Use LibGdx libraries with existing android project? - android

I have a project that I have been working on which is a standard android application that does not include any other external libraries at this time. I am now looking at making a game at the end of the app(its a quiz so after the questions I want to make a mini game).
So what I am trying to find out is can I just import the libraries that it uses and connect them to my project rather than creating a LibGDX project and importing that?

What it comes down to is your personal preference. In answer to your question, yes you could just add in the jar files and such into your current project, however you are going to have to edit your manifest and some add in some other stuff besides jars using this Setup. In my personal opinion it would be easier to create a libgdx project using the tutorial found here, but in the end as I said before it all depends on what exactly you want to do.
Before deciding, ask yourself.
Do I want to have everything in one project, or can it be in more than one?
What would be better in the long run for managing my app.
Do I want ease now or later?
Cheers!

Related

Incorporate vuforia android SDK in a new project

I want to use vuforia sdk's text recognition module in my new app.
I have been successful in building and running their sample apps. However, having done that was apparently not enough for me to figure out how to start using vuforia android sdk in my mew project in a proper way.
The IDE is Android Studio. I have the license key for my vuforia account.
Could someone help me get started? I jist need to start using vuforia as a library in my own personal project. I do not want to start developing directly over their sample apps.
I am sorry if the context of the questions doesn't fit into that of this particular community.
I wanted to do exactly what you said. I didn't want to build on the top of their samples. I struggled to find a tutorial but there is none, at least I was not able to fine one. Turns out it is really easy. Go to the Vuforia folder(wherever you installed it) and then head to vuforia-sdk-android-X-XX-X\build\java\vuforia and copy the .jar file and paste that file to your new project in Android studio inside your libs folder. Then add this line to your Build.Gradle
compile files('libs/Vuforia.jar')
inside your dependencies. That's it. You can access all the Vuforia classes from there. Don't forget to instanciate them just like in the example with your own key from Vuforia developer console.
I don't know if this is still relevant, but... This link shows what you need to do, code-wise, for creating a new Vuforia App: How can I build a basic Vuforia app. This, along with the links you have already seen regarding the setup, should be enough for you to get started from scratch.
Instead of relying on Vuforia's module, I built my own real-time OCR from scratch, using the Camera (1) API and Google's Mobile Vision Library.
My app - Optical Dictionary & Vocabulary Teacher - performs a lot better than Vuforia's module. It does real-time scanning of words, shows them in a more friendly manner, and does way better validation of words. It even lemmatizes the words (e.g fooled -> fool, thieves -> thief etc).
Also, needless to say that this gave me complete control over my module as well.
Here is a Video Demo of my app.
If any one wants to build something similar, they can feel free to contact me for assistance.

Import an activity from another project

As a total Android development beginner, I might be asking a stupid question here, but I thought I'd go for it anyway, since I have no clue about what to do.
I want to have a carousel kind of menu on my MainActivity for the app I'm trying to develop. I found this project after some searching : http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/146145/Android-3D-Carousel
It's exactly the kind of carousel I want to put in my app, but I'm not sure whether I should import parts of the project containing the carousel (which is a demo of it, available to download) so I can use the same type of carousel in the MainActivity of my own app, or if it's a totally wrong way of thinking.
I think I've also figured that Android libraries are .jar files, and this carousel is a project, not a .jar, so I don't know if there is a way to get this kind of component inside my app.
I tried some dirty copying and adapting from one project into another, but I'm so new with even the basic structure of an Android app that I couldn't make anything out of it.
Any help or guidelines would be greatly appreciated.
I'm planning to make a menu out of this kind of component, and couldn't find anything else closer to what I'm trying to do, for Android.
EDIT : I'm working on Eclipse
Stick the visual language of Android, Holo. Pushing clunky GUI that looks out of place is the last thing this platform needs.
You may mark a project as a library when you create it. You can then import it to another project with Project Properties > Android > Add Library. This point answers you question the most, I guess.
I strongly suggest understanding basic widgets and classes first. Don't go onto the deep waters. If you want flashy slidy things, take a look at Fragment and FragmentPagerAdapterclasses. Plenty more examples that are free, to begin with. By using support library v4 and Android Sherlockbar you should get a better feel of the platform while keeping it up to day date and backward compatible.
Download the project, then go File->Import->Android->Existing Code into Workspace and you will have that project in workspace.
If you want to add only activity then create your own one, File->New->Other->Android->Android Activity and then copy the code and check method setContentView() if it have the layout you need. If you have MainActivity activity with layout called activity_main (which is default) then just check if you have setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);.

Create and distribute .Jar files for android in Eclipse

In android I need to create a library file(.Jar file) to distribute it to third party people to integrate that functionality within their android apps.
Bit struggling of deciding what the best approach. Yes I can create an android library project and implement the functionality seperately and test it with my main project, but wonder how to create a .Jar file out of that (I know it works perfect with the .Jar file that automatically creates under the bin filder in library project but don't think its the best practice as it automatically creates and we dont have any control over it).
I serched this thing but didn't get an exact way to do this. But I am pretty much sure its possible as we already have .Jar files available to integrate with android.
If someone can explain the steps that I have to follow to create a .Jar file for android it would be great. I am using Eclipse as the IDE.
In my case I am NOT using any resourses from the library project and just few classes that have public methods in it to call from the main project.
Thanks.

Version controlling Android/Eclipse project with all it's 3rd party libraries

So here is the deal. Let's say I'm developing an app depending on the Facebook SDK and Chris Banes PullToRefreshListView. I import the SDK's to my workspace(which I don't really like since it fills upp the workspace!) and reference it in my app as libraries. I'm making some changes to the PullToRefreshListView, let's say I'm adding a custom font or changing the color of one of the labels.
Now, I'm using Git to version control my project. I would like to be able to put up my project to our Git server and make my colleagues able to pull the project and get to work without having to struggle with getting the same SDK's (of the same versions as I used) setup and referenced in the project. Since I've made some changes to one of the libraries, the project could never be fully restored by another person if I don't provide the code.
How should I act in this situation?
Is it possible to put an uncompiled library in the libs folder or something like that?
If not, what is the right way of accomplishing this?
All I can find when Googling or searching Stack Overflow is how-to's on using compiled .jar files in the libs folder, which is good but not what I'm looking for.
Essentially, I'm looking for a good way of structuring projects using 3rd party libraries.
It sounds like these are android library projects (they contain assets). If that's the case, you can't turn them into JAR files.
The easiest way that comes to mind is to have your root project folder contain your app and all said libraries:
Root
-\Your app
-\src
-\res
-\3rd party lib 1
-\3rd party lib 2
-\3rd party lib 3
This structure would make it pretty simple to push to git and manage in eclipse.

Versioning and common code-bases with Eclipse

I'd like to bring out an Android app in the near future, so I was wondering
how to support a couple of funcitonalities I have got used whilst
developing for J2ME and iPhone
first the versioning. With J2ME (using NetBeans as IDE) I had the
option to auto-increment the softwwares version every time I compiled
it. I was wondering if something like this is available for Eclipse
and if so how to use it ?
secondly a common code base. Is it possible to have a common code
base for several projects ? For example I might have a game which
actually uses the same code but needs different graphic resources. I'd
hate to have a different project for every game/app and have to
manually edit every project's source every time I want to submit a new
code-change. Any solution for this ?
Thanks in advance for every kind of help/hints/tips !
Another idea:
If you can package the common code into Classes then a library approach would help.
In eclipse under project properties you can add a library to your project.
Hope this helps you on.

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