TestFlight - missing On Demand Resources

Hi,


We've been attempting to upload, to TestFlight, an application which makes use of on demand resources / ODR.


The app appears to upload correctly and be processed, and be made available for testing in TestFlight BUT our various ODR bundles appear to not be available to the app to "pull". We get an error whenever the app attempts to fetch an ODR down.


This is an all-new thing for us - we've been uploading versions of this app for quite some time but now, suddenly, this is happening. No change to the content of the ODR bundles, no change to the App. We've even uploaded a previous app version to rule out it being a change "our side" - it still fails to be able to pull down any of the ODR bundles.


Is anyone else seeing this or does anyone know of any potential work arounds (obviously there's the option not to use ODR but that's rather extreme and would mean a HUGE download for our customers).

  • The Issue with TestFlight and ODR is back since 48 hours ago. Our apps are no longer able to download ODR via TestFlight builds. Even the builds made before are no longer working.

    Does anybody have the same issue?

  • Same here for me

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Accepted Reply

Hey folks,

Thank you all for jumping in on this. We believe this issue has been addressed. Please try uploading a TestFlight build again and let us know if you are continuing to experience problems.


Thanks,

James

Replies

I already can't release an update for a two week. the same situation

a few weeks ago we encountered a problem with downloading on-demand resources on the test flight.

We've noticed that this problem is discussed at this forum, and users replied that there was a problem with tags on testflight server.



when this issue was resolved, we got a request to resubmit a new version, which we did. After that, an error with on-demand content disappeared / was solve on the version which was in Testflight.



Loading of On Demand Resources was tested on different devices by many testers through the testflight - the application works perfectly, but the reviewer still gets an error.



But apparently this error remained in the version which is being reviewed by your team.



Pls check the matter of errors related to tags and on your production server?



We introduced on-demand content initially in accordance with Apple's recommendations, and hope that the previous issues with it were solved, and that the update will be published as soon as possible - the customers are really really waiting for it..



many thanks

Several of us are seeing the same thing. https://forums.developer.apple.com/message/413854


I feel the likely culprit is a change in how App Review connects to the production servers due to new remote working conditions.


Hopefully someone from Apple could help us with this! Meanwhile our app updates sit in limbo...


Mark

(in response to Chris060)

Released application using ODR solution on Test flight and on Main submission (App store submission).

When tested build from Test flight on our iPhones it worked well, and resource files are getting downloaded from iTunes server successfully.

When it comes to apple reviewer for both Test flight build and Main Submission, they are facing problem in downloading resources.

Pop up message appears is "The requested application data doesn't exist".


Our observation:

  1. When using ODR, application download meta data information (which contains plist to refer tagged resource in App to server resource hosted on iTunes Server) from iTunes server using internal API calls.
  2. These download of meta data is getting failed on reviewer iPhone because either iPhone is connected to VPN or using private network.
  3. Although we re-submitted application by blocking user to use application, when connected to VPN.
  4. After rejection and convincing the reviewer to disable the VPN while testing, again when he/she try to download the resource file same error message appears.
  5. After reading lots of blog/threads related to similar issue, a very old thread appears ((https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/37962),

which state similar problem. Just wondering what rich kubota - rkubota@apple.com has stated to restart the mobile will work for apple reviewer or he misinterpreted IAP with ODR problem. Or both problem are linked as both are pulling meta data information from iTunes.

6. Right now we are clue less and does not have any alternative other than ODR, as our resources are JS/HTML5 games and we have to follow Guideline 4.7 - Design - HTML5 Games, Bots, etc.

(As we have already tried AWS solution with checksum and our app got rejected).

7. Already raised ticket regarding the same and waiting for the reply.

8. According to me it seems more like network or firewall issue. Can any one help us to understand the environment set up used by apple reviewer, also help us in understaning any linkage of IAP with ODR? Or can we ask reviewer to retest the application after restart of the device.

Can you post your Technical Support Incident Case ID? I will reply to my case with yours so they can see that this issue is widespread.


Here are the ones I've filed:


Developer Technical Support Incident Case ID: 732675555

Feedback Assistant bug report ID: FB7655668


Here's another thread of several of us that are experiencing the same issues: https://forums.developer.apple.com/message/413854

Feedback Assistant bug report ID:FB7448799

Developer Technical Support Incident Case ID:722973666

Still we are waiting for the resolution.

Same for me. No response at all from App Review or Developer Technical Support. I will post here if I hear anything.

Test flight build are working for all other user. We have got it tested with internal and external tester in even different region.

It sound silly but seems some problem in testing environment of Apple reviewer.

Can you ask your reviewer to restart the iPhone device before reviewing the application?

This is last option left from our side which we are going to ask to our apple reviewer to do before reviewing the app.

