Develop Reference

How to take screenshots programmatically in Android?

I want to make an app that takes screenshots of the device every 10 seconds, even when app is running in the background.
I don't know how to do this.
Is there any way to do this with a device that's not rooted?

Here is how to capture the screen shot on Android.
Also an example of Handler and Timer
And a very similar post that asks for the same.

In order to capture ScreenShot of your activity you need a View from your activity, and which isn't present in your service so you have to make a TimerTask which will call your activity at every moment to get the current view of the activity and you can capture the ScreenShot from that.
otherwise If you want to take a ScreenShot of your current device screen or any other app then you have to root permission, and read framebuffer for that which will give raw data of current screen then convert it to bitmap or any picture file.
try {
Process sh = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("su", null,null);
OutputStream os = sh.getOutputStream();
os.write(("/system/bin/screencap -p " + "/sdcard/img.png").getBytes("ASCII"));
os.flush();
os.close();
sh.waitFor();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}

First take code to take screen shot programatically in android. It is available is stack overflow. Then use handler to call this method in every 10 seconds.

Android executing SU commands in background?

I'm writing an android app that sets the max frequency, governor etc.. when the screen turns off. To do it i have a service running that receives screen on/off broadcast intents. When the screen off event fires, I read from the shared preferences and set whatever is set by the user with this function
public static void writeFile(String file, String content) {
try {
Process suProcess = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("su");
DataOutputStream out = new DataOutputStream(suProcess.getOutputStream());
out.writeBytes("echo '" + content + "' > '" + file + "'");
out.flush();
out.close();
}
catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
Then when the screen turns back on, i revert the system to its previous state by rewriting the files. Everything is working nicely, working as intended.
The problem is i'm noticing some lag when turning the screen on/off. Also when i turn the screen on, i see the toast message from SuperUser "App was granted su access", and it pops up once for every command. Is there a way to hide that toast message? I haven't found any way to hide a toast message from another activity. I know they can be disabled in the superuser app, but that's not ideal. I read you can write your own superuser binary but that sounds alot more complicated than simple java programming... also sounds like it could lead to security problems.
Basically i'm asking what's the best way to do this, so that it's as non-invasive to the user as possible?

I haven't used su, but I think if you don't close the stream every time it should only display toast once.

log file for errors?

I am developing an Android-App with "Aide".Aide is an app for developing android apps with android devices. When i start the app, i have created, i get an error like "the app has aborted unfortunately". how can i resolve what happened wrong ? is there a log-file where i can see the stack trace ? is ist possible that everytime an error happens a dialog apperas with the stack trace instead of the message "the app has aborted" ? thanks for everybody who can help me.
Greets
Arne

If you want to observe the stack trace, all you need is a LogCat reader, like CatLog, for instance. Note that if your device is Jelly Bean of higher, you'll need root permissions to read the logs.
EDIT:
Further research indicates that there is a LogCat reader built into AIDE. The root permission issue still applies.

I have never used Aide, but the concept will be the same. You need to be able to debug your app on your phone via your IDE. As an example in Eclipse I would connect my phone via usb and in Eclipse it then shows up as an Android Device in AVD. I then run my App in Debug mode on my phone and all your error output will be in Logcat. Otherwise you will have to code debug logic into your app so that it writes it's own logging onto your fs on you phone.

If you have the Android SDK installed (I guess it's the case), then you can use the adb utility to access the log :
adb logcat
This will show you stacktrace in case of error, and many very other useful informations.

You got 3 options:
Upgrade into a stable Pro version to use the working LogCat on AIDE
Use USB debugging as mentioned by apesa
Use following function to log to local file:
public void appendLog(String text)
// https://stackoverflow.com/a/6209739/8800831
{
File logFile = new File("sdcard/log.file");
if (!logFile.exists())
{
try
{
logFile.createNewFile();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
try
{
//BufferedWriter for performance, true to set append to file flag
BufferedWriter buf = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(logFile, true));
buf.append(text);
buf.newLine();
buf. flush();
buf.close();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
Use it like this:
try{
// your code goes here
}catch (Exception e){
appendLog(e);
}
You need to add permission for writing_external_storage in Manifest.

Android "permanent" superuser permission for an app?

To clarify, I use this code to get superuser permission for my app so I can access root and whatnot:
public String runProcess(String[] functs) {
DataOutputStream dos;
DataInputStream dis;
StringBuffer contents = new StringBuffer("");
String tempInput;
Process process;
try {
process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(functs);
dos = new DataOutputStream(process.getOutputStream());
dis = new DataInputStream(process.getInputStream());
for (String command : functs) {
dos.writeBytes(command + "\n");
dos.flush();
while ((tempInput = dis.readLine()) != null)
contents.append(tempInput + "\n");
}
dos.writeBytes("exit\n");
dos.flush();
process.waitFor();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return contents.toString();
}
And although it works just fine, whenever I call runProcess(new String[] { "su", "-c", "some other command" }); it always asks for superuser permission. I see a lot of root apps on the market who just have to gain superuser permission once at each startup of the app, but I don't think I'd need to ask the user for superuser permission every single time the app calls an function that requires SU. So my question would be, how would I prompt the user to give me SU permission once at the startup of an app without having to continually ask for it for every SU-related action?
EDIT: I know I could run my method/the Runtime.getRuntime().exec() method without typing "su" in it every time but that only works with non-su related actions (i.e. exec("ps") or exec("ls"). Any ideas?

You can use my Library which does this.
https://code.google.com/p/roottools/
Also, if you don't want to use the library the source is available so you can just rip out my code and use it in your application.
Here is a link to the source:
https://code.google.com/p/roottools/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2FStable%2FRootTools-sdk3-generic%2Fsrc%2Fcom%2Fstericson%2FRootTools

If you are just looking for the permission from a "superUser" app which is already running in your device, you just need the following code in your main java file.
try {
process p= Runtime.getRuntime().exec(su);
}
catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
Yes, no need to mention that the device has to be already rooted!!!

Every time you open a console asking for root access, i.e. start it with su, the corresponding super user app will either prompt you or allow/deny it, if you checked something like "Don't ask me again" on the previous prompt.
If you only want to have ask (the super user app) once, you will have to keep your root console open, by not calling dos.writeBytes("exit\n");.
Then keep this session in a background thread and use it when necessary.
So either make sure the user checks "Don't ask me again" on the first prompt or keep the session open.

Working with capacitive buttons in Android

I was curious if there is any library to work with the capacitive buttons of Samsung phones??
I mean to light them up when an event occurs, or blink them, stuffs like that...
Thanks,
rohitkg

There is nothing in the Android SDK for this, as there is no assumption that such buttons exist, have backlights, etc. You are welcome to contact device manufacturers to see if they have a documented and supported means of doing this for their specific devices.

Here's a code snippet I grabbed from samsung-moment-notifications.
Process process = null;
DataOutputStream os = null;
try {
// get root
process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("su");
os = new DataOutputStream(process.getOutputStream());
// write the command
os.writeBytes("echo 100 > /sys/class/leds/button-backlight/brightness\n");
os.writeBytes("exit\n");
// clear the buffer
os.flush();
Toast.makeText(NotificationLights.this, "Lights are on", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
// wait for complete
process.waitFor();
// won't catch an error with root, but it has to have an exception catcher to execute
} catch (Exception e) {
Toast.makeText(NotificationLights.this, "Couldn't get SU, are you rooted?", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
return;
}
1- You must have a rooted device.
2- You must know the location of the script which turns the lights on/off for each device.
/sys/class/leds/button-backlight/brightness is specific to the Samsung Moment.
If you were to try it on another device it wouldn't work.