Just a quick note to say thank you for this - only found this thread the other day, but have been wanting an Android app for a little while. This is brilliant!
Client side reviews is finally online, thanks Viet! By default the review button of the notifier will take you to a blank screen. To fix this, please change the review url (last item in the settings menu) and remove the trailing ‘session/start’. The new url is WaniKani — Log in.
s84606 said... Client side reviews is finally online, thanks Viet! By default the review button of the notifier will take you to a blank screen. To fix this, please change the review url (last item in the settings menu) and remove the trailing 'session/start'. The new url is http://www.wanikani.com/review.You know, now that I think about it, letting users change this rather than hardcoding was pretty good foresight on your part. I couldn't figure out why you did that at first; now I just think you have a window into viet's head 0.0
Ankotaro said...Oh, and for once I felt I could witness a smooth migration.You know, now that I think about it, letting users change this rather than hardcoding was pretty good foresight on your part. I couldn't figure out why you did that at first; now I just think you have a window into viet's head 0.0
Of course the feeling quickly evaporated as I discovered that reviews were happily forgotten if a session was interrupted (I suspect also a change in orientation could do that). Had an "interesting time" till I found a way to fix it :D
Hi, I was wondering if I can do lessons through the app? I could only fine the review button, but I can’t find the lesson button. Also, I have a question about my nexus 7. When I do my reviews or lessons through chrome on my tablet, it doesn’t convert my script into kana. For example, ko stays ko and doesn’t become the kana.
This is an awesome app; thanks for putting it out there!
@soiia: yes, you can do your lessons through the app. As they become available, a padlock button appears on the dashboard. If you click it, it will show a link to the lessons page. You can also enable lessons notification, through the settings menu. As for the issues with your tablet, I’d suggest using my app+integrated browser, which should interact better with wk.
@jonnystarfish: thanks, I’m glad you find it useful!
I don’t know if this is the proper venue for this sort of thing, but–
I’m using a Nexus One and I’ve noticed that at least since the last update, the WKN keyboard is incredibly glitchy, and the glitches carry over to the rest of the Android environment.
Ex: Open WKN, start doing review. As I’m trying to type the letter “i” for example, the keyboard is registering this as me pressing the “space” button. All the buttons seem to be slightly offset. So I say screw it and try to fire up a browser to do reviews there, but from that point on until I turn the phone off and on again, the entire Android environment incorrectly registers screen taps (or does not register them at all).
I tried turning off WKN keyboard and using the stock keyboard but the problem with incorrect screen taps always seems to start up once I’ve entered the review screen, regardless of keyboard used. Everything works fine on the initial screens.
I know there are a lot of variables in play but this only happens when I try to use WKN. The phone is brand new and I never have issues until I try using WKN. This was not an issue two weeks ago when I first started using the app… Just thought you might want to know about it.
Thanks!
Hi, thanks for this report: I’ve never encountered this behaviour, and I confess it baffles me…
Definitely there’s a bug in the Android environment because, of course, even a really misbehaved app should not tamper the whole environment. In addition, 1.4.1 does not change anything in the way reviews are handled.
On the other hand, I noticed that the Android stock browser (which is the same used by WKN for its integrated browser) does not handle the WK site well:
- There’s a CPU leakage due to the HTML5 audio tags
- Sometimes it simply crashes, and the stack dumps reveal that it’s a segmentation fault in the native code (i.e. a serious bug in the android system libs)
Just to determine where the issue really is, would you be so kind to do your reviews using the stock browser and tell me if you encounter the same issues? No need to even open WKN: just launch the Android browser and try some review/lesson sessions.
In addition, please upgrade to release 1.4.2 (I’ve just published to Google play, so it may take a while before it becomes available): it contains a patch that may fix similar problems, especially if you encounter this behaviour after you do some lessons.
Thanks!
s84606 said…
Hi, thanks for this report: I’ve never encountered this behaviour, and I confess it baffles me…
Definitely there’s a bug in the Android environment because, of course, even a really misbehaved app should not tamper the whole environment. In addition, 1.4.1 does not change anything in the way reviews are handled.Hey thanks for the response. I’m downloading the newest update as I type this (thought I had auto-update enabled, but that was on my old phone) so I’ll give it a whirl the next time reviews pop up.
On the other hand, I noticed that the Android stock browser (which is the same used by WKN for its integrated browser) does not handle the WK site well:
- There’s a CPU leakage due to the HTML5 audio tags
- Sometimes it simply crashes, and the stack dumps reveal that it’s a segmentation fault in the native code (i.e. a serious bug in the android system libs)
Just to determine where the issue really is, would you be so kind to do your reviews using the stock browser and tell me if you encounter the same issues? No need to even open WKN: just launch the Android browser and try some review/lesson sessions.