Same thing here. My app with ODR works perfectly in TestFlight (tested on several devices in several networks), but App Review team still has the error with missing data when they try to test functionality with ODR. I've asked the guys from review team to turn off VPN, or reboot devices, but I'm receiving in response only default replies that they don't provide any technical details and I should fix it on my side... But how if it works everywhere, except the review team devices???

We're experiencing the same issue (feedback ID: FB7698419 TSI Case ID: 734928412 ).

The app works as expected when installed from TestFlight but fails downloading the ODR tags when in review (NSBundleOnDemandResourceInvalidTagError).

We've also tried using different bundle id and diferent Xcode versions (11.1 & 11.4.1) but the result is the same.

I received a response on May 21 from a technical support representative who was able to reproduce the error the App Reviewers are seeing and produce a console log. The error was reproduced on a cellular connection so I believe that rules out issues involving reviewers connecting via VPN. He said he has passed the information on to the ODR engineers who hopefully can use the logs to find the issue on their backend. I followed up today and sent him a link to this thread and enumerated all the Feedback Assistant reports and developer TSI cases that everyone has filed with the hope that the issue can be escalated. I'll report back if I hear anything more from them.

We've had this issue since 6th of March 2020 (just about the time when apple has fixed TestFlight issue where we (the developers) could not get assets downloaded from TestFlight builds. After the "fix" by Apple, it looks like this has now been broken for App Store Review Engineers.


I've a submited a build done with the latest version of the XCode 11.5 and have not as of yet received neither positive or negative response (will post here either way) but have noticied something that in all our testing we've not seen before this latest XCode 11.5 TestFlght submission.


As per Apple documentation (see below), there are circumstances where an ODR system may not be able to deliver the data/asset for various reasons, and the best course of action is to simply retry the operation. For this unlikely scenario, we've added a new flow to our assets downloading mechanism to report the error to the user and offer a choice to retry the operation. The error reported is rather bizarre and it reads something like:


"....www.asset-pack-a2c34.....43f97" couldn't be moved to "15011.....5902" beause either the former doesn't exist, or the folder containing the later doesn't exist. (4)


So after receiving the above error, our app presents this in a form of an alert with "Close" and "Retry" buttons, and tapping "Retry" yields positive result and the actual assets are downloaded OK for the same assets that failed previously!? As we have 700+ ODR assets in our app, during testing of 1st 100 or so assets, this error was reported 3 times so far (Over WiFi)



From Apple Docs

On-Demand Resources

NSBundleResourceRequest
no longer throws exceptions when encountering certain kinds of internal errors. Instead, it returns an error in the error argument of the completion handler of the
beginAccessingResourcesWithCompletionHandler:
method. The error might include the
NSFileReadUnknownError
and
NSXPCConnectionInterrupted
errors in addition to
NSUserCancelledError
and network-related errors.

If your app encounters an error when using

NSBundleResourceRequest
, request the resource again or display a prompt to your user to try again.

I've been in touch with Rich Kubota who is working to get to the bottom of the ODR request issue. He was able to reproduce the error with my app and capture device logs to help the ODR engineers track down the issue. To be clear, the error that's being returned by a request for any ODR: "Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4994 "The requested application data doesn’t exist." UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x281b6a730 {Error Domain=_NSBundleResourceRequestErrorDomain Code=100 "No manfiest found for bundle ID com.xxxxxx" UserInfo={NSLocalizedFailureReason=No manfiest found for bundle ID com.xxxxxx}}}" (where "com.xxxxxx is the bundle ID of my app) (and note the typo "manfiest" 😐) Again, ODR works for me in TestFlight and every other configuration I'm able to try, only fails in App Review.

I received this message from Rich last Friday 5/29: "I finally managed to get the ODR engineer set up with the App Review Network administrator to provide the info needed to investigate this issue. It’s unfortunate that this is taking so long but is it. Now that the OR folks are discussing the issue with App Review, a solution should be on it’s way. However, I have no timetable to provide. I don’t have access to the bug report, but I would resubmit the app after each rejection so that the app is reviewed daily. I’m not in the bug report chain so I can’t tell you when the issue is resolved."

I resubmitted today and my app was again rejected after the reviewer saw the same error. My plan is now to resubmit my app everyday until the issue is resolved. I'll post here if I hear anything new.

This is the exact issue we have been facing in our team as well - with same error message.
Great that they are working on getting it fixed.
Please keep us updated if any news comes out of it.
Thanks!

Chiming in here. Started getting this problem today (06/05/20) upon testing a minor update to an app - no changes to IAP or ODR methods.


Just checked and the current version live on the App Store still works fine. All signs point to this being a TestFlight server-side issue...