Develop Reference

Writing an audio file to websocket using IBM Watson Android sdk

I realized after going through a post in the IBM developer forums that the android sdk reads bytes from the mic recording and writes them to the websocket. I am now trying to read bytes from an audio file on memory and write them to the websocket. How should I do this? So far I have:
public class AudioCaptureThread extends Thread{
private static final String TAG = "AudioCaptureThread";
private boolean mStop = false;
private boolean mStopped = false;
private int mSamplingRate = -1;
private IAudioConsumer mIAudioConsumer = null;
// the thread receives high priority because it needs to do real time audio capture
// THREAD_PRIORITY_URGENT_AUDIO = "Standard priority of the most important audio threads"
public AudioCaptureThread(int iSamplingRate, IAudioConsumer IAudioConsumer) {
android.os.Process.setThreadPriority(android.os.Process.THREAD_PRIORITY_URGENT_AUDIO);
mSamplingRate = iSamplingRate;
mIAudioConsumer = IAudioConsumer;
}
// once the thread is started it runs nonstop until it is stopped from the outside
#Override
public void run() {
File path = Activity.getContext.getExternalFilesDir(null);
File file = new File (path, "whatstheweatherlike.wav");
int length = (int) file.length();
ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
byte[] b = new byte[length];
FileInputStream in = null;
try {
in = new FileInputStream(file);
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
try {
for (int readNum; (readNum = in.read(b)) != -1;) {
bos.write(b, 0, readNum);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
byte[] bytes = bos.toByteArray();
mIAudioConsumer.consume(bytes);
}
However, Activity.getContext is not recognized. I can convert the file to bytes in MainActivity but how do I then write it to the websocket? Am I on the right track or is this not the right way? If it is, how do I solve this problem?
Any help is appreciated!

Activity.getContext is not recognized because there's no reference to Activity, since it's just a Thread. You would have to pass in the Activity, although it would likely make more sense just to pass in the Context if you need it.
You've got the right idea that you can create a FileInputStream and use that. You might like to use our MicrophoneCaptureThread as a reference. It'd be a very similar situation, except you'd be using your FileInputStream instead of reading from the microphone. You can check it out (and an example project that uses it) here: https://github.com/watson-developer-cloud/android-sdk/blob/master/library/src/main/java/com/ibm/watson/developer_cloud/android/library/audio/MicrophoneCaptureThread.java

How to load quickly the image from the url in the ImageView of the normal android view(not list view)?

My internet connection is very fast. Despite that my image loads very slow in the app. Here is the code i have been using. As suggested I have been using async method to perform certain task seperately..
public class ItemPage extends Activity{
ImageView image;
String url;
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
image = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.img);
//getting url from the parent activity
Intent intent = getIntent();
Bundle extras = intent.getExtras();
if(extras != null) url = extras.getString("bigurl");
//async call
new DownloadFilesTask().execute();
}
private class DownloadFilesTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void> { //working part
Drawable drawable;
#Override
protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {
try {
drawable =drawableFromUrl(url);
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
return null;
}
protected void onPostExecute(Void result) {
image.setImageDrawable(drawable);
}
}
public static Drawable drawableFromUrl(String url) throws IOException {
Bitmap x;
HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();
connection.connect();
InputStream input = connection.getInputStream();
x = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input);
return new BitmapDrawable(x);
}
}
Please help me. Is there any way to load the image faster from the url? Thanks in advance for your time.

i think you want to use Aquery Library .
it is load images very speedly.
refer this link

This works for me.
Bitmap mIcon_val;
URL newurl;
private void loadImage() {
Thread backgroundThread = new Thread() {
#Override
public void run() {
// do second step
try {
newurl = new URL(image_url);
mIcon_val = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(newurl
.openConnection().getInputStream());
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
} catch (IOException e) {
}
Message msg = Message.obtain();
msg.what = 123;
handler.sendMessage(msg);
}
};
}
private Handler handler = new Handler() {
#Override
public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
switch (msg.what) {
case 123:
imageView.setImageBitmap(mIcon_val);
break;
}
}
};
For calling the thread, you can use
backgroundThread.start();

