I'm developing an android app and am not sure if something like this exists or how to even approach it. I would appreciate any advice.
In this app I would like to have a screen that displays only local news for a certain zip code. I would of course type in the zip code but after I do this once it would take it from there.
What is the best way to do this?
I've read a bit about RSS feeds. Is this the way to go? Is there a particular RSS feel that will let me type in a zip code...and if so, how do I display this content inside a page of my app?
Maybe there is a website that specifically does this for android apps and I just need to set a url to this web page to consume the information?
Sorry if I'm not very informed about this. This is my first app and I would really appreciate knowing how best to approach this problem.
Thanks
Google News gives "information near you". It uses geolocation to know where you are and shows the news that happen in your area, maybe you can use that.
You can also use the RSS they provide for a certain area, for example, California:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&gl=us&as_occt=any&as_qdr=a&as_nloc=california&authuser=0&q=location:california&um=1&ie=UTF-8&output=rss
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You may have seen this in games/apps that on the first screen you get some "news" like "expansion now available" or "check out the other new game". The way i would implement it is by using a server/website with a php script that the app queries and it then gets a JSON with the news. However i am not a "php guy" and i understand that with a big app and lots of news this could create quite the traffic and thus cost (in a very extreme scenario).
So i wondered if i could use (or abuse) some feature of the store itself.
Another scenario would be that (worst case) after patching a new bug is introduced and i want users to know that a fix will be available shortly. Most users these days won't go to a website etc to find out if someone is working on this, they close the app or even deinstall and give it a bad rating. If they could read about a fix on the very first screen it might mitigate this.
I am aware that all this is not exactly best practice but i still want to know about it.
I'm a noob self learning programmer and i'm wondering how can i make an application for mobile. As an example, so you can understand what i need (and easier for me to explain), think of an application where the user can store products and related information by filling forms (an icon, price, name, features, weight...) and then consult stored information.
For me it looks like the best way to create it is by using web related tools like HTML, CSS, MySQL...
The problem i find is that i don't know how to create a web shaped application and then turn it into a mobile app.
I'm sorry if i didn't explain the best way, but hope you guys get my point are able to put me in the right way!
Thanks a lot in advance!!
P.S. Beyond HTML and CSS and a little MySQL i have basic knowledge of JS, C++ and C#.
As a newbie, it's better to do the correct choice at the beginning.
For Android development, the entry point is the developer portal: https://developer.android.com/
The app you've thinking of is quite classic: You won't have troubles to find some tutorials on the web.
You can do that with either SQLite or Firebase Realtime Database, you choose.
I guess, the easiest way will be creating responsive website and then include that in your app as a WebView. However, this might give users the feel that you're just loading the website in a WebView if you don't include some features like, maybe, push notifications, update checker, theme changer, something like that.
You can alos find a lot of easy tutorials and templates to build a WebView app.
P.S.: I myself have made an Android app of my friend's blog by first making a website and then using WebViews.
It's late and my brain can't even think of the proper things to search for to find the help I need.
Here's what I'm aiming for:
My app takes in a bunch of data from the user. Specifically sizes for windows and doors around a house. My app takes all that data and determines how much material is required, etc.
Here's where I'm stuck:
What I'd like to do is turn that all into a fancy looking report and offer the user the ability to print it. I figured the easiest way to do that would be to generate a report using HTML (or PDF) and have it open up in a web browser, which already has print capabilities.
Can anyone tell me if this seems like a good strategy for what I'm trying accomplish? And if so, point me in the right direction (or to the exact same questions that's already been answered somewhere on this forum).
Thanks.
I was trying to write an android app to help people do easier searches on multiple websites like craiglist, ebay ..etc
I am not sure where really to start from, or the name of the technology I would be using. To make it more accurate question, these websites are all forms based that you either post stuffs or retreive stuffs through searching. How can I make my android app actually in which it will ask the user for a item name (that part I know) and then send item name to say craiglist so it gets the results back?
I was thinking of copying the url that is displayed on my broswer when I click search on any of the website and using the same link with string manipulation to include whats needed.
Is this correct? Any other ideas are I know? I am kinda all over the place, but I need a starting point.
Some sites might expose a public API for you to connect with, but that's site specific.
Sites that do not expose such a system can be "scraped", which means you're using string manipulation (as you mentioned) to parse our the data you're after.
Both ways require basic knowledge on how to perform HTTP operations, there are several ways to do this but the easiest way it to use the HttpURLConnection class as described in various tutorials on the web.
Googling for "android http GET POST tutorial" should point you in the right way to get started with your adventure :)
This one is puzzling me...
For my Android application I want to be able to return the current time in any location the user requests (right down to city level). The request itself comes from a voice command, so I cannot use alternative methods.
The most obvious way (so I thought) was to query Google, but I need your brains to help me solve how to extract the data I want please!
In Google, query:
"What's the time in China"
You should see a 'widget' at the top displaying the answer nicely. View the page source and search on 'China' and it's there - I thought great, this is going to be easy!
But...
"What's the time in London"
Although the display in Google appears the same, there is no result for 'London' when searching the source HTML...?
Using Google Chrome, I inspect the element of the 'widget' and can then view the contents I wish to extract in all cases.
So, my questions is firstly, am I missing something obvious (Google don't want us to be able to do this for example)? Or is there a way to 'force' the result to be in the HTML by structuring the query perhaps?
Secondly, is there a way to access the specific 'element container' and return the results to my Android Application?
I thank you in advance...
You should really use an API instead of parsing html.
I guess there are many many API which will give you the time in a given city.
http://www.worldweatheronline.com/time-zone-api.aspx for example (havnt tried it myself)
If you still want to extract data from the google result (which is html), check for html parsers like in this post : Parse HTML in Android