I've created an app which pulls data from a JSON file and displays it.
Now that app is specific for one sports team. I want to create the same app for 10 other teams.
Plus there will be an accompanying pro version of the app.
I'll be doing the same thing for the iOS version.
The only difference between the apps will be colors, logos and url of the data source.
I wanted to know if there was a better way to create apps. Instead of individually creating 40 different projects.
It will help me in updating the app as opposed to copy pasting the same code 40X.
Are there any special features available in eclipse and xcode to do that?
Thanks
I would simply swap out the resources for each team and rebuild the app.
For example, with Android, maintain an AndroidManifest.xml and a res/ subdirectory tree for each team. When it is time to build, simply copy over the resources into the project, overwriting the previous team.
I don't know of any existing tool to do this automatically, however.
Have you looked into using PhoneGap and just create a "mobile site" that detects the app that is connecting and adjusts the data/styles accordingly.
There's always the possibility of creating ONE app allowing the user to set the team preference upon first load, and swapping out resources programmatically.
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Upon reviewing your responses, you seem to want a strategy to manage your resources. Since different OS has different resource requirements (screen-size, iOS 2x png for example). The most common strategy is to keep a separate resource structure and setup build target to copy/xcopy replace these image resources before build. Source control + an OSX build server would be most beneficial.
After creating these apps I've found the following way to be the most easiest way to create a similar app.
Android:
1. Select the project from the project explorer sidebar copy it and then paste it. Give it a new name.
Select the new project and then right click > Android Tools > Change Package Name.
Give it a new package name. Eclipse will give you an option to refactor the code, say yes.
Go to res/values and change all strings.
Change the icons and other images.
Go to src click the package and then refactor it. Give it the new package name.
Go to manifest file and rename any old names which might still be lingering.
Related
I had created a bulky activity and now I need to modify a lot in it. I decided to first copy paste the entire code on text box but I do not think it is the right way. I want to save the activity consisting of xml file and .java file in a single file that can be recalled if required. Is this possible or should I copy and paste both file to some location manually.
Thanks
In modern Software development it is often a good practice to use some kind of version control system.
A lot of people are using systems based on git like GitLab, GitHub, BitBucket etc.
These tools help to manage your source code in different versions and enable you to switch between versions easily.
In your case you could decide to work with github and after pushing your project you could compare your recent code with the new one until you decide your refactoring is done.
If you decide to dive into this you find many tutorials with google.
e.G https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-git
How do I use the ADT Translation Manager (http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/installing-adt.html#tmgr)? After I install it, there's a menu option to Upload String for Translation, but that tells me I don't have a translation project yet.
When I go to the Play Store to create a project, it requires me to upload files to get started, and I would have to finish the flow and pay in order for it to create the project.
How do I use the plugin to upload the files? I have a rather large project, and it would be an enormous pain to upload the files one at a time through the web tool.
I'm not familiar with that, but I manage my translation by my own.
transai - https://github.com/Jintin/transai
It's a command line tool I wrote to manage my Android & iOS text.
It can generate csv files from your strings.xml, and you can do translate according the csv file.
After you finish, you can transform it back to strings.xml.
It more readable for now IT man to help me do translate this way.
You can give it a try.
If you have any further question, you can leave issue to me.
Thank you.
We have an Android project where we maintain a single code base for different customers, what will be the fastest/most efficient way to compile for different customers every time? Few options I found and my questions:
writing scripts: to replace resources folder and edit app name, version, etc.
Using Android Library Projects It is gonna be quite impractical to separate current project as Library projects, I am thinking whether it is possible to save some settings and resources files as a Library project and just import different library projects for different compilation?
Storing settings and resources on a remote server Is it possible to store resource files and some app settings (xml, constants, etc) on a remote server, and download them and replace to the app when the user first launch the apk? Where will these files be stored?
Any other options you would suggest?
Android Studio provides a feature called "flavors" that allow you to quickly define different configurations from a single code base. I have just learned about this in the last couple of days, so I don't know a lot more than this.
The best way I've found is a post build script step. Use a default set of resources/assets for your main build. This is your default apk, use it for default testing. Save the unsigned apk this builds. Then for the customer specific APKs, open up the unsigned apk (its just a zip file), overwrite any overwritten files, then sign the new version.
This works fine so long as you don't need to change code for different customers. It also doesn't put any unneeded assets/resources in any build, so you don't leak info to one customer about your other customers by including their files.
