I am an amateur app developer. I have developed many android apps but for offline use only. Now I'd like to make an online app. The users should login with Facebook account and I handled that. The problem is that I want to save some data like the user Facebook friend-list and some other stuff. I knew that there are 2 ways to solve such problem the first one is using Parse and the second one is using the SQL-lite so which of them should I use?
I think that the Parse database is more suitable in this case, because you will be able to sync the data automatically, when you store it in the cloud
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For the past few days, I've been trying to understand what exactly is Firebase. I am in need of some more 'beginner-friendly' answers on the subject. My intention is to create a backend for my Android project. For my previous project , I used a GoDaddy host , PHP, MySQL and it did work just fine.
I am in need of stuff like these :
Storing string data. Like user email , password , profile picture path , number of friends etc.. (in a single row)
Uploading and downloading files. Video , audio
Creating a real time chat messaging system inside the app.
I am currently reading Firebase guides on user authentication. For example there is a method for signing a new user with email and password , but what if I want to store more than just email and password? Is Firebase fully customizable? Is it easy to use , or is it designed for professional developers only?
Firebase is fully customisable yes.
If you want to store more than an email,password etc, you can do so my creating a well structured JSON first. You can then try and map this to firebase db.
Firebase is a good and stable backend as a service platform and it is used by plenty of professional apps. It is fairly easy to use. Follow their youtube channel for tutorials. They have very good tutorials and explanations about how things work. I am in the exact same boat as you, learning firebase.
You may also want to look at alternatives like pubnub and pusher for the requirement of yours. They work in a similar way.
Hope this clears some of your doubts
I have a question that probably has a straight forward answer, but I am asking here to make sure.
If I want to develop an app with users (e.g. Snapchat, Wordfeud etc.), how do I do it? Do I have to use a database of some kind? The users will not have much information stored to them, say nothing more than a username and a score collection.
Can I do this without using databases?
And how do I even set up an app for having users?
You need a database.
For the simplest, you can set up a MySQL database on any server, and make queries to it.
You can follow this tutorial: http://codewithchris.com/iphone-app-connect-to-mysql-database/
You will need a database if you want to implement some functionalities like friendlist and sending messages.
To handle the authentication, Google has built in tools to help you :
https://developers.google.com/identity/sign-in/android/sign-in
Hi I want to sync android database with web database, my scenario is:
I want to make an android app dictionary. The dictionary words are added by web forms and the user android consume those words. In the Android application I have the historical of words that the user displayed and data of their studies, that should be synchronized online in case of change user phone or him have multiple devices.
My question is how to do that:
I need authentication or can get the User's google account to identify him?
How should I synchronize these two databases?
If I use Backup API i can get the same data in diferents devices?
I need authentication or can get the User's google account to identify him? That's your decision. You could even provide both methods. Some people don't want to share everything with Google, others don't care. If you want to create your own authenticator read the Udinic blog post about it.
How should I synchronize these two databases? You need a sync adapter in Android and a receiving service in your web application. In the Udinic blog there is also a tutorial about sync adapters. On server side you could create a REST service for example.
If I use Backup API i can get the same data in differents devices? The Backup API doesn't seem to be the right choice as it only restores data during the initial setup and I assume you want to synchronize the data all the time.
I want users to send textual feedback to myself(the developer) directly(without involving Google Play).
Hence, I can get the suggestions to improve my app directly to myself, instead of users writing negative reviews on Google Play.
I do not own a website nor have access to any server.
I do not want to use ACTION_SEND, as that opens an email app.
I'm an android beginner and this is my first app.
Maybe that data can be stored in a database(on cloud, common to all users) that I can access at any time I want?
After researching, I think GCM is supposed to be used, but I no idea how to go about it.
Please tell me the easiest way to implement this.
Thank You.
That is not what exactly what GCM is for. GCM is primarily for sending data from the cloud to the the devices.
You are correct in thinking that one option is to store the data in a database in the cloud. You could use http://pythonanywhere.com free account and build a web app that provides you endpoints which will save and retrieve data to a SQLite db pretty easily (if you have knowledge of python and server side web concepts).
Another perhaps simpler option is to use a pre-existing cloud database solution http://www.parse.com is a cloud backend that also has a free-to-use option that you can use to store arbitrary data. It is pretty easy to get up and running if you follow their many nice Android tutorials.
One last option I will present is to use a Google Spreadsheet with a Form associated to it. Once you create a form if you know the right url and parameters you can send a post request to insert arbitrary data into your spreadsheet. I've created a library that simplifies the process of uploading. GoogleFormUploader. If you need help getting your form set up you can watch the relevant portion of my video tutorial covering this topic
I have ~5k active users own small app. I thought my app needs to that user favourites etc. saving data on online. And maybe add user login screen with Facebook or Google+ when saving data.
That's why I use Parse, Amazon? Which one is easy to use?
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonSimpleDB/latest/DeveloperGuide/Welcome.html
https://parse.com/
I have own 5GB Bandwidth web server so what can I do? But I'm new in PHP language and maybe security problems? Or I should use JSon?
What would you suggest how I do?
The best known app use their own API.
So the best solution for you is to build a little API in you server.