I'm planning to develop a location based Android app. The app needs to store location information such as currentLocation, location info of an address i.e latitude and longitude of each as well as other user info such as name, sex, age etc which i believe i can extract from a fb or g+ login. The app will also include a chat functionality which will allow its users to communicate.
I'm comfortable with Java, but haven't used PHP. But i don't mind spending time learning it if that is the best option in building a backend.
I was wondering if i could use the GAE for the same. I also came across parse.com which can be used as a backend. There may be other options too, which i may not have explored. I'm new to android app development. This will be my first app. Kindly suggest a backend which suits my needs the best. All kinds of inputs are welcomed!
I work at Backbeam. It is a backend-as-a-service and it has support for geolocated data and users authentication using Facebook, Google+, Twitter and more external services (additionally to email + password authentication).
Furthermore, we have plans to release an Open Source version this year.
If you need further information we will be glad to assist you :)
There isn't a right or wrong answer to this really.
For myself, I've been learning and using Python and MongoDB. There are so many web/cloud based hosting services that learning and using a free account for your development shouldn't be a problem no matter your language choice.
If you are writing the app in Java, maybe you want your cloud system to also be similar using JavaScript such as NodeJS.
Related
I am new to Android Studio and I am developing an application like College Management System.
Basically, in my app, there are two logins- one for faculty and one for students.If any faculty uploading any file to the server, then on student side on the same time they should get a notification.
Not sure where to start, so any suggestion about where to look would be really appreciated.
Thanks!
Use Firebase.
Specifically you'd need Cloud Messaging and maybe Authentication.
Both services are completely free and easy to set up (especially if you're developing using Android Studio, because it is integrated with Firebase and allows you to copy/paste code already configured for your FB account).
There's also a well made documentation.
And if your college wants something more the prices are really cheap.
P.S.
I'm no way affiliated with Firebase or Google.
For the past few days, I've been trying to understand what exactly is Firebase. I am in need of some more 'beginner-friendly' answers on the subject. My intention is to create a backend for my Android project. For my previous project , I used a GoDaddy host , PHP, MySQL and it did work just fine.
I am in need of stuff like these :
Storing string data. Like user email , password , profile picture path , number of friends etc.. (in a single row)
Uploading and downloading files. Video , audio
Creating a real time chat messaging system inside the app.
I am currently reading Firebase guides on user authentication. For example there is a method for signing a new user with email and password , but what if I want to store more than just email and password? Is Firebase fully customizable? Is it easy to use , or is it designed for professional developers only?
Firebase is fully customisable yes.
If you want to store more than an email,password etc, you can do so my creating a well structured JSON first. You can then try and map this to firebase db.
Firebase is a good and stable backend as a service platform and it is used by plenty of professional apps. It is fairly easy to use. Follow their youtube channel for tutorials. They have very good tutorials and explanations about how things work. I am in the exact same boat as you, learning firebase.
You may also want to look at alternatives like pubnub and pusher for the requirement of yours. They work in a similar way.
Hope this clears some of your doubts
I am to build an android app that needs a central cloud storage (along with some server coding). My app is somewhat in the footsteps of
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.justyo
I mean i should be able to store a login and registration (possibly FB login in the future too). Then, i will also have to maintain and fetch users' 'friends' in the app along with a status (that can be changed any time by the friends).
I am not new with android dev. I also know ample amount of web development. However, i don't know the approach to this kind of an app that is to use some server side code and online db for android.
I have search a lot on the internet and have found a bunch of stuff, but i am just not getting the confidence as to which approach is what i need here.
Is there something pre-built and given by Google themselves?
Do i have to by a domain, deploy a hidden (UI-less) web service and access it through the android app?
is there a free option out there by google?
Is there a sample demonstration android app out there?
I don't need the code or anything. I am just confused; afraid of starting off in the wrong direction. Please answer so it is easy to understand.
Thank you in advance :)
There is the Google Cloud Platform, specifically App Engine. You can read the Docs here.
You dont't need to register a domain to use the platform. Yes, you will need to deploy a (not necessary UI-less) web service to the cloud, accessed from the Android client through endpoints. Additionally, the service is free up to certain limits.
Sample apps are available for deployment once you create a project from here.