My internet connection is very fast. Despite that my image loads very slow in the app.
It doesnt mean you can download image very fast when you have a really fast connection, it could be that the web server have a limit download speed for each connection, or the server is far from your current location. I would recommend to check the download speed of the server you are trying to connection first, if it is slow then it is not code but the server itself.

you may try using picasso library.it has several functions to compress,crop images that may help in downloading images at better rates.the link provides the full documentation of usage of the library-
http://square.github.io/picasso/

Here's something you can do to speed up the image processing side of things.
When you decode the stream you are converting it to an in-memory raster format. A 32bit image at 500x500 will take 1 mb of memory (500x500x4bytes). the native pixel format varies by device, and the fastest performance is to match the bitmap's pixel format to the system's pixel format so the system doesn't need to convert the image from it's native format to the window format.
Older devices in particular will use the 16 bit format. The image would be stored at 32bits, and then converted to 16bits when it's drawn to the screen. On these devices, you would be saving half the memory storage and avoiding a costly pixelwise conversion by decoding the image at 16 bits instead of at 32 bits. On newer devices that have the memory, it's better to store the image at 32 bits to avoid the conversion penalty.
So somewhere early on, store the pixel format that is used by the system. It will either be a 16 bit format (RGB_565) or a 32 bit format (8bits per pixel per color)
// default to 32 bits per pixel
Config bitmapConfig = Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888 ; //RGB_565 | ARGB_8888
WindowManager wm = (WindowManager)context.getSystemService(Context.WINDOW_SERVICE);
int bmp_cfg = wm.getDefaultDisplay().getPixelFormat();
if (bmp_cfg == PixelFormat.RGBA_8888 || bmp_cfg == PixelFormat.RGBX_8888 || bmp_cfg == PixelFormat.RGB_888){
bitmapConfig = Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888;
} else {
bitmapConfig = Bitmap.Config.RGB_565;
}
Later, when you are decoding the bitmap, use the window manager's default pixel format so that it will create the bitmap with the correct pixel format while decoding (rather than converting in a second pass)
BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
options.inPreferredConfig = bitmapConfig; // match pixel format to widnow system's format
Bitmap bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input, null, options);
bitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(bitmap);
You can also play with the sample size to adjust the bitmap, but at 500x500 you probably need the whole image anyway.

how to get bitmap information and then decode bitmap from internet-inputStream?

background
suppose i have an inputStream that was originated from the internet of a certain image file.
i wish to get information about the image file and only then to decode it.
it's useful for multiple purposes, such as downsampling and also previewing of information before the image is shown.
the problem
i've tried to mark&reset the inputStream by wrapping the inputStream with a BufferedInputStream , but it didn't work:
inputStream=new BufferedInputStream(inputStream);
inputStream.mark(Integer.MAX_VALUE);
final BitmapFactory.Options options=new BitmapFactory.Options();
options.inJustDecodeBounds=true;
BitmapFactory.decodeStream(inputStream,null,options);
//this works fine. i get the options filled just right.
inputStream.reset();
final Bitmap bitmap=BitmapFactory.decodeStream(inputStream,null,options);
//this returns null
for getting the inputStream out of a url, i use:
public static InputStream getInputStreamFromInternet(final String urlString)
{
try
{
final URL url=new URL(urlString);
final HttpURLConnection urlConnection=(HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
final InputStream in=urlConnection.getInputStream();
return in;
}
catch(final Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
return null;
}
the question
how can i make the code handle the marking an resetting ?
it works perfectly with resources (in fact i didn't even have to create a new BufferedInputStream for this to work) but not with inputStream from the internet...
EDIT:
it seems my code is just fine, sort of...
on some websites (like this one and this one), it fails to decode the image file even after reseting.
if you decode the bitmap (and use inSampleSize) , it can decode it fine (just takes a long time).
now the question is why it happens, and how can i fix it.

