Develop Reference

DC2type on greenDao

I am using GreenDao for Android application, with some specification, for example, I have a Contact Model with some information like name, avatar, phone number, etc...
Right now the need is to change from only one phone number to a multiphone number.
Instead of creating two tables (table for numbers, and table for contacts), I really need just one information is the number so in my backend the contact numbers is stocked on a DC2type, (a json array saved as a string).
Do we have a possibility to do that using GreenDao?

i search for a solution or a DC2type implementation , etc ... and nothing is found
so i decide to created by my self , and this is what i did :
using the #Convert annotation presented of GreenDao 3 :
#Property(nameInDb = "phoneNumbers")
#Convert(converter = PhoneNumbersConverter.class, columnType = String.class)
private List<String> phoneNumbers;
static class PhoneNumbersConverter implements PropertyConverter<List<String>, String> {
#Override
public List<String> convertToEntityProperty(String databaseValue) {
List<String> listOfStrings = new Gson().fromJson(databaseValue,List.class);
return listOfStrings;
}
#Override
public String convertToDatabaseValue(List<String> entityProperty) {
String json = new Gson().toJson(entityProperty);
return json;
}
}
short story long , i create a json to array parser
thanks to myself to helped me :D

Android - XML or SQLite for static data

I am making Android app for practicing driving licence theory tests. I will have about 3000 questions. Question object would have several atributes (text, category, subcategory, answers, group). I will create them and put in app, so data won't ever change. When user chooses category, app would go througt data, look which question meets requirements (that user selected) and put it in list for displaying. What should I use to store data/questions, XML or SQLite? Thanks in advance.
Edit:
I forgot to mentiont that app won't use internet connection. Also, I planned to make simple java app for entering data. I would copy text from government's website (I don't have access to their database and I have to create mine), so I thought to just put question's image url to java program and it would download it and name it automaticaly. Also, when entering new question's text it would tell me if that question already exist before I enter other data. That would save me time, I wouldn't have to save every picture and name it my self. That is what I thought if using XML. Can I do this for JSON or SQLite?

If you do not have to perform complex queries, I would recommend to store your datas in json since very well integrated in android apps using a lib such as GSON or Jackson.
If you don't want to rebuild your app / redeploy on every question changes. You can imagine to have a small webserver (apache, nginx, tomcat) that serves the json file that you will request on loading of the app. So that you will download the questions when your app is online or use the cached one.
XML is a verbose format for such an usage, and does not bring much functions....
To respond to your last question, you can organise your code like that :
/**
* SOF POST http://stackoverflow.com/posts/37078005
* #author Jean-Emmanuel
* #company RIZZE
*/
public class SOF_37078005 {
#Test
public void test() {
QuestionsBean questions = new QuestionsBean();
//fill you questions
QuestionBean b=buildQuestionExemple();
questions.add(b); // success
questions.add(b); //skipped
System.out.println(questions.toJson()); //toJson
}
private QuestionBean buildQuestionExemple() {
QuestionBean b= new QuestionBean();
b.title="What is the size of your boat?";
b.pictures.add("/res/images/boatSize.jpg");
b.order= 1;
return b;
}
public class QuestionsBean{
private List<QuestionBean> list = new ArrayList<QuestionBean>();
public QuestionsBean add(QuestionBean b ){
if(b!=null && b.title!=null){
for(QuestionBean i : list){
if(i.title.compareToIgnoreCase(b.title)==0){
System.out.println("Question "+b.title+" already exists - skipped & not added");
return this;
}
}
System.out.println("Question "+b.title+" added");
list.add(b);
}
else{
System.out.println("Question was null / not added");
}
return this;
}
public String toJson() {
ObjectMapper m = new ObjectMapper();
m.configure(Feature.ALLOW_SINGLE_QUOTES, true);
String j = null;
try {
j= m.writeValueAsString(list);
} catch (JsonProcessingException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
System.out.println("JSON Format error:"+ e.getMessage());
}
return j;
}
}
public class QuestionBean{
private int order;
private String title;
private List<String> pictures= new ArrayList<String>(); //path to picture
private List<String> responseChoice = new ArrayList<String>(); //list of possible choices
public int getOrder() {
return order;
}
public void setOrder(int order) {
this.order = order;
}
public String getTitle() {
return title;
}
public void setTitle(String title) {
this.title = title;
}
public List<String> getPictures() {
return pictures;
}
public void setPictures(List<String> pictures) {
this.pictures = pictures;
}
public List<String> getResponseChoice() {
return responseChoice;
}
public void setResponseChoice(List<String> responseChoice) {
this.responseChoice = responseChoice;
}
}
}
CONSOLE OUTPUT
Question What is the size of your boat? added
Question What is the size of your boat? already exists - skipped & not added
[{"order":1,"title":"What is the size of your boat?","pictures":["/res/images/boatSize.jpg"],"responseChoice":[]}]
GIST :
provides you the complete working code I've made for you
https://gist.github.com/jeorfevre/5d8cbf352784042c7a7b4975fc321466
To conclude, what is a good practice to work with JSON is :
1) create a bean in order to build your json (see my example here)
2) build your json and store it in a file for example
3) Using android load your json from the file to the bean (you have it in andrdoid)
4) use the bean to build your form...etc (and not the json text file) :D

