Iam making an location app in android, i want to send the user location data to server and also server can send data to user apllication. which should i use soap or rest?
If your services are resource oriented (i.e. you can express them as CRUD operations over a set of entities), then use REST. If your services are method oriented, and you need a rigid interface contract, use SOAP.
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I have an Android app with some data (consisting in latitude and longitude) and a RAILS web service with a MySQL database... I want to know how to send this data to my database
You need an web server with logic implementation to accept/update/delete data from mysql server either by using Java/PHP etc...You need to specify internet permission in your manifest file. And follow the link below for more detail how to make PHP server sends data to an Android device
Rails exposes REST APIs that you can use to send data to your server. There should be an api that accepts post requests and updates the data on your web application's database. Ask your rails developer for the url.
Make a REST post/put call to your webservice.You can use Android httpclient to make a connection. The api is available here
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/http/AndroidHttpClient.html
As always, don't forget to turn on your internet permission and perform your network tasking within AsyncTask or another thread to prevent UI thread blocking.
I want to access an online MySQL database in order to retrieve and manipulate data. I read that the best way would be implementing an own web-service, which returns XML and then parse it in Android, is it right?
Does anybody have a basic tutorial?
Since you want to access a remote server which has your DB and other stuff.
You basically have two options.
1 - ) Either directly access your server via sockets etc.
2 - ) Or create a web service which will connect your server to the outside. ( I.e : Android Client,iOs client etc.)
The best practice is to create a web service and then consume it in your Android application.
Check these for consuming XML in Android.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/x-android/
http://www.warriorpoint.com/blog/2009/07/19/android-reading-using-and-working-with-xml-data-and-web-services-in-android/
Check these for creating web services on server side. (Stack independent)
http://davidwalsh.name/web-service-php-mysql-xml-json (PHP)
http://www.roseindia.net/webservices/buildingsimplewebservice.shtml (Java)
http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/csharp/cs_webservices/article.php/c19391/Creating-a-NET-Web-Service.htm (.NET)
And so on there are a lot of stacks to create web services.
Again, Webservice is the best approach. But you have to take decision based on the amount of the data being retrieved from the server and how often the transaction needs to be synchnorized with the server.
What Arvind was trying to explain you, incase if the volume of data is too large to download via webservice then you probably need to think of some middle tier that will convert he data to json and send it to your device. The reason, if you are transmitting the 1k of soap response over the air, for the same response, if you are transmitting thro json, it could be 100k or 200k or 300k depends. That way you can save the transmission cost over the net and turnaround time is quicker .
I want to create client-server GPS tracking application that clients send location data to server and server saves them on database and show clients location fleet location for site users and give report for them.
In this application i don't know which method i can use.Client applications is android apps and server application is web based application.
Methods for send data from clients to server:
1)Consume web service in clients and send data to server by means of web service
2)Use MQTT in client application and send data with MQTT
in 1st method because data is little when a web service want to send that data to server use XML and this can increase data sizes! and web server for obtain location data first need to decompress them and get location data from web service package that this can use server resources!.But method 2st send location data direct to server but hard to implement and encoding!
which of the methods you offer for me to use in this application?
another concern is if i want to scale this application for other client side platforms like iphone which of above methods is optimum
Have you thought on using a REST service instead ?
So your tracking device will basically just call a REST url and POST data to it.
No overload of data size or compression.
Same REST service can be consumed by an Android or iPhone app.
What are the best ways to connect site and show it's data on an android application ? Also does I have to create anything on server where the site is for using JSON ? I am new to programming web android application's, though I searched a lot I didn't find anything which would explain me straight to the point.
You're on the solid ground starting out using JSON as the interchange between the two.
Alot of popular mobile apps like Twitter and Foursquare have restful APIs set up to interact with their mobile clients by exchanging HTTP requests that contain data formatted as JSON. Most of the communication between the two can be accomplished with HTTP requests using the standard GET and POST methods.
A good place to start would be setting up some server endpoints that output this data and then setting up your android app to request and parse this data just like a browser would. You just need to set the appropriate mimetypes on your server end (application/json).
Most modern server-side languages have implemented modules/functions that can take their native data structures and approximate them in serialized JSON (PHP's json_encode(), python's json.dumps() etc) These can be used to output data from within the app or database to your mobile client where it can be interpreted and used in the Java environment there.
To pass back JSON you need to set the mime type (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/477816/the-right-json-content-type), which is application/json.
If you are passing back JSON or XML then the client just needs to make the appropriate http call, most likely GET, perhaps POST, to actually retrieve the information.
You can use something like this as a starting point:
http://lukencode.com/2010/04/27/calling-web-services-in-android-using-httpclient/
Project Description: I have to make an application in android which gets the Latitude and Longitude from GPS and forward their location with identification to server. On the server end there should be web page which continuously receives the messages from the Android application and shows the location on Google maps.
Suppose there are 10 Android devices at different places in which our application is running. On the Server end we have to show 10 markers on Google maps at the location of devices.
What I have Done: I have made an application in android which gets Lat and Long from GPS. I'm familiar with socket programming on android. I've implemented the web page on the server end which has Google maps and shows the markers.
Confusion:
How can I make a server?
How can I transfer data from Android to server and what application required at server end which receive the data from Android. Is any desktop or console application needed which bind it-self at particular port of server, or web page is enough for me to achieve this target.
What protocol do I have to use? UDP, TCP/IP, or use the HTTP or HTTPS steam directly?
I just need some direction about my problem because I have never worked in Android and Client Server Communication. If you think this question is vague then please recommend a book about networking or any which you think is suitable for this type of problem.
A common setting can be like this:
Have following things:
A file (PHP) at server's end, whose sole purpose is to inject the data (lat,lng) received from android devices into a MySql database
A file (PHP) at server's end whose sole purpose is to fetch you the data (lat,lng) from the MySql databse. This file should receive a timestamp as its argument and return all the values of lat,lng who have been saved after that timestamp (For this, your database must store timestamp)
A file (HTML+JS) which just handles the map thing, has an AJAX call implemented which polls the second file at regular intervals with a timestamp value to get new lat,lng values. and when it gets the values, it plots them on the map
On the Android devices, make your app in a way that it keeps sending its location to the first PHP file at a particular time interval.
This way, you get what you wanted.
On the other note, If we talk about client-server architecture, a client sends the request and gets the response. that's it. for this, client accesses a server side script to get those responses. same way, your android app accesses a particular server side script and gets the response. That's it.
In the case when you want to implement server initiated communication to android, you'll have to use push mechanism, like Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM)
Cheers.
Afaik...
First you need to get the data of GPS by using Location baser services provided in Android SDK(See Location MAnager, Location Listener etc etc...)
Confusion:- The confusion is that
How can I make a server.
Ans: Cant help you with this because i m not expert at configuring servers
How to transfer data from Android to server and what application required at server end which receive the data from Android. Is any desktop or console application needed which bind it-self at particular port of server, or web page is enough for me to achieve this target.
Ans: You can transfer the data that consists of the Latitude and Longitude using a webservice that recieves the data using get or post methods and then dumps it into your database every time the OnLocationChanged method is called on Location Listener. Preferably u can configure a mysql database in your server and then use it for your data storage. The web page you need to design in such a way that it frequently gets the location related data from the database and then display markers accordingly.
What protocol which I have to use UDP or TCP/IP, or use directly the HTTP or HTTPS steam?
Ans: If you are aware of php then u can use REST services or if you are .Net kind of guy you can use a SOAP webservice that uses simple http post methods to update data to the server.
Hope this helps.