I believe the problem is that the call to mark() with the large value is overwritten by a call to mark(1024). As described in the documentation:
Prior to KITKAT, if is.markSupported() returns true, is.mark(1024) would be called. As of KITKAT, this is no longer the case.
This may be resulting in a reset() fail if reads larger than this value are being done.

(Here is a solution for the same problem, but when reading from disk. I didn't realize at first your question was specifically from a network stream.)
The problem with mark & reset in general here is that BitmapFactory.decodeStream() sometimes resets your marks. Thus resetting in order to do the actual read is broken.
But there is a second problem with BufferedInputStream: it can cause the entire image to be buffered in memory along side of where ever you are actually reading it into. Depending on your use case, this can really kill your performance. (Lots of allocation means lots of GC)
There is a really great solution here:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/18665678/1366
I modified it slightly for this particular use case to solve the mark & reset problem:
public class MarkableFileInputStream extends FilterInputStream
{
private static final String TAG = MarkableFileInputStream.class.getSimpleName();
private FileChannel m_fileChannel;
private long m_mark = -1;
public MarkableFileInputStream( FileInputStream fis )
{
super( fis );
m_fileChannel = fis.getChannel();
}
#Override
public boolean markSupported()
{
return true;
}
#Override
public synchronized void mark( int readlimit )
{
try
{
m_mark = m_fileChannel.position();
}
catch( IOException ex )
{
Log.d( TAG, "Mark failed" );
m_mark = -1;
}
}
#Override
public synchronized void reset() throws IOException
{
// Reset to beginning if mark has not been called or was reset
// This is a little bit of custom functionality to solve problems
// specific to Android's Bitmap decoding, and is slightly non-standard behavior
if( m_mark == -1 )
{
m_fileChannel.position( 0 );
}
else
{
m_fileChannel.position( m_mark );
m_mark = -1;
}
}
}
This won't allocate any extra memory during reads, and can be reset even if the marks have been cleared.

whether you can mark / reset a stream depends on the implementation of the stream. those are optional operations and aren't typically supported. your options are to read the stream into a buffer and then read from that stream 2x, or just make the network connection 2x.
the easiest thing is probably to write into a ByteArrayOutputStream,
ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
int count;
byte[] b = new byte[...];
while ((count = input.read(b) != -1) [
baos.write(b, 0, count);
}
now either use the result of baos.toByteArray() directly, or create a ByteArrayInputStream and use that repeatedly, calling reset() after consuming it each time.
ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray());
that might sound silly, but there's no magic. you either buffer the data in memory, or you read it 2x from the source. if the stream did support mark / reset, it'd have to do the same thing in it's implementation.

Here is a simple method that always works for me :)
private Bitmap downloadBitmap(String url) {
// initilize the default HTTP client object
final DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
//forming a HttoGet request
final HttpGet getRequest = new HttpGet(url);
try {
HttpResponse response = client.execute(getRequest);
//check 200 OK for success
final int statusCode = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();
if (statusCode != HttpStatus.SC_OK) {
Log.w("ImageDownloader", "Error " + statusCode +
" while retrieving bitmap from " + url);
return null;
}
final HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
InputStream inputStream = null;
try {
// getting contents from the stream
inputStream = entity.getContent();
// decoding stream data back into image Bitmap that android understands
image = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(inputStream);
} finally {
if (inputStream != null) {
inputStream.close();
}
entity.consumeContent();
}
}
} catch (Exception e) {
// You Could provide a more explicit error message for IOException
getRequest.abort();
Log.e("ImageDownloader", "Something went wrong while" +
" retrieving bitmap from " + url + e.toString());
}
return image;
}