I would recommend a database (SQLite) as it provides superior filtering functionality over xml.

Create the db using DB Browser for SQLite
And then use the library SQLiteAssetHelper in the link-
https://github.com/jgilfelt/android-sqlite-asset-helper
Tutorial on how to use -
http://www.javahelps.com/2015/04/import-and-use-external-database-in.html

You can use Paper https://github.com/pilgr/Paper its a fast NoSQL data storage for Android.

SQLite is the best for your system. because you will have to maintain (text, category, subcategory, answers, group) etc. So if you create db and create table for them. That will be easy to manage and you can relationship with each other which is not possible to XML.

How to use common model class for retrofit and squidb

In my android app, I am reading data from the server in JSON format and storing it local SQLite db.
I am using retrofit and Gson for reading and converting Json into objects.
For e.g.
#Parcel
public class PersonResponse {
#SerializedName("name")
public String name;
}
I am using Yahoo Squidb as ORM.
#TableModelSpec(className = "Person", tableName = "people")
public class PersonSpec {
#ColumnSpec(name="name", defaultValue="")
public String name;
public static Person create(PersonResponse obj) {
return new Person(obj){...};
}
}
Trouble is I can't use a single object for both. Therefore, it has become pain to maintain two similar pojos.
I have to now convert from PersonResponse to Person
Person p = Person.create(obj_person_response);
Has anyone implemented it. Please suggest.

Reading data from json and saving it in android app using ormlite

I am new in doing work with android database. My question is, I have a json data which i want to parse it in my android application. Specifically i want to take that data and save it in my app database which is ORMLITE.
Does anyone have any example of this so please do share with me. Any kind of video tutorial or anything will be helpful here.
Thanks in advance

I would utilize the GSON library which is super helpful for handling JSON
https://code.google.com/p/google-gson/
Then you need to create a java class with all of the data that the JSON has that you want to parse.
If your JSON looked like this:
{
"id":4854
"name":"Charlie"
"age":35
"eye_color":"blue"
}
Then you would want to create a class matching that data. THIS IS CASE SENSITIVE.
public class Data implements Serializable {
private int id;
private String name;
private int age;
private String eye_color;
}
public class Item implements Serializable{
}
Now you can create a java object from the JSON:
Gson gson = new Gson();
Data data = gson.fromJson(yourJsonHere, Data.class)
and boom! your data object is now what your JSON was.

