MJ Stories

Mobile craftsmanship stories

Cover Image for HTTP 500 Is Not a Retry

A batch write endpoint that reports some failures per operation and others as a status code does not have a contract, it has two. A status code cannot tell the client whether you refused its data or broke while processing it, and a batch verdict is a verdict on every operation at once. The only channel that can carry a per-operation failure is the body. Get it wrong and the client does not retry slowly, it stops.

Android
androidkmpoffline-firstpowersyncsyncapi-design

Series · 10 parts

Offline-First KMP

When your mobile app must work without internet as a standard, not an edge case, the sync layer is just the first decision. What comes after — preserving user intent offline, trusting a "success" your server never actually confirmed, resolving conflicts as a human decision — is where offline-first actually gets hard. Field notes from a production KMP winery app.

  1. 1Choosing an offline-first sync layer for KMP
  2. 2Two writes for every tap
  3. 3Minting IDs Before the Server
  4. 4The Write You Never Clean Up
  5. 5HTTP 200 Is Not Success
  6. 6Your Schema Is Not Your Payload
  7. 7You Cannot Fix a Generated File
  8. 8Every Synced Row Needs an ID
  9. 9Your Sync Stack Fits in Three Containers
  10. 10HTTP 500 Is Not a Retry

More Stories

Cover Image for Your API key is not a secret

Your API key is not a secret

We have been hiding API keys in Android apps for a decade — with BuildConfig tricks, NDK, obfuscation libraries. None of it works. The fix is not better hiding; it is treating the key as a public identifier and proving the app is genuine instead.

Android
androidsecurityplay-integritybffarchitecture
Cover Image for Share iOs string resources with Android

Share iOs string resources with Android

There might be a requirement for mobile string resources to be defined or adjusted by management or copywriters. There also might be a requirement to add localization later by those roles. And on top of that strings should be synced across platforms.

Android
androidresourcessharedpoeditor