Child view controller <JWPlayerKit.JWplayerViewController> should have parent view controller <RNSScreen> but actual parent is <UIViewController>

Question

I'm attempting to implement JWPlayer SDK v4 into a React Native ios app using the library [email protected].

If the player screen is the initial screen shown on app load, the player embeds without any issues, however when navigating away from and back to the player screen (using react-navigation tabs), the following exception is thrown:

Exception thrown while executing UI block: child view controller:<JWPlayerKit.JWPlayerViewController: 0x7fd744bab800> should have parent view controller:<RNSScreen: 0x7fd6db935310> but actual parent is:<UIViewController: 0x7fd745a057a0>

I am new to mobile development (coming from React) and have spent countless hours trying to resolve this but am not getting anywhere so any help is massively appreciated!

Answer 1

While it's not exactly a fix, I managed to work around this issue by creating a hidden <JWPlayer> component and added it to App.js. Now any subsequent instances of <JWPlayer> work as expected.

Here's the hidden player component:

export default function HiddenPlayer() {
  const player = useRef(null);

  return (
    <View>
      <JWPlayer
        ref={player}
        style={styles.video}
        config={...config}
      />
    </View>
  );
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  video: {
    display: 'none',
  },
});