At the HDC 2022, Huawei introduced the HarmonyOS 3.1 version. Now, the company has officially released the first developer preview of HarmonyOS 3.1 which mainly promotes the ArkTS development language, and the number of ArkTS APIs will also reach 10,000+.

Huawei HarmonyOS 3.1 API capabilities

• Enhanced declarative UI capabilities
• A new application development model – Stage model, and in DFX
• Web component development
• Internationalization Subsystem capabilities such as development, communication interconnection, and media software

Features of HarmonyOS 3.1 [DP]

Declarative UI capabilities

ArkUI is a declarative UI development framework for building HarmonyOS application interfaces. It helps you improve the efficiency of HarmonyOS application interface development through a concise and natural UI information description syntax, rich UI dynamic components and APIs, and continuously enhanced one-time development and multi-device deployment capabilities.

ArkUI currently supports more than 70 UI components including Canvas, XComponent, DatePicker, etc., and provides rich responsive layout and adaptive layout capabilities.

The specific new and enhanced capabilities are as follows:

1. Declarative 2D / 3D rendering capabilities

1) Added Canvas drawing capability, supports W3C standard Canvas interface, combined with declarative UI paradigm, enhances application developer’s custom drawing capability.

2) Through the XComponent component and NDK capabilities, build C++/TS hybrid development capabilities to support game and media application development.

2. Improvement of layout ability

1) Flat layout capability to improve layout efficiency

2) Custom layout capability, the layout is more flexible and customizable

3. Component capability improvement

1) The use of column structure components has been improved

2) The list component uses promotion
4. Multi-device interaction event normalization

After interaction normalization, developers do not need to pay attention to the current device and input device type, and only need to make a logical response in the interaction normalization event interface.

Application Development Model – Stage Model

As a supplement to the FA model, the application development framework introduces the Stage model as the second application development model. The Stage model includes life cycle management, scheduling, callback, context acquisition, authentication, etc., which greatly enhances the operation and management capabilities of the application. The key features of the Stage model are as follows:

1. Redefine the application operation rules and fundamentally solve the problem of preempting system resources in the background

1) The number of background resident processes is reduced

2) The memory overhead of the background resident process is reduced

3) Background process behavior is more orderly

4) The resources required by the foreground process can be fully guaranteed

2. Logic and UI are decoupled, application exception recovery and application cross-device migration logic are normalized

1) UI is decoupled from logic, and UI is driven by data

2) Application exception recovery only needs to load key node data

3) When transferring across devices, the application also loads key node data

3. The multi-device application model is unified, which is more conducive to one-time application development and multi-terminal deployment

The UIAbility life cycle of the Stage model is separated from the window display/focus event, which unifies the UIAbility model in the multi-device mode and promotes more concise multi-device compatible application code.

DFX

1. CPU time-consuming tuning

It is used to track the key processes in the code execution process and measure and analyze the time consumption of hotspot functions in high CPU load scenarios.

2. Memory allocation tuning

By tuning common problems such as excessive memory allocation and memory leaks, developers can quickly find the context of the memory life cycle.

3. HiAppEvent (application buried point framework)

Provides pre-embedded, predefined, custom event embedment, storage, distribution, and subscription frameworks for HarmonyOS application events. In-app developers can integrate the SDK to access the big data cloud, and complete the acquisition of buried point data through the HiAppEvent subscription mechanism.

Web component development

This update supports document preview and basic editing functions for document-based web applications and supports copying and pasting of mixed graphics and text content across devices. Under the unified W3C standard, it supports the rapid migration of document Web application ecology, with small adaptation and transplant workload and low debugging cost; it supports cross-device copying and pasting of mixed-text content, which solves the problem of loss of images when copying rich text content across devices, and improves mobile office work. experience.

International Development – Pseudo-Localized Debugging

Supports pseudo-translation replacement of interface language, text length extension, and text boundary testing. Developers can test without adding pseudo-translation resources to the App, and can quickly debug by switching the system language to the en-XA area.

Communication interconnection

1. http enhancements

Including support for caching, support for concurrent frameworks, support for gzip compression, and support for specifying data return formats.

2. Support TLSSocket

Support the client to specify security transmission options such as certificate, key, CA, etc., initiate a connection to the server, and establish a TLSSocket connection to support TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3.

Media software

1. Audio and video playback, recording, codec

1) Audio and video playback, including: local playback, online playback

2) Audio and video recording, including: audio recording, video recording

3) Audio and video codec, including: audio soft codec, video hard codec, support H264

2. The camera supports preview, photo and video functions

1) Basic camera capabilities, including: basic preview, basic photography, and basic video recording

2) Support basic parameter control: flash, focus, zoom, etc.

Distributed Data Management

Distributed data provides applications with distributed collaborative capabilities of databases between different devices (KVStore supports distributed, RDB only supports local).

In addition to the above key features, this HarmonyOS 3.1 will also include basic security capabilities, network management, package management, testing frameworks, file management, resource scheduling, USB services, input methods, printing, location services, accessibility software services, user IAM , window, telephone service, distributed soft bus, power service, event notification and other subsystems have different degrees of updates or enhancements.

The above major updates of HarmonyOS 3.1 will be released gradually in subsequent developer versions. Finally, let’s take a look at the version update rhythm of HarmonyOS 3.1.

Huawei HarmonyOS 3.1 timeline

• HarmonyOS 3.1  Developer Preview – November 2022 – January 2023
• HarmonyOS 3.1  Beta – January 2023 – March 2023
• HarmonyOS 3.1 Stable Update – April 2023

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