I want to create an Android Application for a Blogger blog. The content is contributed by some handful of people including me. With all the search that I have done, I am able to find out SAX parser libraries that pull the data and show the content in WebView and the like.
I need to be able to save the feed data on the device. When the user requests, sync only the latest content and provide them with the ability to read the content offline. I have the following queries.
Is there any official Blogger API Library that I can use to consume the blog entries.
Any links on how to store this data for offline reading.
If I store the content in an SQLite database, how can I show the images if any in an entry (Need this info once the above two get answered)
I think blogger provides feed data as RSS, Atom etc. Which one will be suited for use in a mobile app - the pros and cons of the same will be useful.
Eagerly awaiting interesting replies.
P.S. I know that one can use services like feedly for this functionality, but I want to learn to write an app like this myself and also create a custom app for our blog.
Ok, so far I have not received any answers. So I will just update as an answer whatever I have been able to solve.
There is an official Blogger API from Google. You need to add a request to start using it. The usage is capped, but gives a lot of flexibility in terms of using it.
I think we can store the content in a local SQLite database for offline reading.
No idea on how to work with images inside the blog entry
I think we can parse the blogger feed data without any restrictions, just that it won't be as easy as with Blogger API.
Links : https://code.google.com/apis/console,
https://developers.google.com/blogger/docs/3.0/getting_started
Related
Can someone give me a broad overview of what pieces would have to be in place to implement a user-content-driven Android app with a web-based database? Or, link me to some helpful relevant articles on web and app architecture to study?
Further, if II already have a website where people can add content and others can vote on it, and I want to have the same capabilities available via an app, utilizing the same central database, how would I proceed?
I'm guessing I could provide remote authentication into the site via the Android app, and then enable the user's content submissions and votes to sync with the database (and website), but how is that handshake process done? And what elements of the site have to be exposed for the app to "connect to"?
Where are lines drawn between a website just being presented inside an Android web view and being made mobile friendly, versus a stand-alone app having the web/database functionality?
I know if I already have a mobile-friendly website, it might seem logical to simply direct people to the mobile site, but obviously a lot of people use apps and there are some benefits over mobile web.
Sorry for such a general question, but I can't seem to find any good examples of people doing this to learn from, even though I imagine it must be very common.
Thanks!
The best practice is to build REST API on server side to manage content from database, and just hook to it with mobile apps. There is a lot of different libraries to do that on both Android/iOS
create your rest api and make it return json.
i think that the better way is to use okhttp http://square.github.io/okhttp/
for http connection,
retrofit and gson http://square.github.io/retrofit/
for parsing json results;
I have a client that wishes to show his drop cam feed in his own app, not the app that drop cam provides. However after calling Dropcam, it seems they offer no such solution and it was advised that I look online for a solution. I have, but it seems the threads are old and there is not a lot of helpful info out there.
I know Dropcam has a beta API but I don't know if I'd need that. They talk of accessing camera info, and other info, which I think I wouldn't really need. I just want to access the feed and isn't that up in the cloud anyways? I wonder if there's a 3rd party video viewer API that can handle this?
Any help would be much appreciated.
You seem to be a little confused so let me help you with that.
When accessing 3rd party content you need to access that information through their services or API. Once you have built a dummy application or understand what information you can access, you can further build an application based off of that info.
Now if your client or friend wants their feeds, you will have to go through the DropCam API and their AUTH system before accessing the feed and they will provide that to you with either a SOAP or REST service response in either XML or JSON.
You parse that information and use the data appropriately in your personal application.
This is a very vague questions so i hope i helped you out.
I want to create a native android application for a wordpress website. I want the user to be able to
view the blogs according to the categories.One approach I found is to use xml-rpc api which is
provided by Wordpress. With administrator rights it is working, but I would like to read blog
categories and posts without hardcoding administrator credentials for security reasons.
Another approach I found is to use RSS feed parsing. But I'm not able to get through it properly. Is there any other alternative for doing this? Any suggestion or advice would really be helpful..
An other way you can explore is to use the JSON API Plugin. I used it for a previous app, and the features provided are quite good to retrieve blog content. Anyway you retrieve data in a JSON file then you have to treat it. I used Jackson library which provided simple features too.
I have a website which is already created in Drupal. In one section it consists of a form with different fields which on submit returns you the result from the database.
I want to create an android application to access this search functionality by the form created in Android and also display the results there. Is there a way by which I can write some sort of web service which doesn't change any code for the website and give me desired results.
Can somebody guide me what can I do here? I don't have much knowledge of Drupal but I am familiar with PHP.
You will want to look at using the Services module. Sumit Kataria gave a good presentation on how one would go about developing android/iphone apps using Drupal as a base at DrupalCon Chicago 2011 (there is a video of the session). He covers more then what you are looking for, but does provides a good introduction on how to go about using services.
This is my website: http://www.stustu.co.uk..
I want to create an app that can pull down the listings from this website and display the entries in the form I want; enable users to manage their online accounts conveniently within the app; post new entries. Basically, a similar app to Amazon and eBay.
But I've no clue about how to query the information from the website in the app...
The website itself is WordPress based (quite simple, therefore), and my initial thought was to find some API from WordPress. I did find the official WordPress app, which comes with the source code, but it helps little as its code mainly deals with blogging.
So here's my question:
What are the normal ways a web developer would use on the server side to achieve my aim?
Is that achievable for WordPress?
If not, are there workarounds?
I'm a new self-taught developer, sorry that the question is a bit broad.
The most common approach when you're trying to communicate between an app and a website is to use a web service. Popular architectures include using REST or SOAP to communicate with your server.
This video will teach you how to use REST interface properly on your Android application, while in this link you will find that using SOAP has its disadvantages over REST especially on Android(or mobile in general).
I personally recommend using REST APIs with responses in JSON format for your web service. Twitter did the right thing with their own rest api, and you can structure yours similarly.
Other links you will be finding useful as you develop your application:
google-gson
jackson JSON
http://blogs.developerforce.com/developer-relations/2011/02/rest-api-android-awesome.html
Sorry about not answering your question about Wordpress, as I never had the opportunity to use it. For my apology, have this potato.
How much experience do you have with android? If you have none you should go find the getting started tutorials on the developer site and complete a few of them to familiarize your self with the structure of an android application before you attempt something like this.
The next thing to consider is: does your site look and act nicely on mobile? If so do you want your application to simply be a dedicated browser that pulls up your site? Or do you want to create the entire application natively? In the latter case you'll have to build (or find) some sort of APIs that allow you to tie in to the functionality of your site from within the java in the application.
My experience is mostly on Android so I cannot suggest any strategies or examples for how you'd go about setting up your APIs. But I do know if you attempt to build something that sophisticated natively on android with little experience you'll likely get frustrated early.