I have a database schema where i am loading a bunch of clients from a server with data such as first name, last name and id into my db when the app starts. THis data is then displayed in a list format to the user. I have another tab in my app that switches to a view which shows the client list sorted by id into sections similar to the people app with section headers. The trouble is, the user can switch to the sorted list tab immediately upon startup and that list relies on the db already being populated with client objects. It would be making a query on an empty db if the user switches immediately. Is there any way to block that call until the db is fully loaded with the client data? I know java has synchronized methods, so can i sync on the db query or do anything like that?
The easiest is to add an isReady boolean and to loop it is true (assuming a seperate thread is populating the db). Alternatively you can disable the button until it is ready, which is a better solution.
Related
I want to make an android app that works offline. For the data part, I want to have some data in a json file, and whenever my app is open firstly that JSON file is fetched, and from the fetched data I want to make tables entries in android room database(offline). So that, let say if user liked some quotes, then i can change the state of that quote as liked in room db, and when user clicked on Liked Quotes navigation, I can show those offline stored quotes which were liked (OfCourse when user delete the app that data will be lost). The problem I'm facing is where to fetch that data file and create entries in room db. If I do this in onCreate() then whenever user will open this app the duplicate entries will be created everytime. How to make those entries only ones?
There's several ways to do it. One way is to include a random UUID in each element, and make that column in the DB have a UNIQUE constraint. Then re-adding it will fail (alternatively you can use an UPSERT and then it will automatically update the data in case the data changed).
Another way is to just not process the file if it already exists in onCreate. Your logic can be
if(network_exists) {
copy_file_from_network()
}
else if(json file exists) {
return
}
else {
copy_file_from_assets()
}
process_json_file()
Actually I can see a good argument for doing both- that way if there are updates to existing rows you process them, but if there's no new data you don't waste your time.
As for a good place to put this- I'd be running this during your splash screen if you have one, so the user has an indication that you may be processing for a while.
I'm having trouble building a twitter style load more button in the middle of my recyclerview. I'm currently working with a syncAdapter to fetch new data before inserting them into a db. I also have a ContentProvider and i'm using a Loader which is a CursorLoader to update the recycler_view's adapter.
When the syncAdapter fetches newer data than what exists in the app and there is more data available between the last of the new items fetched and the previous top item I want to show a LoadMore button in between.
My would-be logic for activating the loadMore button in my adapter is if the last row id of the newly fetched data set doesn't exist in the db. But the problem is I don't know where to perform this logic.
I can't make it in onLoadFinished because it is called after the new data is inserted, so I can't check the incoming data against the old data there, because by then the id of the last row in the incoming data set has already been written to the db.
I've thought of making the check while unparsing the incoming json before inserting to the db. I can check if the last id received exists in the db there, and know if a load more button is warranted, but letting the adapter know from there seems non-trivial. Since data is fetched on another thread(syncadapter or a service I've got), i'd have to write the fact that loadmore exists between two rows in SharedPreferences or send a broadcast. Is there a more elegant way of doing this, maybe i've missed something.
I'm open to suggestions.
In my app, I have a button called "Contacts" that allows the user to select contacts to add to his or her friend list. When clicked, the user is shown a list view of all the user's contacts. Each list view row contains the contact display name, icon, email address, and a button. The name, icon, and email are all fetched using the ContactsContract class.
The problem I'm running into is that processing all of the user's contacts is very computationally expensive.
I tried two solutions:
In a CursorAdapter, I tried modifying the bindView method. I passed in a cursor that queried the user's contacts and in the bindView method, I executed an asynchronous call to my server to return the relation of the contact to the current user. i.e. if the contact had the app installed and was a friend, the button would display "remove". This call would determine the button type and set the appropriate onClickListeners.
This didn't work because it would cause the list to be very slow, not smooth, and feel very laggy.
I just tried loading the contacts and the server queries in some different thread. When it would finish loading, I would initialize a BaseAdapter with the the name, icon, email, and button type already determined in the different thread.
This didn't work because it took 30 - 40 seconds to load the contacts. However, it was much smoother once it finished loading.
How can fix this issue?
Should I get the data from the server first or pre-load it for each item in the adapter?
Edit:
The layout would look similar to this:
What i would do is to load both the contacts and the remote data, create a custom class to hold them, put it inside an ArrayList<MyCustomContactClass>, and only after its all ready i would load the adaptar into the listview.
I currently successfully use a SQLite database which is populated with data from the web. I create an array of values and add these as a row to the database.
Currently to update the database, on starting the activity I clear the database and repopulate it using the data from the web.
Is there an easy method to do one of the following?
A: Only update a row in the table if data has changed (I'm not sure how I could do this unless there was a consistent primary key - what would happen is a new row would be added with the changed data, however there would be no way to know which of the old rows to remove)
B: get all of the rows of data from the web, then empty and fill the database in one go rather than after getting each row
I hope this makes sense. I can provide my code but I don't think it's especially useful for this example.
Context:
On starting the activity, the database is scanned to retrieve values for a different task. However, this takes longer than it needs to because the database is emptied and refilled slowly. Therefore the task can only complete when the database is fully repopulated.
In an ideal world, the database would be scanned and values used for the task, and that database would only be replaced when the complete set of updated data is available.
Your main concern with approach (b) - clearing out all data and slowly repopulating - seems to be that any query between the empty and completion of the refill would need to be refused.
You could simply put the empty/repopulate process in a transaction. Thereby the database will always have data to offer for reading.
Alternatively, if that's not a viable solution, how about appending newer results to the existing ones, but inserted as with an 'active' key set to 0. Then, once the process of adding entries is complete, use a transaction to find and remove currently active entries, and (in the same transaction) update the inactive entries to active.
I have an application that uses a pre-polulated database to list events. The app allows people to save these events to their favorites by setting a '1' to the column isFavorite. Then the user can view only a list of 'favorited' events which searches for all rows that have isFavorite = 1.
If any changes happen to the events or I need to add more to the list, I have to make those changes and then push the update to the app which completely writes over the table, clearing out their favorites.
Is there any way that I can, on upgrade, save a list of id's of all the events that they have set to their favorites, then after the new database has been loaded, to set all id's in that list to 1 so the user doesn't lose their favorited data?
If there are any other better solutions to this problem I would really appreciate it, this has been the biggest hurdle for me so far.
I guess, you have a SQLiteOpenHelper-class? This class must be extended and then provides two functions: onCreate (which is called when the Database is queried and it doesn't exist (Normally creates your Database in the first place)) and onUpdate (which is queried when the Database structure should be updated).
The onUpdate-method has an SQLiteDatabase-Object parameter, which is your Database. You can then Query the information you need, save them and then create the new Database-tables. After that, you can insert your saved data back into the Database.
Can't you cope with thus in your DB design? Have a user favourites table that holds id's. So long as these id's don't change upgrade won't affect it surely?
One possible solution is backing up part or all of your database to restore at a later time. I found this guide quite handy http://www.screaming-penguin.com/node/7749
Alternatively, you may save their favorites as a SharedPreferences. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/SharedPreferences.html for more information on that.