This is a weird one.
My Windows Phone 8 app's background agent seems to be updating absolutely fine throughout the day when I'm running a debug build. However, when I change to a release build, it either doesn't run at all or very infrequently. This is for a weather app: my live tile's content should change every hour. I've seen it sometimes update every hour, but then stop for a few hours, and then suddenly start again. At no point does the app's background agent get blocked by the OS either, which suggests to me there's nothing wrong with the background agent or it's just not getting run much/at all.
At the moment, I have debug and release builds of the app on my Lumia 1020 running Windows Phone 8.1. Code-wise they are identical. The debug build is updating every 30 minutes (I know cause of a timestamp on the live tile), whereas the release build has not updated once since it was created 90 minutes ago (but its background agent is still listed as being 'allowed' to run on the Battery Saver app).
Here's the method that creates the agent:
private void AddAgent(string periodicTaskName)
{
periodicTask = ScheduledActionService.Find(periodicTaskName) as PeriodicTask;
if (periodicTask != null)
{
RemoveAgent(periodicTaskName);
}
periodicTask = new PeriodicTask(periodicTaskName);
periodicTask.Description = "LiveTileHelperUpdateTask";
try
{
ScheduledActionService.Add(periodicTask);
// If debugging is enabled, use LaunchForTest to launch the agent in 5 seconds.
//#if(DEBUG_AGENT)
ScheduledActionService.LaunchForTest(periodicTaskName, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1));
//#endif
}
catch (InvalidOperationException)
{
}
catch (SchedulerServiceException)
{
}
}
And here's the scheduled agent code:
public class ScheduledAgent : ScheduledTaskAgent
{
/// <remarks>
/// ScheduledAgent constructor, initializes the UnhandledException handler
/// </remarks>
static ScheduledAgent()
{
// Subscribe to the managed exception handler
Deployment.Current.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(delegate
{
Application.Current.UnhandledException += UnhandledException;
});
}
/// Code to execute on Unhandled Exceptions
private static void UnhandledException(object sender, ApplicationUnhandledExceptionEventArgs e)
{
if (Debugger.IsAttached)
{
// An unhandled exception has occurred; break into the debugger
Debugger.Break();
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Agent that runs a scheduled task
/// </summary>
/// <param name="task">
/// The invoked task
/// </param>
/// <remarks>
/// This method is called when a periodic or resource intensive task is invoked
/// </remarks>
protected async override void OnInvoke(ScheduledTask task)
{
// If the app has not been purchased and trial has expired,
// don't do anything here.
if( (bool) IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings["TrialExpired"] == true )
return;
// Setup view model to get data from.
LiveTileViewModel viewModel = new LiveTileViewModel();
await viewModel.getWeatherForTileLocation();
// Use a dispatcher because we are NOT on the UI thread!
Deployment.Current.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>
{
try
{
RadFlipTileData extendedData = new RadFlipTileData();
extendedData.IsTransparencySupported = true;
// Determine which sized tile will be the live tile.
// Only create a live tile for it due to memory constraints.
string liveTileSize = IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings["LiveTileSize"].ToString();
switch (liveTileSize)
{
case "SMALL TILE":
extendedData.SmallVisualElement = new LiveTileSmall()
{
Icon = viewModel.Location.Hourly.Data[0].Icon,
Temperature = viewModel.Location.Hourly.Data[0].Temperature
};
break;
case "REGULAR TILE":
// Code here similar to small tile's
break;
default:
// Code here similar to small tile's
break;
}
FreeMemory();
foreach (ShellTile tile in ShellTile.ActiveTiles)
{
LiveTileHelper.UpdateTile(tile, extendedData);
break;
}
NotifyComplete();
}
catch (Exception e)
{
}
});
}
}
}
Anyone got any ideas what might be causing this or had any similar experience where the background agent only works on a debug build?
Thanks for your time.
