Installing Intercom for RN on managed workflow with SDK 42

I know there’s already an open feature request to have Expo officially support Intercom for RN.
I wanted to ask again now, if it is possible to install and use it on the managed workflow, using plugins and custom dev client? It seems to me like it is still impossible, since Intercom are asking on their tutorial to edit the iOS/AppDelegate.m and MainApplication.java files, but perhaps it is doable with plugins and mods and I am missing something out. Would really like to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks!

I am sure it’s possible with a config plugin. I’m not even 100% sure it needs a plugin.

What I would do is create a new Expo app to investigate this and then run:

yarn add @intercom/intercom-react-native

(Or npm install…)

Then run expo prebuild and compare the results with Intercom’s installation instructions. If there’s anything outstanding you will need a config plugin to take care of that. Note: EAS Build automatically runs a prebuild, so if you run prebuild yourself you can see that the necessary changes have been made before the app is built. But expo prebuild effectively ejects your app, so if you prebuild your real app you might want to revert those changes again afterwards.

EDIT: I think it might be only the MainApplication.java changes that will need a config plugin. There is a withMainActivity mod, so maybe something similar to that would work, but I’m not quite clear on how to do it.

Thanks for your response wodin!

I couldn’t find a mod to edit MainApplication.java file, only MainActivity.java.
Is it possible to create my own mod that will edit MainApplication.java ? Is it stable enough to count on it?

Thanks!

There is an open issue for this here- Expo config plug-in · Issue #448 · tinycreative/react-native-intercom · GitHub

Looks like the setup instructions also indicate that there are changes necessary in AppDelegate, Info.plist, MainApplication.java, and build.gradle, all of which are doable from config plugins, although we hope to make it even easier and more reliable to make changes to code file like appdelegate and mainapplication soon

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@charliecruzan any plans to support it in the near future (the request in the issue)?

Thanks!

You’d have to ask the folks at react-native-intercom, not me :sweat_smile:

Haha will do.
@charliecruzan, @wodin Any tips on how to approach editing the MainApplication.java and iOS/AppDelegate.m files? Should we use a specific mod?

there are some guides and examples in this doc page

I’m still figuring out config plugins, but maybe having a look at some existing plugins will help.

e.g. try searching the following repository for withAppDelegate.

As for MainApplication.java, there are examples on the page Charlie linked to involving MainApplication.java, but I don’t yet know enough about this stuff to know if those examples are sufficient to work out how to write your own plugin.

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