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Add the Extension

The simplest way to install and manage your AIR native extensions and libraries is to use the AIR Package Manager (apm). We highly recommend using apm, as it will handle downloading all required dependencies and manage your application descriptor (Android manifest additions, iOS info additions etc).

However you can choose to install it manually, as you would have done in the past.

Install

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Note: All of the commands below should be run in a terminal / command prompt in the root directory of your application, generally the level above your source directory.

If you don't have an APM project setup, expand the guide below to setup an APM project before installing the extension.

Setup APM

Install APM​

If you haven't installed apm follow the install guide on airsdk.dev.

Setup an APM project​

You will need an APM project for your application.

There are many ways to do this and for more options see the APM documentation. Here we will just initialise a new empty project:

apm init

Check your github token​

We use github to secure our extensions so you must have created a github personal access token and configured apm to use it.

To do this create a token using this guide from github and then set it in your apm config using:

apm config set github_token ghp_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

If you don't do this correctly you may find the install will fail.

Install the extension​

Install the extension by running: 

apm install com.distriqt.OCR

This will download and install the extension, required assets, and all dependencies.

Once complete apm will have created something like the following file structure: 

.
|____ assets
| |____ ios
| | |____ Frameworks
| | | |____ TesseractOCR.framework
|____ ane
| |____ com.distriqt.OCR.ane    # OCR extension
| |____ [dependencies]
|____ apm_packages              # cache directory - ignore
|____ project.apm               # apm project file

  • Add the ane directory to your IDE. See the tutorials located here on adding an extension to your IDE.

  • You will have an assets directory that contains required assets for the installed extensions. You must add the files in the assets/ios folder to the root of your iOS application package. (It contains the Frameworks folder with the required iOS dynamic frameworks). You do not need to add this to your Android application package.

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We suggest you use these locations directly in your builds rather than copying the files elsewhere. The reason for this is if you ever go to update the extensions using apm that these updates will be pulled into your build automatically.

Training Data

This extension does not include any training data.

You will need to make sure you download and include at least one traineddata file.

Application Descriptor​

Updating your application descriptor will insert the required extensionID's and generate the manifest and info additions for your application.

You update your application descriptor by running:

apm generate app-descriptor src/MyApp-app.xml

Change the path (src/MyApp-app.xml) to point to your application descriptor.

caution

This will modify your application descriptor replacing the manifest additions and info additions with the ones generated from apm.

You should backup your application descriptor before running this command to ensure you don't lose any information.

If you need to insert custom data into these sections see the guides for Android and iOS

Checking for Support​

You can use the isSupported flag to determine if this extension is supported on the current platform and device.

This allows you to react to whether the functionality is available on the device and provide an alternative solution if not.

if (OCR.isSupported)
{
    // Functionality here
}