In addition, please upgrade to release 1.4.2 (I’ve just published to Google play, so it may take a while before it becomes available): it contains a patch that may fix similar problems, especially if you encounter this behaviour after you do some lessons.
Thanks!
As for the browser, it’s definitely slower than WKN, but it’s the only way I’ve been able to actually complete reviews on the phone. I do not have any of the issues I mentioned using the stock browser; problems only start once I use WKN to start reviewing and then the issues persist outside of the app.
So I’ll test out the newest update and get back to you with the results.
Thanks again!
Since I’m a little pessimistic about this test (the use case you report does not fit perfectly with the behaviour that has been fixed in 1.4.2), if you want, you can downgrade to rel 1.3.0, which is two weeks older and I believe is the one that used to work on your setup:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6gbx2kuuiofi3dp/WaniKaniNotifier-1.3.0.apk
BTW: I forgot to ask, what is the android version you are running?
Thanks for the follow up. My specs are Nexus One 2.3.6, kernel version 2.6.35.7-59465.
I tried doing reviews on 1.4.1, and the problem started occurring again after 5 or 6 reviews. For what it’s worth, the problem is literally relegated to half of the keyboard-- YUIOP, HJKL, maybe NM all work fine. It’s when I go to press just about anything on the left side (QWERT, ASDF, etc) that the weird offsetting effect happens and anything I press triggers either Mute or the space bar.
I’ll give the older version another shot when I get a chance; thanks for the link.
Funny, 2.3.6 is the version of my Android phone too… and they talk about portability of Java code 
At any rate, if the old version works for you, we are in business: there are very small changes and reverting to the old behaviour should be easy… pity I can’t reproduce it, I’d be really curious to see what’s going on…
Is the app available anywhere else than google play?
Thanks
CuZnDragon said…
So far it has been distributed through google play only (I had a look at Amazon, but I did not like the clauses much).
Is the app available anywhere else than google play?
Thanks
If you prefer a direct link, here you can find the latest version:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/161xe1vcg3e33ci/WaniKaniNotifier-1.4.2.apk
If you find it useful, let me know, and I’ll publish new versions on dropbox as well.
Cheers
I’m not entirely sure this wasn’t just because I was screwing around with my phone a little, but I’ll put this here anyway:
Recently I’ve had a day’s worth or more of data on the stats panel up and disappear on me. (Well, that or it was just never collected for the 2 periods this affected. I wasn’t paying enough attention beforehand to know which.) It gets reconstructed fine-ish (see boxiness around first gray bar below), but it is a little off-putting…
Sorry for not giving a more useful report >.<
Truly love this app and it has been indispensable to me for a while now. So first, many thanks for putting this together, it really is great!
I have however noticed that since first using this app, one of my radicals has always shown as a critical item even though it is not listed as such on WaniKani. Not a big thing, just a little bug that has its annoyances and I thought you might want to be aware of.
Hi @Ankotaro, do you remember if the days when no data was collected the notification service used to work? Currently the algorithm is really simple: it tries to store data at 1 am (or at any later time when the phone is awake). If it fails, and notifications are disabled, then next retry is half an hour later. If notifications are enabled, next try is when any other notification event triggers (and they are a lot: connectivity changes, new reviews, every time the app is refreshing its data). I’d say that either the notification service (as an Android service) was shutdown, or the connectivity was permanently down. In both cases, the icon should have not appeared when new reviews were available. Regarding the boxiness, yeah, you got me there, I was too lazy to connect them in the nice way 
BTW your post reminds me I wanted to add an export/import feature for stats data (e.g. as a CSV). Maybe you could give me an advice on how to make it easy for users: how would you do that? File push/pull through Bluetooth?
@rebeljonny: I see, it must be quite annoying… However it’s strange, because there the app is virtually stateless… Try this:
http://www.wanikani.com/api/user/<your-api-key>/critical-items
If it displays that critical item, it means that there is some disalignment in the WK database: you may want to ask hello@wanikani.com to fix it.
Thanks to you both
Thanks have it installed on phone, will also install on my tablet and test it.
s84606 said... @rebeljonny: I see, it must be quite annoying.. However it's strange, because there the app is virtually stateless... Try this:Thanks for the reply. I did what you said and interestingly the same radical did appear on this list even though it isn't registered as such on the website UI. I'll email WK about it!
http://www.wanikani.com/api/user/<your-api-key>/critical-items
If it displays that critical item, it means that there is some disalignment in the WK database: you may want to ask hello@wanikani.com to fix it.
Thanks to you both
Many thanks!