Develop Reference

Mapbox Methods Not Recognized by Android Studio

Getting a bit lost here: I need to update Mapbox's API from 4.x.x-beta to 5.x.x and a number of things, such as xml attributes' names, way of getting access token and location services has been changed. I dealt with the first two thanks to the documentation but cannot seem to make LocationServices methods work. Android Studio tells me that it cannot resolve methods such as getLocationServices() or getLastLocation(). Here's what my code looks like, that's what used to work with Mapbox 4.x:
package com.example.myapp.interactor;
import android.location.Location;
import com.mapbox.mapboxsdk.location.LocationServices;
import com.example.myapp.MyApp;
public class GpsInteractor {
private LocationServices locationServices;
public GpsInteractor() {
locationServices = LocationServices.getLocationServices(MyApp.applicationContext());
}
public Location lastKnownLocation() {
return locationServices.getLastLocation();
}
}
So, as per documentation here ("Getting Location Updates" section), I should copy LostLocationEngine class to my project. When I did so, it cannot access some of the fields from LocationRequest.java LOST API class, namely interval, fastestInterval and smallestDisplacement.
I found this question with really similar problem and tried to compile several combinations of Mapbox APIs, but no luck.
Am I missing something?

If you haven't modified the maps locationSource yet,
LocationEngine locationEngine = LocationSource.getLocationEngine(this) will return the default LOST location engine being used. Starting in 5.0.0 LocationEngine replaces the LocationServices class. For example, to get the last known user location, you can do this:
LocationEngine locationEngine = LocationSource.getLocationEngine(this)
locationEngine.getLastLocation();
You can read more on the LocationEngine in the new documentation here.

Xamarin Forms In app billing for Android

I'm making an app where I have to have in app purchases (buying keys that I can further use in the app).
I have looked at this component http://components.xamarin.com/view/xamarin.inappbilling, but I have no idea how I can implement this in xamarin forms. Is there anyone out there willing to help me with this problem? Is there any open source projects with in app purchase that I can look at?

I know its late, but this might help someone:
The way to do achieve this is to create a service and then surface it to a standard interface (as per your requirement) that will be consumed within the forms project.
You can even use MessagingCenter to communicate between Android and Xamarin.Forms project.
FormsPrject:
MessagingCenter.Send<MainPage, string>(this, "BuyProduct", "buyButtonPressed");
AndroidPoject
MessagingCenter.Subscribe<MainPage, string>(this, "BuyProduct", (sender, arg) =>
{
//logic to buy product
}
Hope that helps!!

The question is very vague so I will offer a general answer and some notes that I found important. I am using Visual Studio 2015 with Xamarin Forms 2.3.0.107.
I would use abstraction for this instead of sending messages directly between the projects.
The basic idea is, you will create a public interface in your Xamarin Forms project. Since your Andriod project has a reference to the Xamarin Forms project, it can use this public interface. Then you will implement this interface in your Android project will all of the billing logic. In the Xamarin Forms project. Using the Dependency service we can get the existing instance of the implementation into the Xamarin Forms project. Then, you can code against the interface. This is especially useful if you ever want to do an iPhone or other implementation, because you would never need to make changes to the Xamarin Forms code; you can just plug in new implementations.
It might be a bit out of scope but, be sure to meet all of the Google requirements as far as setting up your developer account and your merchant account and your API account. It is all very confusing and messy.
The Xamarin component in nuget is currently version 1.5. However, the component has a newer published version. You want to use the newer (2.0 or higher) version.
Use the Android SDK manager to install the Google Play Billing Library.
In your Android project, add a reference to Xamarin.InAppBilling and add a Xamarin.InAppBilling component.
The Google object has to live in an Android activity, because you depend on overriding an activity method to complete purchases (I used the MainActivity here and made the google object a static for easy access)
Testing this with Google Play is a hassle. The documentation is confusing because of differences between versions. You cannot use actual product id's until you publish your app. They provide test id's that can be used during testing but they only offer some functionality.
I have made these code examples as minimal as possible to illustrate the concept. You will obviously want to do much more.
Xamarin Forms project
Create an interface:
public interface IInAppBilling
{
void Pay(string productId);
}
Any time you want to use the billing service, you use IInAppBilling billingService = DependencyService.Get<IInAppBilling>(); to get a reference to the device-specific (Android) implementation.
//call this from a button click or whatever
void BuySomething(string somethingId)
{
//Get any IInAppBilling object that is registered with the DependencyService.
IInAppBilling billingService = DependencyService.Get<IInAppBilling>();
billingService.Pay(somethingId);
}
Android Project
Override an activity's OnCreate method and create an InAppBillingServiceConnection:
public class MainActivity : global::Xamarin.Forms.Platform.Android.FormsApplicationActivity
{
public static InAppBillingServiceConnection google;
protected override void OnCreate(Bundle bundle)
{
base.OnCreate(bundle);
google = new InAppBillingServiceConnection(this, "MII...ApplicationKey");
global::Xamarin.Forms.Forms.Init(this, bundle);
LoadApplication(new App());
}
}
Create a class that implements the Xamarin Forms interface we created earlier. It is important not to ignore the assembly: Dependencyannotation at the top. This is what makes the class available to the Dependency service in the Xamarin Forms object:
[assembly: Dependency(typeof(com.myapp.InAppBilling))]
namespace com.myapp
{
class InAppBilling :IInAppBilling
{
public void Pay(string productId)
{
MainActivity.google.BillingHandler.BuyProduct(productId, ItemType.Product, "MyUniquePayload");
}
}
}
Override the activity's OnActivityResult method to finalize purchases:
protected override void OnActivityResult(int requestCode, Result resultCode, Intent data)
{
base.OnActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
// Ask the open service connection's billing handler to process this request
try
{
google.BillingHandler.HandleActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
//log it or something?
}
}

