Using an online .txt file as a data source - android

I am building an Android app for a client and most of the data that i need is contained in an online .txt file attached to my clients website. I've never used an online .txt file as a data source before and don't really know where to begin?! Can anyone point me in the direction of a good tutorial on the subject.
Many Thanks in advance
P.S. I haven't asked whether it's possible because i have assumed it is due to the fact you can use an internal .txt file as a data source

I think the best approach is to download the file on the device and then read it like a normal file. If the file changes on a period of time, then configure the app to download and read the file and then update the local info in the app.
I don't think you can use an online txt as a DataSource, but you can implement this so you have an abstract source for your file, and then just call read on it.

Expose the txt/xml file over web,if you want to get it down to phone use URL loader and load it to the phone and operate if you want to use it online (like others may also be using it) it will be a bit complex in order to deal with data coming from more then one source but possible. clear you question a bit more.

Related

Android App to talk to a web server, download a file and parse

I am new to this. I have the Android SDK installed with Eclipse. I can work with basic activities and layouts.
I am looking to write this Android application that will;
1) Allow users to sign-in using a pre-allocated password.
2) Login and change the password.
3) Every time the user opens the app, he downloads a CSV file from a server to the SD card.
4) The app parses from the file and displays them on several activities and small frames inside the app.
Think of it as an informational application. But, I'd like to add some intelligence on top of it after I get this done.
I have read many articles and topics but none of them give me a specific approach to do this faster. I have very little time for development.
If there's a similar application that you're familiar with, I'd like to take a look at the code.
I want to know exactly (the code) on how the communication between the app and a linux based server on the web needs to be established. Right now, there's only a CSV file (or an EXCEL file - which one's better to parse? How to decide?) there.
Also, when the CSV file is up to date, I wouldn't want it to download the file again. How to prevent it?
As I said, I am new - so please be patient.
Thanks
If you are new to this and want to develop something fast, why do it the hardest way, in java? There are so many easy toolkits out there, e.g. RFO.Basic, you will be amazed how much you can achieve, fast, that way.
(You asked several questions) Easiest to parse? If you don't have Excel installed on your Android device, the CSV is of course easier to parse, needing only text tools. However, if you have a choice of formats, why not use XML? If you have never worked with XML, there is a little learning curve, but there are lots of tutorials on the web. After that, you'll never want to go back to CSV.
Your last question: how to prevent download of unchanged file? Is this about a big file? In that case start with quickly downloading the hash (checksum) of the file, so that the client can decide if the file has changed.

Android, storing big number of small images linked to database

I have been asked to create a tiny android app.
In everyday work i code for .NET and I have no experience connected with Android, but as it is a really small app I guess it's going to be a good experience rather than something hard.
The core of the app would be a small database (probably XML, unless somebody suggest better solution) that would contain categories, names of the institutions assigned with each category and logo (not very high resolution I guess a single file would be <100kB) of the institution.
The database also would not be very big - I expect not more than 1000 records in total. The DB has to be totally offline and local, it cannot require Internet access when operating.
The model I assume would be to ship new version of the application when the database changes (which is not going to be very frequent).
What is the best way to deal with these requirements?
My first idea was to create an XML file that would contain the records and link to the image. The XML and all the images linked to it would be stored in single file (preferably zip) that would be stored in app resources. This is very good as it is going to be very easy to update the database.
The second idea that somebody suggested me would be to use SQLite and store images in BLOB. In general I have read that it isn't a good idea to store images in database directly, and I am afraid if it's going to be possible to meet all requirements mentioned above.
Mostly I have no idea how to update the database easily and attach it to new version of application.
Any suggestions?
I would be grateful for any response.
I wouldn't go about using XML to save your data and by no means zip anything.
I think your way of thinking is ok, but you're making things really complicated for yourself.
Seeing as you're used to .NET I suppose you're also pretty confident with SQL, so I'd suggest you have a look at how to use the built-in SQLite database in Android.
If you would go the XML route you'd have to serialize and de-serialize the XML file over and over again and then parse the XML. Ok you don't have a lot of data, but searching inside an XML file with at least 1000 nodes would be slow in comparison to the performance of a database.
Also upgrading an existing SQLite database is not that hard - Android has methods for that (onUpgrade coming from the SQLiteOpenHelper).
As to saving images I'm assuming that you won't fetch new pictures from the Internet, so it would be best just to store them in the drawable folder of your app (be mindful of different screensizes) and then reading them into an ImageView when needed. To figure out what image should go for what institution I would store either the image name of each image in the SQLite database or store the resource id for each image in the database - for instance R.drawable.myawesomepictureformyinstitution.
I know my answer is somewhat "superficial", but your question is also somewhat "broad" and hard to answer without me actually writing most of the code, and that's not my intention ;-)
Hope this helps - let me know if anything is unclear.

