Announcements

Release notes, key changes and deprecation notices

Behavioral Change Announcement

We are excited to inform you about the recent updates we have made to our product to enhance your experience. These changes are scheduled for deployment as follows: 🔜 9th August: SG Region 🔜 10th August: EU & US Region. The best part is that these modifications will take effect immediately without requiring any action from your end to update the version.

Now, let's take a look at what will be changed:

Post creators will still have the ability to view their own soft-deleted posts.
Admins/Super Admins will still retain the privilege to view user's soft-deleted posts.
Non-Admin users, however, will no longer be able to access soft-deleted posts of other users.
Moderators & Global Moderators, will also no longer be able to access soft-deleted posts of other users.

Should you have any concerns or questions regarding these changes, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We value your feedback and are here to assist you!

API Deprecation Notice: v3/files for Image Moderation

We'd like to announce that we will be deprecating v3/files API in favor of v4/images API for our image moderation feature. Effective 1 January 2024, v3/files will no longer support image moderation. If you are using v3/files to upload images, we recommend that you switch to using v4/images instead.

To ensure a smoother transition process, we have already updated the iOS and Android SDKs in version 6.6.0, as well as Flutter SDK beta 0.21.0 to point to the new endpoint for uploadImage(). Therefore, if you wish to continue using the image moderation feature, you will need to upgrade to Android or iOS SDK 6.6.0 or higher; or Flutter beta 0.21.0 before 1 January 2024. After this date, v3/files and any SDKs below the aforementioned versions will no longer support image moderation. There is no impact to TypeScript SDK users as the SDK is already using v4/images.

What this means if you wish to continue having images moderated:

Android & iOS: You will need to upgrade to Android or iOS SDK 6.6.0 or higher (or UIKit 3.1.0 or higher), before 1 January 2024. After this date, v3/files and any SDK version below 6.6.0 (or UIKit 3.0.0 and below) will no longer support image moderation
Flutter: You will need to upgrade to Flutter SDK beta 0.21.0 or higher, before 1 January 2024. After this date, v3/files and any SDK version below beta 0.21.0 will no longer support image moderation
TypeScript: There is no impact to TypeScript SDK users as the TS SDK is already using v4/images

If you have any concerns or questions about this deprecation notice, please do not hesitate to contact our support team.

RxJava2 and PagedList Deprecation Notice

20 October 2022

Today we are announcing the deprecation of RxJava2 and PagedList for Amity Android SDK, as we will be migrating from RxJava2 to RxJava3 and from PagedList to PagingData, effective January 1, 2023.

What this means:

If you are using RxJava2 and PagedList, the last version that supports them (which will be released in December 2022) will continue to be maintained until 31 October 2023.
From 1 November 2023, Rxjava2 and PagedList will no longer be supported.

Although we will not stop supporting RxJava2 and PagedList until October 2023, we recommend that you start planning your upgrade around Q4 2022, from RxJava2 to RxJava3 and from PagedList to PagingData.

Separately, we will also be upgrading our SDK to support RxJava3 and PagingData in the coming weeks. Once the upgrade is complete, we will remove RxJava2 and PagedList from future versions of the SDK.

Objective-C Deprecation Notice & Minimum Target Upgrade to iOS 13

Updated: 19 September 2022

Today we are announcing the deprecation of Objective-C for Amity iOS SDK as we will be migrating from Objective-C to pure Swift, effective 1 January 2023.

What this means:

If you're using Objective-C to build your app, the last version that supports Objective-C (that will be published in December 2022) will continue to be maintained until 30 September 2023.
Starting 1 October 2023, Objective-C will no longer be supported.

Although we will only be ending the support of Objective-C in October 2023, we recommend that you start planning the upgrade around Q4 2022.

Xcode 14 Upgrade & Minimum Deployment Target Upgrade from iOS 12 to iOS 13

Separately in the coming weeks, we will also be upgrading our SDK to support Xcode 14, and will be raising the minimum deployment target from iOS 12 to iOS 13. Once the minimum target upgrade occurs, we will be dropping iOS 12 & Xcode 13 support from future versions of the SDK.

What’s in store with iOS 13+ upgrade:

There are many new enhancements coming along with this upgrade, such as async/await APIs that help you to work easier with asynchronous programming. Migrating to Swift also comes as a cost-effective method in developing and maintaining your projects.

Managed UI Kit Deprecation Announcement

Updated: 21 June 2022

Amity Social Cloud will be deprecating all managed versions of the UI Kits (IOS, Android and Web J.S.) on 31 August 2022 as requests to be able to further customize their look and feel have increased. Our UI Kits were built to enable even faster integration of our social and chat features. In January this year, we open sourced all our UI Kits to provide our customers with more flexibility and greater customization options. Since then, we have seen a shift towards the open source version as it gives complete control over the visual style while keeping the integration time as short as possible.

To ensure that you continue to receive the latest updates and improvements, we encourage you to migrate over to the open source version. We’ve written instruction guides to help you migrate to the open source version, get the latest updates, and contribute to the project all available below.