0-byte files not detected when downloading files on Android

I have an app for Android which downloads hundreds of files from the Internet. Some files turn out to be 0-byte after download. The app attempts to detect such cases and delete such files after download but sometimes it fails. The problem is more frequent on Android 4.x devices.
Here is the method which does the downloading. I gets the number of actually read bytes from inputStream.read(buffer).
public class Utils
{
public static class DownloadFileData
{
int nTotalSize;
int nDownloadedSize;
}
public interface ProgressCallback
{
void onProgress(long nCurrent, long nMax);
}
public static boolean downloadFile(String sFileURL, File whereToSave, DownloadFileData fileData, ProgressCallback progressCallback)
{
InputStream inputStream = null;
FileOutputStream fileOutput = null;
try
{
URL url = new URL(sFileURL);
URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
//set up some things on the connection
connection.setDoOutput(true);
connection.connect();
fileOutput = new FileOutputStream(whereToSave);
inputStream = connection.getInputStream();
fileData.nTotalSize = connection.getContentLength();
fileData.nDownloadedSize = 0;
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
int bufferLength = 0; //used to store a temporary size of the buffer
// now, read through the input buffer and write the contents to the file
while ((bufferLength = inputStream.read(buffer)) > 0)
{
// if interrupted, don't download the file further and return
// also restore the interrupted flag so that the caller stopped also
if (Thread.interrupted())
{
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
return false;
}
// add the data in the buffer to the file in the file output stream
fileOutput.write(buffer, 0, bufferLength);
// add up the size so we know how much is downloaded
fileData.nDownloadedSize += bufferLength;
if (null != progressCallback && fileData.nTotalSize > 0)
{
progressCallback.onProgress(fileData.nDownloadedSize, fileData.nTotalSize);
}
}
return true;
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e)
{
return false; // swallow a 404
}
catch (IOException e)
{
return false; // swallow a 404
}
catch (Throwable e)
{
return false;
}
finally
{
// in any case close input and output streams
if (null != inputStream)
{
try
{
inputStream.close();
inputStream = null;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
}
}
if (null != fileOutput)
{
try
{
fileOutput.close();
fileOutput = null;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
}
}
}
}
Here is the piece of code which processes the downloads. Since sometimes the number of read bytes is incorrect (it is > 0 and the real file has the size 0 bytes) I check the size of the downloaded file with outputFile.length(). But this again gives a value > 0 even though the file is really 0 byte. I tried to also just create a new file and read its size with recheckSizeFile.length(). Still the size is determined as > 0 while it's really 0 byte.
Utils.DownloadFileData fileData = new Utils.DownloadFileData();
boolean bDownloadedSuccessully = Utils.downloadFile(app.sCurrenltyDownloadedFile, outputFile, fileData, new Utils.ProgressCallback()
{
... // progress bar is updated here
});
if (bDownloadedSuccessully)
{
boolean bIsGarbage = false;
File recheckSizeFile = new File(sFullPath);
long nDownloadedFileSize = Math.min(recheckSizeFile.length(), Math.min(outputFile.length(), fileData.nDownloadedSize));
// if the file is 0bytes, it's garbage
if (0 == nDownloadedFileSize)
{
bIsGarbage = true;
}
// if this is a video and if of suspiciously small size, it's
// garbage, too
else if (Utils.isStringEndingWith(app.sCurrenltyDownloadedFile, App.VIDEO_FILE_EXTENSIONS) && nDownloadedFileSize < Constants.MIN_NON_GARBAGE_VIDEO_FILE_SIZE)
{
bIsGarbage = true;
}
if (bIsGarbage)
{
++app.nFilesGarbage;
app.updateLastMessageInDownloadLog("File is fake, deleting: " + app.sCurrenltyDownloadedFile);
// delete the garbage file
if (null != outputFile)
{
if (!outputFile.delete())
{
Log.e("MyService", "Failed to delete garbage file " + app.sCurrenltyDownloadedFile);
}
}
}
else
{
... // process the normally downloaded file
}
I am not sure but I think there is a bug in Android with reading file size. Has anyone seen a similar problem? Or am I maybe doing something wrong here?
Thanks!
EDIT: how i determine that the files are 0-byte:
all the files which get downloaded go thru the described routines. When I then later view the download folder with a file browser (Ghost Commander), some of the files (like maybe 10%) are 0-byte. They can't be played by a video player (shown as "broken file" icon).