Adding a file to Android internal storage at design time

I've been messing around with Android, after having read Android Application Development for Dummies, and nothing else (just to illustrate how little I know) I'm trying to create my first useful, but very simple app.
The app should do the following:
prompt me for a password
read a string (persisted somewhere in the memory)
use my password as a key to decrypt the string
parse the string as xml and display the data to me
other than being a coding exercise, this would serve me as a sneaky way of storing sensitive data that's too copious to remember.
I don't want the app to handle input of this data, I want it to come pre-filled with it. (never mind reusability right now) I don't want to hardcode the string in the code though.
I've decided to store the string in a file in the app's internal storage (if this is a bad idea, feel free to suggest something else). I've found plenty of examples on how to work with these files. But they all deal with creating the file at runtime. What I'd like to do is create the file as part of my Eclipse project, and then have it available to the app at runtime.
Is it possible to do this?
What I'd like to do is create the file as part of my Eclipse project,
and then have it available to the app at runtime. Is it possible to do
this?
Yes it's possible, you can create your file in the assets or res/raw directory, then fill its content when the app is running.
However, I'm not sure if this is the best place if you have sensitive information to store in.

Create an output document from Android App

I have an android app where I will be capturing various information in different forms and storing into the SQL lite database for tracking/viewing purposes. I want to give the option of exporting the information into a RTF/PDF/Doc and give the option of sending it thru email.
I looked at various similar questions posted here earlier but didnt get a definitive answer. I saw the Android PDF Writer library http://sourceforge.net/projects/apwlibrary/ but this seems very basic. I considered iText but I think there would be issues with licensing if in future I want to sell this app..
Basically I want to define a template document with a structure that will be copied and content added to it based on what the user wants to export...
Any help is greatly appreciated...
I wanted some elegant solution where I can store a template in the assets folder and replace whatever I want to create the output document. Finally I went with html. I created a html template and put it into the assets folder. After that it was as simple as read assets, read db, do string.replaceall and write the output html and email it out.....
OpenOffice.org's Universal Network Objects (UNO) interface to programmatically generate MS-Word compatible documents (*.doc), as well as corresponding PDF documents.
its basically java so it should work on android too.

Upload file for primitive chat

I need a fast way to upload files to a ftp server.The files will be used for a primitive chat.Something like a timer and every 5 sec checks to see if the file x was added,if it was added open it and show it.
So please tell me an easy way to upload a file,because from google,I got only hundreds of lines of code.And yes,I need it for a FTP server.
Also it would be awesome to tell me a way to acces a file trough ftp open it and show it.(don't really need to download).
You should use the org.apache.commons.net.ftp.FTPClient library - it's free and implements fairly easily with Android. You can find a pretty easy how-to at the bottom of this blog post:
http://hoang17.com/posts/android/android-how-to-upload-a-file-via-ftp
That article should be especially helpful as it shows you how to store a string as data in a specific filename.
To be honest though - FTP seems like the absolute worst way to create any form of chat communication. :)
Cheers.

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