My application have to request some RSS feeds and display the result, i want to be able to add some feeds to the RSS list without modifying the app source code.
The app users will not have the permission to modify the RSS feeds list so i can't implement it in the app.
My idea is to create an xml configuration file and host it online, so the app can access this file on start : this solution let me update the file without updating the application.
But i don't know which online service let me to do that, do you knowa some services that are dedicated for this purpose ? Any proposal will be helpful.
Thanks.
Your not being that clear on what you want. As there are many different hosting sites. It seems your looking at just something to host your app underneath the app?? Or were you looking at something else?
Related
I have data in the pdf format(Not in english). I want to load the data to my app and app will be offline. What are the elements i shall be using in android to make the app which is like reading data chapterwise? As the data i have is huge,how to load it offline from pdf? What is the efficient way?
This is reference link for the app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.winjit.hclite&hl=en
Getting the text of a pdf is a hard task in android. You can check this other similar questions to this topic which all have no straight forward answer: Link, Link, Link.
If you cant workaround this there are commercial libarys out there which you can find pretty easy with your search engine of choice (I don't want to promote them here).
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question but I've looked around and couldn't find the answer.
An app that I'm building allows the user to download files, but I want to protect the URL of the files.
Is there a way to find the URL of a file being downloaded via an app?
If there is, can I prevent it somehow?
I am using download manager to download the files. Is it any different in this aspect if I write my own async methods?
Similarly, can users see the GET requests sent by the app?
Any info or direction to pages that talk more about this is appreciated.
Thanks.
I am using download manager to download the files. Is it any different in this aspect if I write my own async methods?
If you are using DownloadManager to download files, depending on how you're using it, yes, users could get the URL quite easily, since the downloads app may show it. (this depends on how you're actually doing the download with DownloadManager, I'd need to see your code in order to tell you for sure.
If you write your own code to do the download, then yes, it will be harder for users to figure out where the file is being downloaded from.
Is there a way to find the URL of a file being downloaded via an app?
Even if you don't use DownloadManager, it is still possible, just more difficult. If users are using a firewall which logs network accesses, or something similar, your URLs will be logged and visible. Similarly, users can use a tool like Wireshark to see all networ traffic going between the device (and your app) and the server your data is coming from. On rooted devices, users can also install monitoring tools.
Similarly, can users see the GET requests sent by the app?
Yes, using the same tools (eg. wireshark), one can see exactly what URLs your app is requesting.
If there is, can I prevent it somehow?
No. If someone wants this information, they will get it, all you can do is make it harder. For starters though, I'd recommend not using DownloadManager and writing your own code instead, and using HTTPS. Additionally, you could try to ensure that your URL only works for users which have been authenticated in some way - check this question for possibilities.
Let me know if you have any other questions, and I'll try to help.
I am new to this. I have the Android SDK installed with Eclipse. I can work with basic activities and layouts.
I am looking to write this Android application that will;
1) Allow users to sign-in using a pre-allocated password.
2) Login and change the password.
3) Every time the user opens the app, he downloads a CSV file from a server to the SD card.
4) The app parses from the file and displays them on several activities and small frames inside the app.
Think of it as an informational application. But, I'd like to add some intelligence on top of it after I get this done.
I have read many articles and topics but none of them give me a specific approach to do this faster. I have very little time for development.
If there's a similar application that you're familiar with, I'd like to take a look at the code.
I want to know exactly (the code) on how the communication between the app and a linux based server on the web needs to be established. Right now, there's only a CSV file (or an EXCEL file - which one's better to parse? How to decide?) there.
Also, when the CSV file is up to date, I wouldn't want it to download the file again. How to prevent it?
As I said, I am new - so please be patient.
Thanks
If you are new to this and want to develop something fast, why do it the hardest way, in java? There are so many easy toolkits out there, e.g. RFO.Basic, you will be amazed how much you can achieve, fast, that way.
(You asked several questions) Easiest to parse? If you don't have Excel installed on your Android device, the CSV is of course easier to parse, needing only text tools. However, if you have a choice of formats, why not use XML? If you have never worked with XML, there is a little learning curve, but there are lots of tutorials on the web. After that, you'll never want to go back to CSV.
Your last question: how to prevent download of unchanged file? Is this about a big file? In that case start with quickly downloading the hash (checksum) of the file, so that the client can decide if the file has changed.
Is it possible to retrieve movie/songs rating from different website or a blog and show it in android application as to which blog or website has given how much rating to a movie/song and show it in one place.
P.S: I am beginner at android application development and got this idea to make a app which could fetch ratings for a particular songs or movie . So if it is possible it will be great if you give me a little headstart as to how will it will be done .
Thanks.
I would recommend something like a external server or database that does crawling work for you.
You would need something like a list of websites/blogs you get your ratings from and you would need to write something like a crawling script for each website. That means downloading the HTML-file of the site and parse it for your information. This data must be stored in your database or the server must do this dynamically.
Now your device connects to the database/server to get the analysated data. If you let your device do the whole parsing-work, it would kill the net-traffic and would take ages to load.
I'm in the middle of writing an Android app, and would like to give my users the ability to share the document files it creates.
What I'd ideally like to see would be files hosted on a HTTP server somewhere, so a user can simply fire up their browser on the Android phone, surf to the relevant page, and then download the file to their phone. I'd then like for my app to be able to open that downloaded file.
I'm not sure if that's possible at all, but would certainly be interested in hearing from anyone that knows anything about such things. Unfortunately I seem to be having difficulty coming up with the answers myself - like much of the rest of the Android SDK, there is a severe shortage of relevant documentation.
When the user access a file you wish to support you should be able to register with Android using IntentFilters to indicate that your application is able to handle a specific MIME-TYPE.
See the documentation here .
It's easy enough to get files from a web server.
In your includes -
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;
import java.io.InputStream;
In your code -
URL requestURL = new URL(urlStringForFileYouWantToOpen);
URLConnection connection = requestURL.openConnection();
InputStream response = connection.getInputStream();
Then do what you want with the InputStream. I'm not sure if that's close enough to your description of the user downloading a file and then accessing it from your app, but it seems more straightforward to me to let them get the file while in your app.
Incidentally, I've stumbled across a reasonable solution that is a fair bit easier than messing around with intents and so on...
The WebView widget allows you to set a DownloadListener object that gets notified whenever the WebView is directed to a file of a type it doesn't natively understand. Thus, the functionality I was after can be achieved by creating a WebView in my application and registering a DownloadListener to listen for when the user downloads one of my application's document files.
Thanks for all your help!
If you want to integrate the download from within the app then #jball's answer is what you need if your would prefer that the process is initiated via the browser then #Scott's answer is what you need.
From your description it sounds like you also want users to share documents created with the app which would require your app to be able to upload apps to the webserver. Something like WebDAV would be ideal for that, either implemented yourself using org.apache.http library or using one of the open source implementations out their.