Develop Reference

How do I save app logs locally on Android?

I want to save the logs generated by my application locally on the android device and view them in an instance of a crash.
Using the "Take Bug Report" under the developer options gives the entire system logs which are irrelevant to me. I am looking only for those logs created by my application when it runs.
Is there any application that does this? Or are there any libraries I could include in my application code to satisfy my requirement?

You may just add firebase to your project, and everything will be done automatically.
Or if need it to be "locally", can use the Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler to save crash log. Register it when your application onCreate.
private static UncaughtExceptionHandler mDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler;
public static void registerUncaughtExceptionHandler() {
mDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler = Thread.getDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler();
Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler(new UncaughtExceptionHandler() {
public void uncaughtException(Thread thread, Throwable ex) {
// Save Log
saveLog(ex);
// Throw system
mDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler.uncaughtException(thread, ex);
}
});
}
private static void saveLog(Throwable exception) {
try {
String stackTrace = Log.getStackTraceString(exception);
// Save it to SharedPreferences or DB as you like
} catch (Exception e) {
}
}
Then can extract the last crash log, submit to your server or display in logcat when app starts.

It is much better to use Third Party libraries such as Firebase Crashlytics or Sentry Crash Report or AppMetrica for crash reports.
just add these libraries and make an account on one of these sites, then you can have a full report of crashes if happen.
but if you want to save the logs on the device, you can refer to this question :
Saving Logcat to a text file in Android Device

You can try this
fun writeLog(context: Context) {
try {
val path = File(context.filesDir, "log_files")
if (!path.exists()) {
path.mkdir()
}
val fileName = "your_filename.txt"
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("logcat -v time -f $fileName")
} catch (e: IOException) {
}
}
Or you can change logcat command based on your requirements: refer to this https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/logcat
You can check it at data/data/{applicationId}/files/log_files/

Auto download offline speech recognition language on Android

Is there any way in Java to detect if an Android device has an offline speech recognition language installed, and if it does not prompt the user to download it?
I know you can ask to speech to text to prefer offline speech to text, but how do you know if the device has the language installed?
This question is not on how to use offline speech, this works.
The question is "how to detect and download/install offline speech languages" from Java app code. i.e. have the app detect if they have offline German language installed, and if not prompt the user to download/install it.

This is not the answer you are hoping for, as at the time of writing, I don't believe there is a straight forward solution to this. I very much hope to be proved wrong.
I requested an enhancement to provide this information programmatically a long time ago - here
The enhancement suggested an additional parameter RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_SUPPORTED_OFFLINE_LANGUAGES:
It would surely be trivial for this to be added and used in the following way:
final Intent vrIntent = new Intent(RecognizerIntent.ACTION_GET_LANGUAGE_DETAILS);
getContext().sendOrderedBroadcast(vrIntent, null, new BroadcastReceiver() {
#Override
public void onReceive(final Context context, final Intent intent) {
final ArrayList<String> vrStringLocales = intent.getExtras().getStringArrayList(
RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES);
// This would be nice
final ArrayList<String> vrStringOfflineLocales = intent.getExtras().getStringArrayList(
RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_SUPPORTED_OFFLINE_LANGUAGES);
}
}, null, 1234, null, null);
Alas, it has never happened.
You do have two other options to attempt to handle this gracefully.
In the unlikely event you application runs with root permissions, you can check the location of /data/data/com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox/app_g3_models/ which contains the offline files, labelled quite handily by their locale.
The second involves knowing when the user needs a prompt to install the missing offline files.
From my experience, the recognition error of SpeechRecognizer.ERROR_SERVER most often denotes this, but it is not foolproof.
#Override
public void onError(final int error) {
switch (error) {
case SpeechRecognizer.ERROR_SERVER:
// TODO - prompt to install offline files
break;
}
}
When detected, you can guide the user to the correct installation screen.
public static final String PACKAGE_NAME_GOOGLE_NOW = "com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox";
public static final String ACTIVITY_INSTALL_OFFLINE_FILES = "com.google.android.voicesearch.greco3.languagepack.InstallActivity";
public static boolean showInstallOfflineVoiceFiles(#NonNull final Context ctx) {
final Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setComponent(new ComponentName(PACKAGE_NAME_GOOGLE_NOW, ACTIVITY_INSTALL_OFFLINE_FILES));
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);
try {
ctx.startActivity(intent);
return true;
} catch (final ActivityNotFoundException e) {
} catch (final Exception e) {
}
return false;
}
Using hard-coded values such as this, is of course not ideal, but neither is this situation!
Once you've messed around with all of the above and think you have a good interim solution - think again! Regardless of whether the user has correctly installed the missing offline files, it is highly likely it still won't work.....
My answer here describes the process I still have to guide my user's with. It's very frustrating.
Finally one more bug to throw into the mix - RecognitionListener.onError(int) can be thrown when there isn't an error. Check my gist from the answer here to use a BugRecognitionListener so you can check the callbacks are being sent in the correct order and ignore those that aren't. This remains a problem, despite my answer suggesting a fix in a previous release.
The above should keep you busy! Good luck....

