Intercepting and redefining modal presentation from a third-party framework

The Problem Some time ago, here at Badoo, we introduced a third-party library to cover our project needs. It was working well, except for one detail: it was presenting UI using iOS modal presentation (typical full screen view controller which is shown from the bottom of the screen), but according to our…

Reactive selfies with Camera2 API on Android — Part 2

This is part two of an article, where I show how you can use RxJava2 to build logic on top of asynchronous API. I chose Android Camera2 API as an example (and didn’t regret it!). This API is not only asynchronous, but also has hidden distinctive implementation features which are…

From zero to Cosmos — Part #2

This is the story of how a small style guide that was first introduced under the radar, became so appreciated by both developers and designers that it made its way to become a complex unification project — a design system called Cosmos. From zero to Cosmos — Part #1 The “Re-Think” project …

MVI in Kotlin Multiplatform — part 2 (2 of 3)

This is the second in a series of three articles on MVI architectural pattern in Kotlin Multiplatform. In the article part 1 we reminded ourselves what MVI is and learned how to use it to write shared code using MVI. We defined simple abstractions like Store and View as well…

Client-side neural networks

Historical background The popularity of machine learning and neural networks is growing every day, and faster than we could ever have imagined. Many industry players are contributing, and client-side frameworks are developing rapidly. Many libraries, such as TensorFlow, are constantly releasing new versions. More mobile devices are now receiving hardware support for…

Add Superpowers to your Appium-Android tests

[Update]: I have now pushed this feature in new appium-espresso-driver upstream and it is available out of the box to everyone! Please refer to this medium blog for the latest happening Over the past few years, Appium has become one of the most widely used mobile automation tools. While there…

Universal links for Android and iOS

Sharing between platforms should always work Mobile apps have given a huge amount of good things to the human race, but at the same time, they have broken the internet. Instead of easy-to-understand links to sites which can be copied and shared, now you have to tell people what app to use to access which content. …

White Box Testing With Appium Espresso Driver

At Badoo, we have techies who strongly believe in contributing to the open source community. This article is about how I contributed a very useful feature called ‘backdoor’ to Appium which solves lots of problems related to Android UI automation. There are a few examples of it in this article…

Run, config, run: How we speed up config deploy

Configuration files (configs) are an integral part of most applications, but practice shows that they are far from being the most popular topic of discussion. Conversations about configs are mostly limited to discussing working with them directly in the code: how to structure them, whether or not using environmental variables…

Server-provided animations in iOS apps

Hi everyone! About six months ago we launched one of Badoo’s most exciting features: Live Streaming. One of its main functionalities is that viewers can send gifts to their favourite streamers to express their appreciation. We wanted to make the gifts as fancy and as engaging as possible, so it…

Routing for iOS: universal navigation without rewriting the app

What’s wrong with navigation anyway? Almost every app has a navigation between different internal components and it seems like it shouldn’t be a problem. UIKit contains more or less convenient containers like UINavigationController, UITabBarController and a flexible way to present screens modally. We, as developers, just need to use the right tools. However, as soon…

Jira combats chaos: how to not lose tasks in development

In my previous article I talked about how we configured Jira to make work flow as convenient as possible and to ensure tickets provided exhaustive information. The aim of today’s article is somewhat different. Assumptions: You are developing and providing support for a complex programming product in use by several…

Achieving State Of The Art Results In Natural Language Processing:

Part 1: Fundamental Concepts Badoo is the largest dating network in the world, with over millions of registered users worldwide. Users of our site are prompted to write an “About me” section in order to give any prospective love interests a little bit more information about themselves.

From zero to Cosmos — Part #3

This is the story of how a small style guide that was first introduced under the radar, became so appreciated by both developers and designers that it finally became a complex unification project — a design system called Cosmos. From zero to Cosmos — Part #1 From zero to Cosmos —…

Fixing serialization of Kotlin objects once and for all

Some time ago, I read an article describing a problem experienced with Kotlin objects and serialization using built-in Java methods. The author suggests an amazing solution involving adding the readResolve method to each object implementing java.io.Serializable rather than using instance checks. Despite this approach seemingly being the most correct one…

Delhi to London : What it’s like to be relocated for a new job!

Since I am from India, I always think in terms of Bollywood movies, where everything is possible. Yes, that’s right…everything. Maybe that is why when I started off with Badoo, I always believed that this was within my reach. If I were to make a Bollywood movie of my journey…

How we achieved a 6x reduction of ANRs. Part 2: Fixing ANRs

In the first part, we discussed what ANR is and what are the ways of tracking it. In this article, you will find information on what problems we found in our application, how we fixed them, and the results we achieved. Application Startup The first thing to do if you want to…

High-Precision Time: how to use fractional seconds in MySQL and PHP

Once I caught myself thinking about time in databases and realised that I nearly always used time with one-second precision just because it was a common way to it, as well as because that was exactly what was written in manuals in lots of examples. Today, however, this level of…

Bundling C library in Swift framework

In 2014 Apple introduced Swift, a new language for developing applications across its ecosystem. As well as offering various new possibilities and features, it also created some new challenges for those wanting to use good old C libraries. In this article, I will describe one common use case which you…

Checking your app’s paid services without losing money

Checking paid services is crucial in Badoo and Bumble apps testing process. Our applications are integrated with 70 payment providers in 250 countries. This means that bugs at any integration can seriously affect revenues, and in unpredictable ways. In this article, you will learn about methods that we employ in…

Deep Neural Networks & Image Captioning

Part 2: Using attention networks to improve the quality of image captions In my previous blog, I introduced the concept of combining a CNN with an LSTM to generate a caption of an image, and talked about how we are using this at Badoo to help our users find love. This time, we will explore how the incorporation of attention networks can…

Xcode 10.2, macOS Mojave 10.14.4, iOS 12.1 and other betas

New betas are here and these are some of the most important things that I have learned about them. Swift 5 for Xcode 10.2 beta Swift Firstly, the latest Xcode beta is bundled with the following Swift version: Apple Swift version 5.0 (swiftlang-1001.0.45.7 clang-1001.0.37.7) Target: x86_64-apple-darwin18.2.0 ABI version: 0.6 Let’s start with the most exciting news: Swift…

A Custom LayoutManager Case: Bumble Beeline

Task

Optimising relational databases with zero downtime

A case study of Badoo’s most loaded database Optimising relational databases is much harder in high-load circumstances: buying an even more powerful hardware is expensive, and one cannot just turn off the app at night to alter the database and migrate data. In this article I would like to tell you how we completely changed the inner structure…

What Google I/O 2019 addressed: Android 10, AR-applications and much more

In this article I’ll share my thoughts on Google I/O 2019 that my colleagues and I attended recently (and Badoo were even mentioned in one of the talks). During the three days, there were more than 150 talks, lots of choice as you can see, but I really wanted to…