Question I think i don't understand how CheckForCatalogUpdates work

Hi,

I need some help with Addressables...
I'm trying to make a small Update System for future project, and i'm stuck with CheckForCatalogUpdates...
Disable Catalog Update is checked in Addressable Asset Settings
But CheckForCatalogUpdates continue to return a list with a length of 0 even if there is changes

With some testing, it appears that, if i upload an update on my CDN, Unity is able to instantiate the news Assets from the remote, but CheckForCatalogUpdates continue to return a length of 0

Here is my testing code :

Code (CSharp):

1. public class Spawner : MonoBehaviour
2. {
3.     public AssetReference localGeometry;
4.     private List<IResourceLocation> remoteGeometry;
5.     public AssetLabelReference geometry;
6.  
7.     private void Start()
8.     {
9.         DisplayGeometry();
10.  
11.         Addressables.InitializeAsync().Completed += objects =>
12.         {
13.             Addressables.CheckForCatalogUpdates().Completed += checkforupdates =>
14.             {
15.                 if (checkforupdates.Result.Count > 0)
16.                 {
17.                     Debug.LogError("Available Update");      
18.                     LocationLoaded(Addressables.LoadResourceLocationsAsync(geometry));
19.                 }
20.                 else
21.                 {
22.                     Debug.LogError("No Available Update");
23.                     LocationLoaded(Addressables.LoadResourceLocationsAsync(geometry));
24.                 }
25.  
26.             };
27.         };
28.  
29.     }
30.  
31.     private void DisplayGeometry()
32.     {
33.         localGeometry.InstantiateAsync(Vector3.zero, Quaternion.identity);
34.         Debug.Log(geometry.labelString);
35.     }
36.  
37.     private void LocationLoaded(AsyncOperationHandle<IList<IResourceLocation>> obj)
38.     {
39.         remoteGeometry = new List<IResourceLocation>(obj.Result);
40.  
41.         StartCoroutine(SpawnRemoteGeometry());
42.     }
43.  
44.     private IEnumerator SpawnRemoteGeometry()
45.     {
46.         yield return new WaitForSeconds(1f);
47.         float xOff = -4.0f;
48.  
49.         for (int i = 0; i < remoteGeometry.Count; i++)
50.         {
51.             Vector3 spawnPosition = new Vector3(xOff, 3, 0);
52.  
53.             Addressables.InstantiateAsync(remoteGeometry[i], spawnPosition, Quaternion.identity);
54.  
55.             xOff = xOff + 10;
56.             yield return new WaitForSeconds(1f);
57.         }
58.     }
59. }

When i do change on my remote assets, i can see the change in the scene (more or less object spawned in the scene according to the catalog on the CDN)

So my question is: why CheckForCatalogUpdates awlays return me nothing ? Did i miss a step ?
I'm stuck since 3days and it drives me crazy, any help would be appreciated

PS: Debug.LogError is used to see messages in console on my Developement Build.

Thanks.

 

You probably have check for catalog updates on startup checked in your addressable settings, so your extra check in code right after initialization is redundant and does nothing. The CheckForCatalogUpdates API is meant to be used during normal runtime to periodically check for updates so that the player doesn't need to restart the app.

 

I said "Disable Catalog Update is checked in Addressable Asset Settings", so i think this is not the issue i'm facing

 

Oh sorry, I missed that part.

 

Np ^^

 

Up :/

 

Anyone ? I'm still stuck :/

Edit : Status = Completed, IsDone = true while checking with breakpoint on the if/else statement, but Result.Count is still 0

 

Thanks for your reply, i'm using the version 1.8.4 of Addressables since the beginning of this project and Unity 2019.3.14f1 Personnal.

 

For me it returns 1 entry which is MainCatalog. It doesn't matter whether there is an update or not. Also when I use external server to download content update manually, it does not update content on the device, but it does in the editor. It would be great if you could share and example how to use it properly to make it work.

 

I'm facing a smiliar problem: I get an update when I upload a new version to my server. The problem is that this update is done automatically but I want to do it manually! I have also checked "Disable Update on Startup" but it isn't changing anything. Updates are still done automatically. I am using Unity 2019.3.13f1 and addressables 1.10.0

 

Yes, please do it!

 

The bug report is created
But I don't know how to check for content update while waiting for the bug to be fixed :/

 

I am having the same problem, this is how I get around it currently: https://forum.unity.com/threads/explicitly-load-cached-external-catalog.911120/#post-5974481

 

Thanks for doing it! I was hoping for someone else creating one I think we will wait with this feature until it has been fixed. I don't want to spend time on a workaround when they will do it as well. I did this once before and 2 weeks later there was an update where they fixed it and all my work was overdue. So we will just hope they might fix it soon.

