I am working on an android application which can find users nearby.
I need help in design that application.
I am thinking:
1. When I start my application, I use API to find my location.
2. I send that location to my server.
3. server returns a list of other users nearby.
My question is how can the server keeps track of a list of users who are nearby?
Do I create a background service on phone who will report users location periodically?
And the server maintains a list of all users' location?
Is that approach feasible?
You're on the right track. If you are able to geocode or retrieve your current location lat/lon coordinates, there might be a library that can help you out.
My first thought was the Geocoder (https://github.com/alexreisner/geocoder) library for ruby, it offers a slick API that allows you to easily find other nearby objects:
if obj.geocoded?
obj.nearbys(30) # other objects within 30 miles
obj.distance_from([40.714,-100.234]) # distance from arbitrary point to object
obj.bearing_to("Paris, France") # direction from object to arbitrary point
end
There are other options that are easy enough too, if you're using PostgreSQL with PostGIS, you have some utility functions that I'm sure you could use to query 'nearby' users. (Found an example, "What is the best way to find all objects within a radius of another object?" http://postgis.net/docs/manual-1.3/ch03.html#id434832)
So the overall workflow would be:
Request lat/lon from device API
Send lat/lon to server/web service
Use library/database to find other users within a specified radius
Send list of users back down to device
I suspect the most difficult aspect would probably be keeping the lat/lon of other users up to date, but that's a different problem to solve.
Edit:
Just to clarify, you'll definitely want to store all the logged in users' lat/lon inside of some sort of database on the server. It's a very feasible approach, but you'll have to keep it up to date and be able to determine somehow if the data is stale (if that's important to your application). Whether you use a background service to keep that information up to date is kind of up to you and the constraints of the problem you're trying to solve.
Related
I would like to preface my query by saying that I am an absolute beginner when it comes to programming but I really want to realise this project so every little help is deeply appreciated.
I am trying to build an app that needs accurate train data for it to work and from my current research as there is not central government API for railway data , the only accurate data source for train location that I can find is in an other app that uses crowd sourcing to pinpoint the location.
I wanted to know if it is possible to fetch that train data from that app and then use it on my own as it would make my app a lot more reliable and accurate.
The issue currently is that the app only shows graphical representation of the data thats being fed to it from its servers , so I wanted to know if there is a way to access the actual data being sent to the app.
Thank you.
Let me clarify, this is a very broad question and hence will have a very broad answer too.
As far as I can understand from your question is that you want to show TRUE location on a map.
For this, you will have to understand the complete Tracking scenario. Let me explain it to you step-wise below:
There is an app, installed on a device (user) which fetches the GPS location (REAL) data and keeps sending it to a server (backend).
This GPS data is the Lattitude-Longitude coordinates of the device (user).
The server stores this information in their database for queries.
There is another user, different than the one currently sending the location data, who wants to know the location of the first user. The app which he is using will request the server (backend) to send the location data for the device. Which, in turn, will send the latest location data (LatLng coordinates) to the current app. This app will then show the location data over a map.
Now, usually, this process is followed to show one-to-one location data. However, in scenarios like Train Location etc, servers usually collect pool of location data, being received from several users, to cross-verify the actual location (average out, mean, location optimization algorithms etc.) and then display that information over a map.
As per your requirement, which I can understand, you want to get this REAL data directly from either another app or from the server. If you want to get the location data from the server, you will need an API, which serves as a Request-Response platform. However, if you are looking to get the data from another app, it would rather be simpler to get the location data directly, as your APP will also be installed on the device itself.
I would suggest you to kindly read about getting and processing location data, communication with servers over API etc for better understanding and implementation of your requirements.
I am new to mobile development and I undertook some freelance work. Now I am required to display a page with top N nearest places (businesses registered with us).
I am wondering what the best way of going about this is, from my experience it would seem that I would want to do this calculation in my back-end server.
I have a NodeJS server, however, it seems the server will be concurrently doing a lot of other work just verifying JWT tokens and what not, I have seen that android provides a method to easily do these calculations (Location). I have also read that there are some google API's one could use.
The idea I have is that I can pull my places with their lat, long from my database then the user sends lat,long and my server calculates top N results and sends to user.
What would you recommend and why?
Thanks!
The short answer is: Server.
But why?
The job of the server to make it so no one can use the app who is not authorized to do so. Thats one of many jobs anyway. However, you should send your location to the server, the server makes the API call, and returns the N closest locations.
You take that response, parse it, and fill in a view as you would like. With the server doing the heavy lifting, you can then also keeps track of something better, like how many calls, which calls, location of calls, etc etc.
Using Android Studio, what sort of things are needed when trying to compare a specific user's location to every other user. For example if there are 1000 simultaneous users, and I want to find the closest one(or farthest) to any given user, what sort of calculations need to be done?
If each user's locations were saved to a DB, where do I start? Is it necessary to compare one location against the 1000 (or more) users to find the closest, or would it make more sense to make some type of cut-off (i.e. only compare users who are within 50km).
