provides an ability to pause and resume downloads/uploads which should ultimately simplify the process of transferring files.
In addition to the above features, the AWS Mobile SDK for iOS also includes following additions
- Support for DynamoDB using Object Mapper
- ARC support for improved memory management
- Ability to chain async requests using BFTask for improved code readability
- Implementation of Objective-C recommendations
- Returns NSErrors instead of throwing exceptions
- New CocoaPods support enables you to add pod "AWSiOSSDKv2" and pod "AWSCognitoSync" to your Podfile
The Amazon product team has provided detailed setup instructions on the developer guide. The GiHub project page provides the steps required to work with the SDK using Swift and Objective-C.
After the release of Version 2, Amazon has released series of bug fixes for both iOS and Android SDK's related to Cognito Offline Sync, Cognito, Cognito Identity, S3, SNS and SimpleDB.
The Amazon Web Services Mobile SDK provides a wide range of services and tools that enable developers to quickly build apps as and when they require with no un-front fees and long term commitments. The SDK includes libraries, code samples, and documentation for iOS, Android and Fire OS. While iOS SDK is available separately, Android and Fire OS SDKs are clubbed together into one single installation package.