I'm just looking for a little guidance, or a point in the right direction here.
I'm creating a battery monitoring application. I want to be able to link multiple android devices to the same users account, so that they can see the battery level of all their devices.
What is the simplest way to create a user profile, and share that data?
I was wanting to use "Sign in with Google" and possible a database storage solution, but I'm not sure if that is the easiest way to go about it.
I haven't used the Google thing but from what little I've read about it it sounds like that would be a good way to go. Parse.com is also a pretty easy service to use for data storage, and it supports access control lists to restrict data to a particular user.
Related
I'm trying to program an app using android studio that receives data (blood sugar levels) from the app tomato (which calculates blood sugar levels automatically every 5 mins or so). The tomato app already exists and is made by a company.
So I was wondering if doing this is possible. if so, how?
I saw this post: Is it possible for an Android app to use data from another app? which is very similar to what im trying to do but i didnt find an exact solution/answer to this.
Any opinions and help are very much needed and welcomed.
You would first need to know how the app is storing the data, you could check your phone's storage using the Device File Explorer in Android Studio. If they have exposed the data then you are able to check and read the files that the app has exposed. However, I have a feeling that they would not be leaving them in plain text for you to take.
Upon some further reading, it seems they read from a device called a MiaoMiao Transmitter. You could ask the producer of this product for a developer kit and see what they say. This would come with documentation as to how you can get data from the product. However, if they do not provide you with any help, you will need to do some investigation as to how the device functions.
Perhaps it sends android broadcasts when it is taking a reading? This is just speculation of course. This is very niche and I believe that is a reason there are only a few apps that use the device - they are trying to lock out "non-verified" developers. However, when there is a will, there is always a way! ;)
Best of luck!
Im creating an app in which users could browse from many sale offers with cars.
I would like to potential sellers could acces and enter data from web page, then save it to some external server/database.
My app only downlaods this data(pics, descriptions, etc) and show it in some way.
I am begginig programmer with half year experience in android, but ive never set up my own server, neither use external database in my previous apps.
I would like to ask you what is the best way to achive this goal. I will be greatefull for any adivices or materials which i could start from.
I do not know how you thought your data layer, but depending on you can use a database object-oriented, which in my opinion is great for such applications. visit the https://www.parse.com/docs/android/guide is very easy to use think will like. so of course it will not have the need to use a webservice if you choose to use parse.
I want to make an android application which will display an external message (For example: some quotes, proverbs etc) daily.
The message should be retrieved from some place other than the client device and I would like to configure the messages from back end
These messages should also change everyday.
How should the back end be and how can the android application retrieve the configured message ?
Do I need a server at the back end for the same or can avail some cloud services for the same ?
What is the best approach to do?
If you want to avoid having to set up and manage a server on the backend yourself you can take a look at a 'backend as a service' offering.
Two example candidates are:
https://parse.com
http://aws.amazon.com/lambda/
Both Parse and Amazon provide SDK's to allow you interact with the backend from your Android app.
You will likely want to study this a little to decide if you want this type of solution or to build your own server as Brian suggests - I think there are pros and cons to each approach and you'll have to choose which is best for your case.
Yes, you will need a server. You can start building the server software on the same machine as your Android emulator and create them in parallel. You'll need to choose a language and most likely a web server framework that suits your thought process and style.
If you want to use REST, for instance, google some for "best REST server framework". You will get hundreds of answers that don't mean much, but look at the communities that surround the frameworks that come back. Look at the user lists and how many questions about it exist on this site. That will give you a better idea of whether you can ask questions and get answers when they arise. You are making an investment by learning a framework, spend a little time deciding which one you are going to use, possibly by trying a few of them for a very simple site that returns the kind of data you are looking for.
Other than that, you really need to ask specific questions once you've chosen a language and a framework. Hope that helps.
I am trying to push some sensor data from android onto the cloud. There seems to be certain existing sites like xively, thingsspeak,nimbits which do all of this. But the thing is I need to be able to dynamically create new devices without logging into the site and also push data from the android phone to those sites. I can do the latter easily but the former seems to be an area where there is a lot of restriction. I also need to describe my sensor data very accurately so I would probably need several extra fields. Taking all this into consideration I have come to the conclusion that creating my own database would probably be the best way to proceed. However I would like to know if this option is the right way to proceed?
Also are there any easy to use libraries which help me contact an external sql database easily in android?
Yes, you should probably have your own backend for something like this. Google App Engine has a feature called Cloud Endpoints that makes it easy to write an Android backend and auto-generate an Android code for communicating with it. And it automatically handles the serialization/deserialization, so that you don't need to parse/serialize XML or JSON in order to send the data.
I'm kinda of a noob at Android and I'm writing a simple app, for my own personal learning, to hookup to an external API (Flickr or Netflix). What I want to do is ask the user for their login info to either site so that they can view their pictures or dvd queue. My question is what's the best practice to store user data like that?
I was thinking of encrypting the login/pwd and store it onto the SD card. Any thoughts using this method? Is there a better method?
I'm interested in reading other developer's perspective.
I'm sure there are numerous methods out there. I just don't want break "#1 Rule" of storing user info.
Thanks.
As mentioned in this answer:
If you are using ApiLevel >= 5 read
about AccountManager.
The SampleSyncAdapter tutorial uses AccountManager. It might be a good place to start.