unable to use google Oauth with Azure mobile services in android app

I am trying to add authentication for android app using azure mobile services and its authentication providers.I am using mobile services 1.1.5 jar and my android project targets API 19.
The method login(MobileServiceAuthenticationProvider, JsonObject,
UserAuthenticationCallback) is ambiguous for the type
MobileServiceClient
Here is my code
private void authenticate() { // Login using the Google provider.
ListenableFuture<MobileServiceUser> mLogin = mClient.login(null, null, null);
Futures.addCallback(mLogin, new FutureCallback<MobileServiceUser>() {
#Override
public void onFailure(Throwable exc) {
createAndShowDialog((Exception) exc, "Error");
}
#Override
public void onSuccess(MobileServiceUser user) {
createAndShowDialog(String.format(
"You are now logged in - %1$2s",
user.getUserId()), "Success");
createTable();
}
});
}

The ListenableFuture overloads are not available in SDK 1.1.5. You will need the version 2.0.1 beta SDK. An overview and a link to download this version are available on the Azure team blog.
In addition, the new overload for login() does not take three parameters. You will need to pass in a provider, which can be either a string or a MobileServiceAuthenticationProvider object. Optionally you can also pass a token, which is either a string or a JsonObject.
If your goal is to use Google authentication, I would expect you would call the following:
ListenableFuture<MobileServiceUser> mLogin = mClient.login("google");
If it's useful, the source for the beta SDK is available.
Alternatively, you can continue to use the 1.1.5 SDK, but you may need to provide a UserAuthenticationCallback object if you wish to take action on the result. This would be an additional optional parameter to login().

How to use the DriveApi.OnSyncFinishCallback (Android's Google Play Services)

The Android's developer documentation states that you can use a DriveApi.OnSyncFinishCallback to (presumably) handle when a synchronization between your local contet and your google drive account is completed. Normally such synchronization appens automatically, trasparently managed by Google Play Services, but apparently you can force a sync request with a call to:
Drive.DriveApi.requestSync(mGoogleApiClient);
I say "apparently" because the official documentation of this function is very poor, at least (https://developer.android.com/reference/com/google/android/gms/drive/DriveApi.html#requestSync(com.google.android.gms.common.api.GoogleApiClient))
Anyway, a OnSyncFinishCallback can be instantiated with this code:
OnSyncFinishCallback myCallback = new OnSyncFinishCallback(){
#Override
public void onSyncFinish(com.google.android.gms.common.api.Status arg0) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
};
My question is where and how can I register this callback so it will be called automatically when the sync is completed? The requestSync call returns a PendingResult that only have a setResultCallback(ResultCallback arg0) method, that can't be used for a OnSyncFinishCallback.