It seems overwhelming and I am new to android, so I am unsure where to even start. Parse.com and Pubnub are being used in this project.
Geohashing by User Proximity Tutorial
I'll reference for you here the geohashing tutorial that walks you through how to build a realtime app that connects users based on relative location.
Note that this example is written in JavaScript and not Java/Android. However you can still use this design pattern to determine proximity.
App Geo Location: https://www.pubnub.com/blog/2014-05-07-geohashing-chat-by-proximity/
There is also a short video which discusses the Geohasing concept.
Adding in Parse SDK and Location Comparison
Also you can add in this link: Parse reference guide. And a Parse Connector SDK if needed.
So basically I have made a few small apps in the past, but this is my first 'proper' app.
One of the main features of the app, and the bit that I am struggling with is that I need to be able to populate a ListView with all of the other users logged into the app, however I only want to display users that are within a set distance, for example 10 meters.
I tried using Bluetooth to achieve this, however that didn't work. I would now like to use location services to do this.
My idea is to have to app send the location of the device to an external server every few minutes and then all other devices can run a function that compare their location to others found on this server.
Does anybody know how I could go about achieving this, or know of any tutorials that cover a simpler topic. Thank you
Disclaimer: I'm not an android developer, but this seems like a design issue not a implementation issue so hopefully my comments below might be of some use...
I don't think there's an API that you can just set to "true" to get this functionality, so I think you're going to have to custom craft all the moving parts (and there are a couple). I would think the general process would be something like:
On the client:
User on client logs in to server with some sort of identity (i.e. "user#gmail.com")
Every X minutes the client app gets the current location (i.e. "100N 90E") and sends it up to a server
Every X minutes the client polls the server to see who is within 10 miles (i.e."joe#gmail.com", "mary#gmail.com")
On the server:
Needs some sort of authentication endpoints for getting a user's identity
Needs an endpoint for users to register their location ("user#gmail.com is at 100N 90E")
Needs a service to find out how far each user is from each other
Needs an endpoint to return the users within X miles (list generated from #3)
Each one of these steps shouldn't be difficult on their own and you can actually get pretty nuts with the distribution algorithm on server step #3 if you wanted to.
Some questions you can ask yourself are:
"How do I set up a server to listen for HTTP requests?" - Take a look into Node.JS for a simple solution
"How do I get a user's location in android?" - Easy google search finds plenty of documentation
"How do I write a service to continuously perform actions?" - Node.JS would again help with this
"Where will I store user's locations and their distances from each other?" - You can look into a NoSQL option like CouchBase or MongoDb. Or you could use MySQL for a more structured database.
Hope this helps...
I am making an application which needs to be able to find people nearby, who are users of my app.
I looked at many answers of precedent similar questions, and it seems I have no choice but to keep uploading a user's current location to the server, and get nearby users' list when necessary.
Then my question is,
1. To get the nearby list, there should be some algorithm or function which calculates the distance. Then doesn't that mean I have to get all distances between my location and the rest of the app users? So the server returns certain number of users who have the least distance results. If I'm correct, wouldn't there be memory or time issues?
2. This might sound weird, but how about this.
I'll probably send latitude and longitude information or address information to the server. Can't I compare those strings with all users' address list from the first numbers or letters using string searching algorithms or something?
For example, if my last updated address is 'abcde' on the server, the algorithm will look for addresses that start with 'a', if finished searching, then look for addresses that has 'b' after 'a', in other words 'ab'.
This might not be a right solution, but I thought it might work because the address will be saved in same forms.
To find nearby users efficiently, you need a spatial index. See: Hierarchical Triangular Mesh.
You also can use one of the databases that support spatial queries.
I'll probably send latitude and longitude information or address information to the server. Can't I compare those strings with all users' address list from the first numbers or letters using string searching algorithms or something?
That won't work with latitude and longitude because that way you can only search for proximity in one dimension. For example, 30°N 30°E will appear closer to 30°N 90°E than to 31°N 30°E.
It may work with addresses, but only if they are reliably connected with coordinates (i.e. not typed in by users), and only if you don't mind that users 200 meters apart but on different sides of some administrative border will not count as close to each other.
You can use the REST Api from Server Side using PHP which takes the Current LAT LONG of all user for your app From User's Android Phone at certain time Interval Lets Say 5 min & it returns the Nearest Location,Address Distance.You need to call the Api # certain time Interval & in response From Server You will get all the Details What You Want Like Nearest Location of Your App user, Distance and Other Thing.
Why i am suggesting this way because to do Computation from Android Side Will Affect the App Performance Having Battery Issues So its better to Have All computation from Server side instead of Android(User) Side
hope this will helps you.
I am a bit late here but for anyone who comes across this question, assuming you are using Firebase for your database, your best option would be GeoFire using queries around a specific point in coordinates and a radius in km. Here is a link to the github repo https://github.com/firebase/geofire-android which explains everything in detail.