Ok, I don't use ORMLITE, I'm using GreenDao as ORM but I guess it's the same thing. For parsing a JSON there is some libraries that help, I always try to use GSON that is a library that handle serialization between objects and JSON data. There is a lot of documentation about GSON on the web and plenty of examples. Search for it. I recommend use that approach, for me is the better. Also you can parse a JSON with the org.json.JSON library. This one is more "by hand" parser but could be pretty useful. For example:
for the following JSON:
{
"name": "MyName",
"age": 24
}
that you want to map into a object Person that is a class from your data model generated by ORMLITE:
public class Person {
private String name;
private int age;
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public void setAge(int age) {
this.age = age;
}
}
You could do something like:
Person myPerson = new Person();
//This is the use of the org.json.JSON library
JSONObject jObject = new JSONObject(myJSONString);
myPerson.setName(jObject.getString("name"));
myPerson.setAge(jObject.getInt("age"));
And that's a way. Of course JSON library has many function and types to help you with JSON data. Check it out.
But all that code with GSON will be reduced to:
Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().create();
Person myPerson = gson.fromJson(myJSONString, Person.class);
So again try using GSON, it's the best way. Hope it helps

What is the fastest way to parse a JSON string into an SQLite table?

I'm writing an Android application which will occasionally need to download a json string of around 1MB and containing around 1000 elements, and parse each of these into an SQLite database, which I use to populate a ListActivity.
Even though the downloading and parsing isn't something that needs to be done on every interaction with the app (only on first run or when the user chooses to refresh the data), I'm still concerned that the parsing part is taking too long, at around two to three minutes - it seems like an eternity in phone app terms!
I'm currently using Gson to parse each json object into a custom object that I've defined, and then using an SQLiteOpenHelper to enter it into the database.
My question is - is there a faster way of implementing this? Would it be noticeably faster to interact with the json directly, without using Gson? Or am I doing something stupid in the code below that's slowing things down?
Here's the method I'm using in my AsyncTask to parse the json to SQLite:
protected Boolean doInBackground(Integer... bType) {
InputStream source = getJsonInputStream(bTypeString);
VegDataHandler db = new VegDataHandler(mainActivity, bTypeString);
Gson gson = new Gson();
Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(source);
JsonParser jParser = new JsonParser();
JsonArray jArray = jParser.parse(reader).getAsJsonArray();
aLength = jArray.size();
mCurrProgress = 1;
publishProgress(mCurrProgress, 0, aLength);
/* Each array element is of the form { company: {...} } */
int i = 0;
mCurrProgress = 2;
for (JsonElement obj : jArray) {
Company c = gson.fromJson(obj.getAsJsonObject().getAsJsonObject("company"), Company.class);
db.addCompany(c);
i++;
publishProgress(mCurrProgress, i);
}
}
This is the addCompany method from my VegDataHandler class, which extends SQLiteOpenHelper:
public void addCompany(Company c) {
SQLiteDatabase db = this.getWritableDatabase();
ContentValues values = new ContentValues();
values.put(KEY_ID, c.getCompanyId());
values.put(KEY_NAME, c.getCompanyName());
values.put(KEY_RYG, c.getCompanyRedYellowGreen());
values.put(KEY_COUNTRY, c.getCompanyCountry());
values.put(KEY_URL, c.getCompanyUrl());
values.put(KEY_NOTES, c.getCompanyNotes());
values.put(KEY_EMAIL, c.getCompanyEmail());
db.insertWithOnConflict(TABLE_COMPANY, null, values, SQLiteDatabase.CONFLICT_REPLACE);
db.close();
}
This is the class that holds each json element before adding to the SQLite (I've omitted the getters and setters for brevity).
public class Company {
public Company() {
}
#SerializedName("id")
public int companyId;
#SerializedName("company_name")
public String companyName;
#SerializedName("red_yellow_green")
public String companyRedYellowGreen;
#SerializedName("country")
public String companyCountry;
#SerializedName("url")
public String companyUrl;
#SerializedName("notes")
public String companyNotes;
#SerializedName("email")
public String companyEmail;
}
Thanks in advance for any replies.

First you need to determine the portion(s) of the process that are eating up the most time. From your comment above it sounds like the JSON parsing is the culprit.
If JSON parsing is the issue:
Research and consider a faster JSON parser. Perhaps something like json-smart.
If SQLite/DB bulk inserts are the issue:
See my answer here
General tips:
Recycle objects as much as possible (keep new to a minimum)
Always use transactions in DB bulk inserts at the very least
Don't open/close the database. Do this once at the start/finish of your processing
Use pre-compiled statements!