iCloud Sync Error

[Mike Schwartz]

Brendan,

After enabling iCloud sync on both my laptop and phone, I see the following error message on my phone: Synchronization has failed. Error sending to iCloud. Encountered an error fetching records. OK [button].

DETAILS: I first enabled iCloud sync on the laptop, and waited a fair amount of time to ensure that the initial upload had completed. I checked on this by opening System Preferences/iCloud, then clicking the Manage… button next to the storage bar chart. I can see Tap Forms listed there, with a reasonable (or is it?) size for my database document. After seeing a stable file size in iCloud, I then enabled iCloud sync on my iPhone.

Question: The file size for my Mac DB document.tapforms is 238.9 MB, and the size of my most recent backup.zip file is 225.4 MB. System Preferences reports that Tap Forms is using 199.9 MB in iCloud. So is that discrepancy reasonable, or does it indicate a damaged or incomplete version in iCloud?

Functionally, iCloud sync appears to be sort-of working. I added a record to one of my forms on the Mac version after enabling iCloud sync, and the new record appeared on the phone. But then I changed a field value on the phone, and I have not seen the change propagated to my laptop.

How can I troubleshoot this?

Thanks,
Mike

[Brendan]

Hi Mike,

I’m not sure whether or not Apple compresses data stored in iCloud. That could be a reason why the sizes don’t exactly match up.

But also, Tap Forms doesn’t store everything in iCloud. There are multiple revisions of your records, forms, layouts, fields, etc. stored locally which are not sent to iCloud. Only the current revision is sent to iCloud.

Try making a second change to see if that makes it through. I’ve seen sometimes where one change doesn’t make it, but then a second change causes them both to propagate. I’m not sure if that’s just me being impatient or a bug.

[Brendan]

Oh, one other thing that can increase the size of the local database that’s not reflected in iCloud is the SQLite Write Ahead Log file (db.sqlite-wal). That file contains the most recent transactions written to the database. It can get just as large as the database file itself sometimes.

[Mike Schwartz]

Okay, it sounds like you’re not too surprised or concerned about the file size in iCloud being smaller than the local copy. Good.

I tried to make the second update on the iPhone as you suggested, to see if it would “unclog” the pipe. But now I get a variation on the original error message. The first time, the message said: “Synchronization has failed. Error sending to iCloud. Encountered an error fetching records.” This time, it says: “Synchronization has failed. Error sending to iCloud. Couldn’t communicate with a helper application.”

But after dismissing the error message, record update did propagate through to my laptop. And further playing around shows pretty quick and reliable sync in both directions, despite repeated error messages of both varieties (error fetching, couldn’t communicate w/ helper app). If I keep the iPhone app open, the error messages just continue to pop up periodically, even if I’m not doing anything on either the phone or the laptop.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Mike

[Brendan]

Hi Mike,

That’s weird. I haven’t seen that helper app error before. Is that on iOS or Mac you see that helper app error?

Try rebooting all your devices to see if that helps.

Those specific error messages you’re seeing don’t actually come from Tap Forms. That is, I don’t have those messages in my app. The errors are being generated by Apple’s CloudKit framework in response to Tap Forms requesting a batch of records from iCloud.

[Mike Schwartz]

The helper app error messages were on the iOS/iPhone side. I restarted the iPhone and haven’t seen any more error messages while continuing to test iCloud sync. It’s looking good; thanks for the advice!

— Mike

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