What happens once the managed version UI Kit is deprecated?

Once the managed version is deprecated, we will transition our support to the open source UI Kit for any bug requests and releases of new features. You will still be able to use the managed UI Kit, however it will no longer be receiving further updates. All documentation relating to the managed UI Kit version will be moved to the deprecation notice section. Any ongoing improvements will be made to the open source version under the Lesser General Public License (GNU).

How to migrate off the managed version UI Kit?

iOS SDK Breaking Changes

Updated: 09 December 2021

From 09 Dec 2021 onwards, Amity iOS SDK will no longer maintain versions which were built with Xcode version prior to 13. and SDK v5.8 will be the first version that is built with Xcode 13 and the iOS 15 SDK.

What drove the change?

According to Apple’s announcement here, "Starting April 2022, all iOS and iPadOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 13 and the iOS 15 SDK."

When is the deadline I need to make the change?

From now to April 2022, you will be able to submit an app to App Store with Amity iOS SDK version prior to v5.8. but it’s highly recommended to plan the upgrade.
From April 2022 onwards, you will NOT be able to submit an app to App Store with Amity iOS SDK version prior to v5.8

What’s the impact to my users who are currently using the app with Amity iOS SDK version prior to v5.8?

There is no impact from the functionality wise for the users who are using your App under old Amity iOS SDK. However beginning form April 2022, developers can only submit an app to App Store with the following requirement.

Built with Xcode 13
Built with iOS 15 SDK
Built with Amity iOS SDK v5.8

Maintenance Strategy for Breaking Changes

Updated: 27 April 2021

EkoSDK 4.8 and UIKit 1.12 will be the last version to contain the prefix Eko. New features WILL NOT be added to these older versions any longer.
We will only maintain these older versions for critical issues and bug fixes. Whenever a hot-fix is made available, it will be rerouted back to historical ASC SDK & UIKit, respectively, regardless of the current latest versioning.
Amity Social Cloud's SDK 5.0 and UIKit 2.0 will be introduced as a modularized category of changes and advancement. New features will only be added to these versions and those to come, above i.e. v5.1, v5.2 and so on and so forth.
EkoSDK 4.8 and UIKit 1.12 will be supported for critical issues for a period of 6 months. After which the window period will expire and EkoSDK 4.8 and UIKit 1.12 will be officially discontinued and no longer supported moving forward.

You can find more information about these changes in the respective changes for each platform, which you can access using the links below.

iOS Android Web

Follow / Unfollow Limited Availability Announcement

Updated: 26 April 2021

After the launch of our Amity Social features that allow customers around the world to build their own social network and grow their own community of users within the safety net of their own brands, our customers and the community they have built has grown much quicker than we originally anticipated - from building a community of travelers to engaging sports-fans around the world.

In order to handle the massive spike in workloads from the growing number of customers while making sure our system always perform at the highest standard from both data latency and scalability aspects, we have decided to revert Follow and Unfollow features into Limited Availability release.

The feature will be temporarily unavailable to all new customers while we work on upgrading our infrastructure and underlying deployment architecture. Starting from 26 April 2021, new SDK downloads will no longer contain follow/unfollow function and newly-generated API key will not be able to use the features. User profile, groups and feed features will remain unaffected. Existing customers who are already using the feature should also remain unaffected.

Our priority is to ensure we scale our system architecture to meet the increasing demand from our existing customers who are using the system to actively grow their community. Our engineering team is working to bring these features back to General Availability release by June 2021. Thank you for your understanding and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused to our onboarding customers.

iOS SDK Breaking Changes

Updated: 08 December 2020

From 1st Feb 2021 onwards, Amity iOS SDK will no longer maintain versions which were built with Xcode version prior to 12, and v4.2 will be the first version with Xcode 12 support. Please kindly plan ahead and upgrade your iOS SDK version if you are using the versions prior to v4.2

What drove the change?

According to Apple’s announcement here, "Starting April 2021, all iOS and iPadOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 12 and the iOS 14 SDK."

When is the deadline I need to make the change?

From now to 31st Jan, no impact but it’s highly recommended to plan the upgrade.
From 1st Feb onwards, Amity will no longer provide customer support regarding iOS SDK versions prior to v4.2
From 1st Feb to 31st Mar, you will still be able to submit an updated version to App Store with Amity iOS SDK version prior to v4.2
From April onwards, you will NOT be able to submit an updated version to App Store with Amity iOS SDK version prior to v4.2

What’s the impact to my users who are currently using the app with Amity iOS SDK version prior to v4.2?

There is no impact from the functionality wise for the users who are using your App under old Amity iOS SDK, but they will NOT be able to get any further updated version from App Store unless you submit a new version which is :

Built with Xcode 12
Built with iOS 14 SDK
Built with Amity iOS SDK v4.2

I want to upgrade Amity SDK but how do I know the changes between my current SDK version and the latest version?

Please refer to this announcement section for details.

Last updated 1 year ago