If you do need to change code, the best way is to do a runtime check on a variable from a settings file. And overwrite the settings file the same way you do everything else.
As an added bonus, if you need to you can write a very fancy system that would allow the customer to upload his own files to override your defaults (including allowing them to override some of your settings), so you don't need to deal with a dozen change requests. That requires a lot more work though.
in our company we are creating a product that is sold to different customers only changing visuals aspects (logos, trademarks, text, etc ...). We doubt how to handle this as we need to maintain a base (with their testings) and customized versions of these products (different package name and some modifications asides).
The more difficult for us is we handle this with Git and projects libraries that need to keep together. We need to keep easy to create new products and maintain updates for each one quickly
which workflow do you recommended to handle this? we have a mix of git + submodules + branches + libraries projects, but it's hard to create an android libproyect base
I don't fully understand your question so if you could write some more info it would be useful for others to help you. The part I understood was the problem of managing multiple projects that have same code but different resources and manifest files. On our project we had a similar problem developing for 3 different servers where code would stay the same but links, api keys and package names would need to change, even logo images might need to be different sometimes adding "integration icon/development icon" etc. What I did in this case was to create one Android library project where all the code and resources that are shared are stored and in our case 3 other projects that reference the library and have special res/drawable folder and strings in value folder where api keys and other settings are stored. This turned out to be great fit for our purposes since you can just pick a run configuration for project to be run and Android will load required resources. You could do this for any number of projects without any files being duplicated and taking space in your git repository. This approach actually allows you to let your designers change drawables for diffident projects by putting different images in folders without or with just a little involvement from developers. If you are skill full you could even write some ant scripts that build and sign projects for them so they can test on devices to see how real app looks.
I have a small Android application that uses different sets of files (a couple of images, a small SQLite DB and a couple of XML files) depending on the specific task at hand.
I know I can include my files into the main application APK using resources or assets but I would be happy to distribute them in a separated APK.
How can I create a data-only APK file?
How can I distribute it? In particular, do I have to do anything special for a data-only package (for example for associating it to the main application package in some way)?
(I'm intentioned to give the user a link to the data package and ask him to install it. No automatic installation required.)
How can I install my files into the internal or into the external storage area of my application? Is it possible at all to install files into the internal storage area created by the main application installer? Do I have to set any particular permission for this?
My approach to this would be to create a wrapper app that's nothing but a content-provider and serves up the files per request by your main app. This would allow you to supply different data packages for the user -- you could even have your main app select between those relatively easily.
It looks like that the commonly accepted way to have the same application with different contents (or styles, or configurations) is to use an Android Library Project for the common code (that is: the whole application, the "engine", the "app framework") and a standard Android Application Project for the contents (that is: an application that actually contains just data). A little bit confusing, just because the "library" here is actually the whole "app", but this seems to be the way to go.
More in detail:
Create an Android Library Application and put into it as much code as you can (all of the non-changing stuff). Please note that this library cannot be launched and cannot be distributed alone. It must be included in a hosting application.
Create a standard Android Application. Include your library into this project. Put in /res and in /asset all of your data (files, XML, etc.).
Compile everything and distribute.
Repeat this cycle every time you need a different version. Different because of data, style, configuration or anything else. Publish the resulting app with a new name.
For what regards me, I'm not completely satisfied by this approach.
A possible alternative is preprocessing the source code with Ruby, Python, Perl, GIT, bash, Ant, Maven, Rake or any other tool that is able to read a file from here, make some change here and there, and write the file there.
The general outline is something like this:
Make a "template" application. Leave your /res and /assset empty.
Run a custom-made script. The script reads a configuration file, copy the /res and /asset files from your repository into the project /res and /asset directories, changes some Java source file and creates/changes some XML file.
Compile and distribute (with a new name, of course).
Using GIT or other SCMs, you just make a new branch for every new version and compile it. Not very elegant (because it can strongly interfere with the normal use of the SCM) but...
There are a few example of these approaches on the web. I'm not completely satisfied by them, either.
Frankly, what the Android ecosystem should offer to solve this problem is some kind of "in-app package manager". Something like the Eclipse Update Manager. This would allow us to use the same application framework to handle different scenarios.
As an alternative, a solid, officially-supported, template-based code-generation mechanism would be nice. Something in the spirit of "Software Production Line": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_production_line . Have a look at fw4spl, for example: http://code.google.com/p/fw4spl/ .