Nativescript View.animate( ) not working

Question

I'm following this tutorial from nativescript.org for nativescript with angular2.

Where, on tap of a button, I am trying to animate the background of a StackLayout.

  <StackLayout #container>
    <Button [text]="'Some text'" (tap)="toggleDisplay();"></Button>
  </StackLayout>  

I'm getting the reference to the StackLayout using @ViewChild decorator.

@ViewChild("container") container: ElementRef;

The toggleDisplay() function looks like this

  toggleDisplay() {
    this.isLoggingIn = !this.isLoggingIn;
    let container = <View>this.container.nativeElement;
    container.animate({
      backgroundColor: new Color("#301217"),
      duration: 200
    });
  }

On click on the button I'm getting runtime exception

An uncaught Exception occurred on "main" thread.
com.tns.NativeScriptException: 
Calling js method onClick failed
[object Object]
File: "/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/@angular/core/bundles/core.umd.js, line: 9427, column: 20
StackTrace: 
    Frame: function:'DebugAppView._rethrowWithContext', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/@angular/core/bundles/core.umd.js', line: 9427, column: 21
    Frame: function:'', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/@angular/core/bundles/core.umd.js', line: 9440, column: 27
    Frame: function:'', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/nativescript-angular/renderer.js', line: 221, column: 26
    Frame: function:'ZoneDelegate.invoke', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/nativescript-angular/zone.js/dist/zone-nativescript.js', line: 190, column: 28
    Frame: function:'onInvoke', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/@angular/core/bundles/core.umd.js', line: 6206, column: 41
    Frame: function:'ZoneDelegate.invoke', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/nativescript-angular/zone.js/dist/zone-nativescript.js', line: 189, column: 34
    Frame: function:'Zone.run', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/nativescript-angular/zone.js/dist/zone-nativescript.js', line: 83, column: 43
    Frame: function:'NgZone.run', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/@angular/core/bundles/core.umd.js', line: 6096, column: 66
    Frame: function:'zonedCallback', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/nativescript-angular/renderer.js', line: 220, column: 24
    Frame: function:'Observable.notify', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/data/observable/observable.js', line: 149, column: 23
    Frame: function:'Observable._emit', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/data/observable/observable.js', line: 168, column: 18
    Frame: function:'onClick', file:'/data/data/org.nativescript.groceries/files/app/tns_modules/ui/button/button.js', line: 33, column: 32

at com.tns.Runtime.callJSMethodNative(Native Method)
at com.tns.Runtime.dispatchCallJSMethodNative(Runtime.java:1022)
at com.tns.Runtime.callJSMethodImpl(Runtime.java:907)
at com.tns.Runtime.callJSMethod(Runtime.java:895)
at com.tns.Runtime.callJSMethod(Runtime.java:879)
at com.tns.Runtime.callJSMethod(Runtime.java:871)
at com.tns.gen.android.view.View_OnClickListener.onClick(android.view.View$OnClickListener.java)
at android.view.View.performClick(View.java:5198)
at android.view.View$PerformClick.run(View.java:21147)
at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:739)
at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:95)
at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:148)
at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5417)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:726)
at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:616)

I found here that

Animating view properties requires the "ui/animation" module.

import animation = require("ui/animation");

So in my angular2 app I did

import * as animation from "ui/animation";

But still getting the same error.

Also here I found out there are some issues with android animations for nativescript. But that doesn't throw any exceptions.

Any help?

Answer 1

I tested your case using the attached code snippets, however was unable to reproduce this behavior. You could try to delete node_modules, platform and hooks folders and to delete the app from the Emulator or device and to rebuild the project. I am also attaching the code, which I used.

app.component.html

 <StackLayout #container>
    <Button [text]="'Some text'" (tap)="toggleDisplay();"></Button>
  </StackLayout>  

app.component.ts

import { Component, ViewChild, ElementRef } from "@angular/core";
import {View} from "ui/core/view"
import {Color} from "color"

@Component({
    selector: "my-app",
    templateUrl: "app.component.html",
})
export class AppComponent {
    @ViewChild("container") container: ElementRef;
    toggleDisplay() {
    let container = <View>this.container.nativeElement;
    container.animate({
      backgroundColor: new Color("#301217"),
      duration: 200
    });
  }
}

If this does not help, please provide some more info about your environment:(CLI, tns-core-modules, nativescript-angular, etc... versions), which will help to investigate further the problem.