 

Some updates on this one? I try to check if there are some updates on the catalog but there are always 0 elements in the list. Version I am using: 1.16.13 and Unity 2019.4.11f1

 

I have found the reason why I didn't get the updates: you have to initialize the addressables system first with

Code (CSharp):

1. Addressables.InitializeAsync();

and then you can use the other methods. I didn't initialize it manually because the documentation stated it would initialize automatically with first API call so I didn't bother.

 

Thanks a lot, consider yourself kissed, COVID or not.

@TreyK-47 @davidla_unity Is this a bug, and if so it is known? If it isn't, please, you should update the documentation, because it says that Addressables.InitializeAsync is not needed to be called manually, and I can't find anything saying that it must be called before calling CheckForCatalogUpdates, I've been going completely crazy trying to make it work.

 

I don't think I quite follow, I feel like you are discussing multiple cases of whether the Disable Catalog Update on Startup are checked or not, and your code only works for one of those assumptions.

What I am seeing is, when I use that code, with the Disable Catalog Update on Startup checked in the editor, CheckForCatalogUpdates does nothing because AddressablesImpl.ResourceLocatorInfo.LocalHash is null, so CanUpdateContent is false

 

OK, yes if the client isn't connected to the Internet, or in my case, if you don't have the URL for the CDN for
InternalIdTransformFunc until after Addressables initializes (due to usage of local bundles in the application), I don't see how to reinitialize Addressables properly once the client can connect to the catalog URL. It seems that once you initialize in these cases where local hash will be null, then CheckForClientUpdates always fails/skips the catalogs due to the localHash always being null. How do we reinitialize things properly so that localHash is not null?

 

I don't see an option to not use auto release handle with InitializeAsync, so don't you have to use Completed in the case of async/await with InitializeAsync? Then we can't use your workaround of using a coroutine yield, and we can't await the task returned because it is released?

 

Check out this post I made a while ago that will allow you to await and still access the value before it's released (it's an extension that wraps Completed for the await keyword).

https://forum.unity.com/threads/await-without-task.951329/

 

I am sorry but this system is unnecessarily complicated,
Nothing works not even the code posted above, trying to yield return the Addressables.InitializeAsync(); throws an exception because the operation is invalid.

so I changed everything to use the onComplete events, now it works but no changes are being detected still

What am I missing, I have been at this for a week now and this is getting ridiculous.

 

=(

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.addressables@1.18/manual/InitializeAsync.html

The last step says a catalog update check is performed

 

What could be the cause of both updates failing?
The automatic update on init doesn't work, and UpdateCatalog fails with a no update required exception
Reinstalling the app updates the catalog.

How do I even begin troubleshooting this?

 

cc @davidla_unity

I can confirm that

CheckForCatalogUpdates()

returns an empty list 100% of the time (whether there really is an update or not) UNLESS I await

Addressables.InitializeAsync()

before calling

CheckForCatalogUpdates()

. If I do call

InitializeAsync()

prior to

CheckForCatalogUpdates()

, the latter function works exactly as I expect.


Just to be extremely clear (note I'm using UniTask async extensions for readability, but that shouldn't matter):

This does work:

Code (CSharp):

1. await Addressables.InitializeAsync();
2. // next line returns a non-empty list if updates are available, otherwise an empty list
3. await Addressables.CheckForCatalogUpdates();

This case doesn't work:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. // note: InitializeAsync is NOT explicitly called
3. // next line ALWAYS returns an empty list, regardless of remote content being updated or not
4. await Addressables.CheckForCatalogUpdates();

This behavior is unexpected and confusing, because the docs indicate clearly that Addressables will lazily initialize itself if not explicitly initialized. Per the docs:

You can manually initialize Addressables, though it is not required, by calling Addressables.InitializeAsync(). This returns an AsyncOperationHandle. Do not release this handle while using Addressables.
If Addressables is not manually initialized, by default Addressables checks that initialization has occurred. If the initial call, such as a LoadAsset request, detects that initialization has not occured then an InitilizationOperation is kicked off automatically. The LoadAsset operation is chained behind the initialization operation and executes automatically afterwards.​

Can you please confirm if this is indeed intended behavior (in which I would suggest the documentation be updated to clarify this) or if this is a bug?

Other details about my setup if it's useful:

Unity 2020.3.13f1 LTS
Addressables 1.16.19 ("Verified")
Addressables top level settings:

• Disable Catalog Update on Startup: TRUE
• Build Remote Catalog: TRUE

 

Thanks very much! That's wonderful news. I will say the experience of learning addressables has been quite rough, but now that I understand it (at least well enough to implement it in my project), I'm generally quite happy with it. I think improving the documentation (and giving some updated talks!) will go a long way.