I must say that requestSync is working absolutely fine for me (January 2015, with Google Play Services 6.5.87). I do a backup of my database on one device and restore it on another device, but before the restore I call requestSync this way:
Drive.DriveApi.requestSync(mGoogleApiClient)
.setResultCallback(new ResultCallback<Status>() {
#Override
public void onResult(Status result) {
if (!result.isSuccess()) {
// Sync not ok
showMessage("Sync error");
return;
}
// Sync ok. I can safely do a query to get
// the database file and restore it.
...
By the way, I'm using the root folder, not the appfolder. The appfolder might have additional synchronization issues when installing/uninstalling the app from different devices, so for the moment I prefer to stick with root folder.

OnSyncFinishCallback is a red herring, it shouldn't be exposed.
Just add a callback handler to requestSync like any other GoogleApiClient method:
Drive.Drive.requestSync(mGoogleApiClient).setResultCallback(
new ResultCallback<Success>() {
//...
});

It turned out that OnSyncFinishCallback was removed from API and DriveAPI.requestSync() doesn't do what it's supposed to. Fortunately Google just introduced new Drive API for Android in version 6.1 of Google Play Services, in particular the Completion Events, that makes exactly what OnSyncFinishCallback was supposed to do. More official detail here https://developers.google.com/drive/android/completion

Android: Google Analytics availability in Google Play Services?

Google Analytics has been announced to become part of the rolling out Google Play Services 4.3, however it is not yet included in the Google Play Services packages list:
http://developer.android.com/reference/gms-packages.html
Any idea when it will become available, and will it be safe to be used straight away, or will it be better to wait for some time to make sure every user has Google Play Services 4.3 already installed?

I've noticed some other differences.
Tracker
To get a new Tracker, use the newTracker() method (accepts both a String value and an int value [for XML configuration]):
googleTracker = gaInstance.getTracker(GA_KEY); // OLD
googleTracker = gaInstance.newTracker(GA_KEY); // NEW
EasyTracker
EasyTracker has now disappeared, so we will have to use GoogleAnalytics.getInstance(this).reportActivityStart(this) as reported by Paito.
Setters
The googleTracker.set() method is no longer available. It has been replaced with more specialised methods, for example:
googleTracker.set(Fields.SCREEN_NAME, null); // OLD
googleTracker.setScreenName(null); // NEW
Event creation
The googleTracker.send() method has also seen some changes.
googleTracker.send(MapBuilder
.createEvent(category, action, label, value)
.build()); // OLD
googleTracker.send(new HitBuilders.EventBuilder()
.setCategory(category)
.setAction(action)
.setLabel(label)
.setValue(value)
.build()); // NEW
AppView
It now becomes
googleTracker.send(MapBuilder.createAppView().build()); // OLD
googleTracker.send(new HitBuilders.AppViewBuilder().build()); // NEW
AppViewBuilder
AppViewBuilder has now been deprecated, replaced by the new ScreenViewBuilder class. (thanks Hai Phong for the tip!)
For those who are running into (or have already dealt with) the Dalvik's 64K methods limit, there are now 3K methods that you will be able to get rid of in your application, thanks to this integration.

It's part of the package list now.
I think the basic functionality works something like this...
import com.google.android.gms.analytics.GoogleAnalytics;
#Override
protected void onStart() {
super.onStart();
GoogleAnalytics.getInstance(this).reportActivityStart(this);
}
#Override
protected void onStop() {
super.onStop();
GoogleAnalytics.getInstance(this).reportActivityStop(this);
}

As per conversation in order to use Easytracker replacement with
GoogleAnalytics.getInstance(this).reportActivityStart(this);
GoogleAnalytics.getInstance(this).reportActivityStop(this);
You need to add your config to AndroidManifest like
<meta-data android:name="com.google.android.gms.analytics.globalConfigResource" android:resource="#xml/analytics_global_config" />
I'm still having to get instance of Tracker to send Events, may be somebody else would have better luck at replacing
EasyTracker.getInstance(mContext).send(MapBuilder....)

The documentation for Google Analytics SDK v4 (now part of Google Play Services) has just been published!
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v4/