It looks to me like your problem is that you only check for "garbage" files if the Utils.downloadFile call returns true. If the download fails in the getInputStream call or the first read, you will have created a file with zero length which will never be deleted.

You should call flush() on your FileOutputStream to ensure that all data is written to the file. This should make your issue with 0-byte files occur less often.
To check for 0 byte files using File.length() should work properly. Can you open a shell (adb shell) on the device and run ls -l to see the byte count displayed by it is 0 (maybe your file manager has some weird issues). Also please debug (or put some log statements) that sFullPath contains the correct file paths. I can't see where sFullPath gets set in your code above and why you don't just use outputFile but recreate another File object.

How to access android MMS resources such as video/audio etc?

I started developing an android app that have to interact with MMS attachements, in particular, get attachements such as text, bitmaps, audio, video etc. and store them on the phone in a specific folder.
So i started reading some books and some post on the web but it isn't a very common argument, and i didn't find an official way to do what i want to do.
I found a fairly good article here on stack-overflow here: How to Read MMS Data in Android?... it works very well for me, but there are 2 problems:
The article shows you how to get MMS data by querying over the "hidden" SMS-MMS content provider, and as far as i know, Google doesn't guarantee that they'll keep the current structure in every android's future relase.
The article only explains how to get Text data and Bitmap data from MMS...what about video/audio? I tried to get a video/audio stream from an InputStream such as the example did with Bitmaps, unfortunately with no luck...
I'm very disappointed about the absence of official tutorial or "How-To" over this argument because SMS and MMS management is a very common need in mobile developement.
I hope someone can help me....
Thanks in advance!!

I found a fairly simple way to read Video/Audio data from MMS, so i decided to publish this part of my class that provides MMS attachements, for all users that need this.
private static final int RAW_DATA_BLOCK_SIZE = 16384; //Set the block size used to write a ByteArrayOutputStream to byte[]
public static final int ERROR_IO_EXCEPTION = 1;
public static final int ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND = 2;
public static byte[] LoadRaw(Context context, Uri uri, int Error){
InputStream inputStream = null;
byte[] ret = new byte[0];
//Open inputStream from the specified URI
try {
inputStream = context.getContentResolver().openInputStream(uri);
//Try read from the InputStream
if(inputStream!=null)
ret = InputStreamToByteArray(inputStream);
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e1) {
Error = ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND;
}
catch (IOException e) {
Error = ERROR_IO_EXCEPTION;
}
finally{
if (inputStream != null) {
try {
inputStream.close();
}
catch (IOException e) {
//Problem on closing stream.
//The return state does not change.
Error = ERROR_IO_EXCEPTION;
}
}
}
//Return
return ret;
}
//Create a byte array from an open inputStream. Read blocks of RAW_DATA_BLOCK_SIZE byte
private static byte[] InputStreamToByteArray(InputStream inputStream) throws IOException{
ByteArrayOutputStream buffer = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
int nRead;
byte[] data = new byte[RAW_DATA_BLOCK_SIZE];
while ((nRead = inputStream.read(data, 0, data.length)) != -1) {
buffer.write(data, 0, nRead);
}
buffer.flush();
return buffer.toByteArray();
}
In this way you can extract "Raw" data such as Audio/Video/Images from MMS by passing:
the context where you need to use this function
the URI of the MMS part that contains data you want to extract (for ex. "content://mms/part/2")
the byref param that returns an eventual error code thrown by the procedure.
Once you have your byte[], you can create an empty File and then use a FileOutputStream to write the byte[] into it. If the file path\extension is correct and if your app has all the right
permissions, you'll be able to store your data.
PS. This procedure has been tested a few times and it worked, but i don't exclude can be some unmanaged exception cases that may produce error states. IMHO it can be improoved too...