DocuSign for BlackBerry 10 in a Few Hours

Last week DocuSign engineering had a second internal hackathon (a nice collage resulting from the first one) and I built DocuSign for BlackBerry 10 in just a few hours (well, sort of).

Some of you might be wondering what BlackBerry is. It’s a mobile operating system that is actually in the process of surpassing Windows and Kindle, based on market share, according to this reputable study. Oh, and by the way, BB also has many loyal aficionados thanks to their years of being a mobile solo-provider to enterprises.

Luckily, DocuSign already had an app for Android and, based on my research, which consisted of looking at this page for a minute, and talking with our mobile dev manager, I figured out that I could just port the DocuSign for Android app to the BlackBerry OS. Porting is just a fancy word for re-writing something in a new language, or for a new platform, without changing functionality very much. It typically involves re-compiling, changing APIs, updating code and re-packaging.

Go @azat_co + Chip! “@tgonser: #sp14dsx – When the data scientist talks, people listen! BlackBerry is not dead yet!! pic.twitter.com/rgZD5miD8x”

— Ashley Carroll (@StanfordAsh) April 11, 2014

It’s worth noting that RIM (the company behind BlackBerry) provides many other options for building BlackBerry 10 apps including:

• Adobe AIR
• Native
• HTML5

This is probably done to boost the number of available offerings within their marketplace (BlackBerry World) and jump-start their development ecosystem, which is lagging far behind those of iOS and Android.

I have worked with Java and J2EE before. In addition, I was an Adroid guy for a long time prior to getting my first Apple product (MacBook Air): I remember that my very first smartphone (running buggy Android 1.6) had constant “Force Close” errors. However, up until this hackathon, all of my forays into mobile dev land consisted only of using HTML5 with the Jo and Sencha Touch frameworks. Awesome challenge! Or so I thought.

The goal was to use Android code, re-package it, and install it in the simulator (with or without changes). I decided to go with Android Studio vs. Eclipse, and downloaded these tools (download page):

• Android Studio
• Android Studio BlackBerry Plug-in
• BlackBerry simulator because nobody at the DocuSign San Francisco had a BlackBerry 10 device ;-)
• VMware as a virtual machine for the simulator (simulator requirements)
• Command-line tools

The complete tutorials are available at Runtime for Android apps.

After downloading, literally, a few gigabytes of SDKs and packages, I was stuck with our code-base in Android Studio due to some Java exceptions regarding Gradle, so I resorted to using command-line tools.

These are the commands from the BlackBerry toolchain that I ended up using:

• apk2barVerifier: to verify apk (Android) files for compatibility for bar (BlackBerry)
• apk2bar: to re-package apk to bar
• blackberry-deploy: to upload and install the app on a BlackBerry

It’s worth noting that for distributing BlackBerry 10 apps to the BlackBerry world, apps must be signed with a special token (tutorial). Obviously, I skipped this step for the hackathon.

Lo and behold, everything worked on the BlackBerry with 0 code changes (except where DocuSign tries to charge via Google Play). The end results were quite pleasing. Thank you BlackBerry for making it easier for us developers. I guess, I can now say that I develop native apps (yeah, right). :-)

In addition, I also found this neat but scammy-looking service called APK Downloader that allows us to install Android apps from the Google Play market directly onto the latest BlackBerry 10 systems. Simply enter the name of the app as a Java package, e.g., com.docusign.ink, (link). The real hack! I could have used it from the beginning and saved myself a few hours. Therefore, it’s vital to conduct proper up-front research prior to embarking on a project! ☺