To detect whether needed Language(German) is available, please follow below :
Iterate the Locale list and check whether Locale available for German language.
If you didn't get any Locale object in return, you can conclude that German language is not available offline. Then you can write code to download and do other stuff.
I did below implementation for my project. Hope below code helps you !!!
private TextToSpeech t1;
private void setForOtherLangAudio() {
Locale[] locales = Locale.getAvailableLocales();
Locale loc = null;
for (Locale locale : locales) {
// Replace XXX with your German codes
if (locale.getDisplayCountry().equals("XXX") && locale.getDisplayLanguage().equals("XXX")) {
loc = locale ;
break;
}
}
final Locale germanLocale = loc;
t1 = new TextToSpeech(getContext(), new TextToSpeech.OnInitListener() {
#Override
public void onInit(int status) {
if (status != TextToSpeech.ERROR) {
t1.setLanguage(germanLocale);
}
}
});
}

Phonegap plugin for android is not working. Why?

I cannot make an Android phonegap plugin work. Not even a single one of the examples I found nor my pathetic failures trying to create one by myself. I first tried with Tutorials like this one. They don't work for me. I always end up with a Cannot call method of undefined error.
So I tried something ready. Got this project from github. It's just a simple plugin to show a toast. I checked everything that i learned on the tutorials:
//the package name in the java
package com.phonegap.toast;
//my class extends Plugin and has a simple show toast method.
public class Tutorial extends Plugin {
#Override
public PluginResult execute(String cmd, JSONArray args, String callback) {
if(cmd.equals("toast"))
{
return showToast(args);
}
return null;
}
private PluginResult showToast(JSONArray args) {
final String message;
try {
message = args.getString(0);
ctx.runOnUiThread(new Runnable()
{
public void run() {
Toast myToast = Toast.makeText(ctx, message, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
myToast.show();
}
});
return new PluginResult(PluginResult.Status.OK);
} catch (JSONException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
return new PluginResult(PluginResult.Status.JSON_EXCEPTION);
}
}
}
the plugin is defined in res/xml/plugins.xml
plugin name="Tutorial" value="com.phonegap.toast.Tutorial"
and no, if i put it on rex/xml/config.xml it also doesn't work
Last, the method that calls the plugin:
function createToast() {
// i also tried window.Tutorial.showToast('Hello AndroidOpen'); with no success
window.plugins.Tutorial.showToast('Hello AndroidOpen');
}
And here I get the same error again.
10-22 15:39:07.770: E/Web Console(2885): Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'showToast' of undefined at file:///android_asset/www/main.js:123
Any enlightened soul can explain to me what I'm doing wrong? I've been trying this for days, with many different plugins, both my own and even this ones and I can't find out what is it.

Okay, here are a few things that are probably tripping you up. First if the config.xml file exists in res/xml then it will take precedence over plugins.xml. So you will need to add your plugin line to config.xml instead.
Make sure you are including the .js file for your Toast plugin.
Third, window.plugins has been deprecated away so you may need to modify the .js if you are using PhoneGap 2.0.0 or better. Check out my blog post on the topic. The root change is that you now need to new PluginName in your JS as it is no longer put in window.plugins by default.

Google tasks API. What parameters to use in TasksRequest.setFields(String fields) method?

I'm building a Android app that sync tasks to google tasks. And i used the Google Tasks APIs. My question is what parameters can I use in TasksRequest.setFields(String fields)? I see the sample code uses "items/title". What if i want to get other fields or what if i want to get multiple fields at the same time?