 

Hey guys, I've been trying to follow along but unable to so far, I feel like what I'm trying to do is REALLY simple.

If I've never used the app before (cache is empty). Addressables works like a charm, everything loads as is. After that point, it NEVER updates addressable content as long as the cache isn't empty. I'm using google cloud services as my remote, but that shouldn't matter.

I just simply want to; Check if the content on the remote is different to the content in then cache. If it is, download the content on the remote.

It's kind of annoying that "DownloadDependenciesAsync" Doesn't actually download anything if it detects something in the cache, even if it's out of the date. The developer provided some code specific to the original question, but yea, how would someone simply just, download updated content. Isn't this kind of a core part of this system? why does it seems so difficult.

 

It just doesn't work and trying to get an answer here has been really difficult

 

Well that's a shame. Literally just spent the last 2 weeks converting asset bundles to addressables for my company and this is a main feature of what we have to do. and the docs make it seem simple.
Going to do test myself because it seems impossible for this to not work. But still, a shame if so.

 

Hi @andymilsom What's the progress now?

 

I do not believe it's fixed and also believe the issue is deeper than a flag not being read correctly.
On v1.18.11 when you disable the catalog update on start in settings and run

Code (CSharp):

1. IEnumerator UpdateCatalogs()
2. {
3.     List<string> catalogsToUpdate = new List<string>();
4.     AsyncOperationHandle<List<string>> checkForUpdateHandle = Addressables.CheckForCatalogUpdates();
5.     checkForUpdateHandle.Completed += op =>
6.     {
7.         catalogsToUpdate.AddRange(op.Result);
8.     };
9.     yield return checkForUpdateHandle;
10.     if (catalogsToUpdate.Count > 0)
11.     {
12.         AsyncOperationHandle<List<IResourceLocator>> updateHandle = Addressables.UpdateCatalogs(catalogsToUpdate);
13.         yield return updateHandle;
14.     }
15. }

(which is a copy-paste from the docs)
it always returns 0.

Which is the bug being mentioned, and your reasoning was because the auto catalog update runs on start regardless of the flag position, BUT I am loading an extra content catalog at runtime and once the
LoadContentCatalogAsync function is completed there is a hash and json file in my com.addressables folder and if I then delete or edit the hash file to be different from the server and run
CheckForCatalogUpdates it will still return 0.

(did these test with and without InitializeAsync running before hand)

 

Yes I have it set to auto-release the handle

this is the code I am using to load the catalogs at runtime.

Code (CSharp):

1.         public static async Task LoadAsync(string url, string suffix = null)
2.         {
3.             if (LoadedCatalogs.Contains(url))
4.                 return;
5.  
6.             LoadedCatalogs.Add(url);
7.             await Addressables.LoadContentCatalogAsync(url, true, suffix).Task;
8.         }
9.  
10.  
11.         public static IEnumerator Load(string url, string suffix = null)
12.         {
13.             if (LoadedCatalogs.Contains(url))
14.                 yield break;
15.  
16.             LoadedCatalogs.Add(url);
17.             var handle = Addressables.LoadContentCatalogAsync(url, true, suffix);
18.             yield return handle;
19.         }

after using that to load the catalog, then manually changing the hash file on my local computer or deleting it and running CheckForCatalogUpdates it will return 0.

 

Will check here in a bit, but from a different post on the forums, it seems to work differently on different unity versions. The post said it works as expected on 2021+, I use 2020 lts.

Also really appreciate the time.

 

I had quite a similar issue as you guys and I feel like I should post my findings here. For me the addressable system was downloading the first iteration of the build but no matter what the settings were, it would not update with further builds.

I tried using manual checks, and cache the catalogs manually but it would still not work as expected.

The issue was NOT with the addressable system was with our settings on AWS S3 bucket. My team and I were using AWS cloudfront on top of S3 and it seems that it has some sort of caching in place. (I'm not a technical dev regarding AWS so I can't go into detail).

After we removed the default caching settings that amazon cloudfront comes with, the addressable system works like a charm. Either with automatic catalog updates or with manual catalog updates. Also the method "CheckForCatalogUpdates" works as expected.

 

Steps that solved it for me:

• Change Bundle Naming Mode for each group to "

  Append Hash to Filename

  "
• Initialize Addressable before "

  CheckForCatalogUpdates

  " :

Code (CSharp):

1. await Addressables.InitializeAsync();
2. await Addressables.CheckForCatalogUpdates();

• Check the "

  Unique Bundle IDs

  " in Addresssables Settings
• Compile the Addressables
• Compile the Player