I'm developing a standard Azure .NET cloud service with a sql backend. The sql db holds various bits of information including username and password details. I've a .NET app that communicates with Azure using message encryption over WCF using a custom username/password validator. Also I've got two mobile apps written for Android and iOS which currently use some web services I've defined in an small .asmx file (legacy code to enable the mobile apps to easily call the API). I was wanting to add authentication into the mobile apps, but am slowly sinking under the weight of information :)
I had thought Azure mobile services were the way to go (meaning I would have to rewrite the .asmx file using custom API presumably) but this only seems to offer authentication against identity providers like Google, Facebook etc. Ideally I'd want to use our sql backend as an identity provider, but have read various articles saying this is very tricky to do. In fact one article suggested using a commercial solution called Auth0.
I'm not averse to commercial solutions, but really just wondered what the simplest approach to this should be. Azure mobile services or something else?
Any help steering me in the right direction would be great.
You can do "custom" authentication using your own database as the identity provider if you want to but as noted it does require a bit of work (at least more than just turning on Facebook / Twitter / etc). I have two articles that explain how to set up custom auth using Mobile Services here:
http://chrisrisner.com/Authentication-with-Windows-Azure-Mobile-Services
http://chrisrisner.com/Custom-Authentication-with-Azure-Mobile-Services-and-PikShare
The second link provides information on simplifying the scripts involved as well as using the custom API functionality of Mobile Services to handle registration / logging in. For the most part these scripts can be dropped into your mobile service. However, since you have an existing database you'll want to connect your Mobile Service to, you may run into issues making sure the table structures match up with what Mobile Services expect. You may need to massage your schema / create a table specifically for your Mobile Service with the necessary user information if adding the existing table doesn't work right away.
If I am building an Android app that uses the Facebook SDK and also has a web app that has most of the same functionality, how should the Android app handle social actions? Should it directly make requests to the Facebook API through the SDK or should it post to the web app server through my own API and allow the web-app to make the request to Facebook on behalf of the Android app? Most of the Facebook for Android examples use the former approach however none explicitly discuss the best practice when there is a web backend that will have the same social functionality as the Android app.
I've been putting my mind into a similar problem before. It was a PHP app, but essentially the design choice was to either put the FB-interaction into the frontend (JS-SDK) or into the backend and proxy it (PHP-SDK). Sadly haven't found much guidance either, so I had to make up my own mind.
As so often there seems no per-se answer, it depends on what you are doing with FB and how deep it is integrated into whatever your app/webapp/backend are doing. Is your Android otherwise more a client-side app or does it rely on other features delivered by the web-app via web-service? Is it somehow integrated with users actions that are dispatched to the backend, or does it just offer some additional gimmicks (e.g. 'Like' button, anything in the lines) Are you using the SDK to authenticate and pull user related data from FB (email, name) and does that information play a role in your backend?
As I see it, it boils down to the following:
Direct communication with FB is a lot simpler to implement as you won't have an additional layer between your app and FB, i.e. proxy code, etc. So if FB is just loosely coupled it's likely the 'good-enough' option.
Patching FB from frontend to backend can get nasty - especially if you want to authenticate via FB it's kinda complex at first. However, you'll have all FB logic in a single place, shared by Android-App and Webapp, so it's obviously easier to maintain later and better to integrate with other interactions your backend might be offering.
Hope that provides some value, would be eager to see other opinions too.
Well I think both approaches are correct but the choice depends on mostly what you already have in place on the server side and if you are planing to use the same functionality from different apps like (Android,iOS, Windows Phone apps). In that case it makes sense to just get user token with permissions you require on the front end and let the web server talk to facebook using that token. You could even save this token for the user so they don't have to give permissions again if for example you have web registration and app registration. In our app we are using this approach since there are basically five front ends (Android,iOS, Desktop,Mobile Web,Full Web) this way application developers just get token using sdk on there platform (you have to use tokens and not user name, password because of facebook rules for security). On the other hand if all Facebook communication is used only inside your app and the server doesn't need to know much about it put api calls in the app.
In my opinion, it is best to use the available SDKs/APIs for each given platform instead of trying to write your own centralization and use a single library. Since you are specifically interested in how the Android app should handle social interactions, I suggest using the Facebook SDK for Android.
While it does increase the size of the code you must maintain and the SDKs/APIs you must learn as your list of platforms increases, the most important factor for this approach is the user experience. By sticking with the native libraries, and growing your app as those libraries evolve, you will be providing your users with an experience that they are most likely to be used to. They won't have to learn how to use your app, but will be able to make posts, update their status, and look at their friend list using controls that they are accustomed to using. Additionally, you will be able to take advantage of specific platform functionality (in the mobile case, such as having your app post to a users feed in a way that promotes your app: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/tutorials/androidsdk/3.0/games/feed/)