The format of this string is described here: https://developers.google.com/discovery/v1/performance#partial-response
And the APIs Explorer can help you build the string as well using a UI: https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer

You must be referring to this snippet of code from the Google Tasks API sample for Android:
#Override
protected List<String> doInBackground(Void... arg0) {
try {
List<String> result = new ArrayList<String>();
com.google.api.services.tasks.Tasks.TasksOperations.List listRequest = service.tasks().list("#default");
listRequest.setFields("items/title,items/notes,items/completed");
//listRequest.setFields("items/title");
List<Task> tasks = listRequest.execute().getItems();
if (tasks != null) {
for (Task task : tasks) {
result.add(task.getTitle());
}
} else {
result.add("No tasks.");
}
return result;
} catch (IOException e) {
tasksSample.handleGoogleException(e);
return Collections.singletonList(e.getMessage());
} finally {
tasksSample.onRequestCompleted();
}
}
The documentation is very unclear about this, but this link gave me a clue.
Notice that I use
"items/title,items/notes,items/completed"
If you get the strings wrong, you will get
invalidParameter and Invalid field selection note

How to make an Android app that depends on another app?

If I create an app that depends on another app or apps (eg: the Facebook and Twitter apps), yet they are not installed, is there a method of checking for those dependencies and installing them at the same time as my own app?

I did this in my application which requires the zxing scanner app to be installed.
You will want this inside your onclick or ontouch:
try{
Intent intent = new Intent("com.google.zxing.client.android.SCAN");
intent.setPackage("com.google.zxing.client.android");
startActivityForResult(intent, 0);
} catch (Exception e) {
createAlert("Barcode Scanner not installed!", "This application uses " +
"the open source barcode scanner by ZXing Team, you need to install " +
"this before you can use this software!", true);
}
which calls
public void createAlert(String title, String message, Boolean button) {
// http://androidideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-add-messagebox-in-android.html
AlertDialog alertDialog;
alertDialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(this).create();
alertDialog.setTitle(title);
alertDialog.setMessage(message);
if ((button == true)) {
alertDialog.setButton("Download Now",
new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
public void onClick(DialogInterface arg0, int arg1) {
Intent browserIntent = new Intent(
Intent.ACTION_VIEW,
Uri.parse("market://search?q=pname:com.google.zxing.client.android"));
startActivity(browserIntent);
}
});
}
alertDialog.show();
}
Then after sorting out all that code out I realise you asked for it to be installed at the same time as your app. Not sure if i should post this code, but it may be helpful

Short answer: No, you cannot automatically install other applications as dependencies.
Longer answer:
Android Market does not let you declare other applications to install as a dependency. As a system, Market appears to be designed for single application installs -- not Linux distro style mega dependency graphs.
At runtime, you can test for installed apps and punt your user over to the Market if so. See the techniques suggested by #QuickNick (testing if an app is installed) and #TerryProbert (punting to market) if that's what you want.
Your best bet is probably to design your app to gracefully degrade if dependencies are not available, and suggest (or insist) that they head over to market to install them.

Start from this:
Intent mediaIntent = new Intent("com.example.intent.action.NAME");
// add needed categories
List<ResolveInfo> listResolveInfo = getPackageManager().queryIntentServices(mediaIntent, 0);
if (listResolveInfo.size() != 0) {
//normal behavior
} else {
//install what you need
}
I give you example of querying services. If you want to check activities, then you will call queryIntentActivities().

I think following the pattern outlined in this post on the Android Developer Blog will help you.
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-i-use-this-intent.html
As TerryProbert points out if you know that the Intent is not available prompt the user to install the missing app.

Here's what I use to return the first mission activity that exists:
try {
Class<?> missionClass = Class.forName(mPackageName+".Mission"+mission);
Method missionDescription;
missionDescription = missionClass.getMethod("missionDescription");
mMissionDescription = (String) missionDescription.invoke(null);
if (mMissionDescription.length() > 0) {
nextMission = mission;
break;
}
} catch (Exception e) {
//DEBUG*/Log.v(this.getClass().getName(), "onResume: Mission no "+mission+" not found: "+e.getMessage());
}
Each mission is held in a separate class, derived from a Mission base class. Derived classes are called Mission1, Mission24 etc.
Not all missions are defined.
The base class has an abstract class missionDescription which returns a string describing the mission.
This code is inside a loop so tests mission=1 to 99, trying to call missionDescription. It returns when the Description for the first mission found is returned.