Let's say there's website X. Website X has a search function that'll return articles/documents/whatever. Whatever it returns will include a link so the user could click on it to go to said article. All of this would be without an API. Would it be possible for an android application to query a search on a random website, get the results and display them in the app, without the user actually seeing the website?
Yes, of course. All you want to do is write the app such that it performs the query to the website on behalf of the user; that way it gets the HTML response. When it gets the HTML page as a response, you parse that and reformat it into something more appropriate for the app.
Look at this SO question if you want more information on HTML parsers in Java: Parse HTML in Android
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We have a phone gap cross-platform built app and we are building the same app in native.
The app has pages/views with text with embedded hyperlinks in them where it sends the user to other pages in the same app. Of course because this is HTML based so this is possible using phone gap apps. But what if we changed that to native how can we have links inside a text where it redirects users to other views or grabs other data from the database and pushes them to the UIViewController?
How will the backend send us JSON strings with hyperlinks in them that will be able to replicate what the phone gap built app does. Is this possible?
Ok maybe we can send embedded HTML in the JSON data. But how will these <a> links open or grab other data from the server?
I find it very complicated or maybe not doable at all. Anybody has ideas on how this could be solved?
A screen shot of what i mean. This is a phone gap app.
All right first and foremost you need structured data.
Lets say I opend a main post with id '14'. Api will fetch data from server for id 14.
JSON structure can be like this:
{"title":"What are origional sin?","content":"Although Adam & Eve had been given. God has given man free will.","inlineLinks":[{"startIndex":"8","endIndex":"18","contentId":"141"},{"startIndex":"55","endIndex":"64","contentId":"142"}]}
Now using spannable string in android and attributed string in ios you now have id for specific inline link content and start and end index which you can use to add clicks to specific inline links. Once user clicks these link you have id of that specific content which you can open in your app.
Since you know the spannable string I hope you dont need the detail code.
Wish you have started your question with Spannable String problem.
Please ignore the indexes incase they are wrong ;)
I have developed some company website in that i had careers option.now using text view i am displaying job openings,but when they update in website app also should get update and if they want to post in app only means how i update or post job opening after placing in google play store. please explain with code.
WebView webView = (WebView)findViewById(R.id.wv);
webView.loadUrl("http://www.emergtechinc.com/Careers/careers-cjo.aspx");
I used webview and displayed the currenopenings page. Is it right but I got whole website page. How can I display whatever I need from website?
If you want to load specific data only, I would suggest an API on the backend of your website. Create a specific Activity in you app that queries the API, which would return data for job postings, and display it in any manner you would like.
If you want users to post to the site from the application, you will also need an API to handle the post.
#Prerak's answer will work as well and be less code than the method I am suggesting.
I want to create an Android App in which student can see their attendance. Actually attendance is updated daily in website as a database. In the website homepage student must enter their log in details such as Username, password and captcha. Then their profile is displayed in which their attendance can be seen. I want to extract the data alone (that is attendance percentage). I think the website uses .asp database. Anybody just give me an idea!
Also sorry if my question doesn't sounds good...
When you say, you are saving in DB, you mean you are saving in SQL Server DB or any other DB and your web App reads DB displays data. So definitely you can develop an android App to interact with that DB and show values in that App.
You could download data from particular user in JSON format.
It depends! Try to analyse the website, How credentials are verifying and interacting with the database. Firebug is a good browser plugin to do so. For achieving the purpose you need to make a script which will take the username, password and capcha to the database and after return you the attendance page.The most hard part is to reading capcha. here is good discussion over it.
Once you get the page you can scrap the page through beautiful Library called JSOUP in java. It is quite easy to learn. After getting the desired value after parsing, you can show the data as you want to show in your app.
Second option can be you anylyse the website extract that div which has the Credential thing and show only that div in webview, WebView has options to change UI element such as background and fonts. After successful Login and getting the result page, parse the information of your use and show the result as you want.
Lastly -The lazy way to do thing by using WebView for whole app. so every thing in webview after changing the UI. It will be same but with different look.
I am trying to write a little Android app for my daughter. The goal is to scan a book's bar code and pass the ISBN number to this website: http://www.arbookfind.com/default.aspx . The result will show if the book is part of the Accelerated Reader program and how many points the book is worth. I am trying to automate the part where the ISBN would need to be entered into the search field.
For simplicity's sake, and because I'm not a programmer, I am using MIT's App Inventor 2. I can now scan and get the ISBN but I will need to know how to format a URL to the website that will allow me to pass the ISBN to it's search page.
Is it possible to send a variable via the URL similar to index.php?myvar=testing&someothervar=somethingelse ? I've tried but perhaps I am not using the correct variable name or format for aspx. Is there an easy way to see what the variable name is in the aspx displayed page in my browser?
EDIT To clarify, I am not trying to scrape data and avoid showing ads from the site I am using to generate the results. I am wanting to pass the ISBN number to the page and have it search and display the resulting page in the phone's browser. I am also fine with a method that would populate the search field and the user would have to hit the search button if that can be accomplished easier.
I would recommend abandoning this route, as it is highly unlikely that the owners of this website will want you passing a query string to their site anyway, but rather they will most likely point you to an Application Programming Interface (API) that they provide, so that your program can connect to this service (free or paid, depending upon the company) and then you can request the book's details by providing the ISBN in the request.
There is no discovery mechanism for an .aspx page like there is for a web service to find out the names of things to pass. Even if you figure out what the name of the query string is that you could pass in for ISBN, you run the risk of the implementation being changed and your "application breaking". While this is also true of web service APIs, since APIs are the route the website providers want you to use, as opposed to screenscraping, then they generally inform their users of breaking changes or newer versions of the API via documentation.
From what I can see that page does not accept URL-variables for their search field the way google.com and other does. The page is generated through some sort of content management system (CMS) and it relies heavily on javascript to make things work. I tried doing a normal search there, and you have two issues you need to wriggle around.
First, the page redirects you to a page where you select if your a student, parent etc. It seems that it relies on some session cookie to remember the setting, but it times out pretty fast.
Second, the form uses javascript to trigger the search, and it appears to be done using AJAX, a method of using javascript to trigger actions on the server and displaying the results, without actually loading the page again. You might be able to get a hold of the javascript code used and re-engineer it for your purposes, and call that using HTTP POST and/or GET from your app, but it is a tricky path, and quite possibly not allowed by the company since you will be loading data from their site, without presenting their advertisements and thus be costing them money.
I am planning to make a desktop application which will have 5 regional newspapers and the user can select either of them to read it.
I need seperate colums such as Opinion,Editorial,Breaking News,Sports,etc. which means I need data of their every column.
But when I visited few papers' websites,they are just giving the headline, one line description and a link to read more as xml feed.On clicking the link the user is directed to their website.
I have seen many android applications like news Hunt ,World news,etc , which show the entire content.How do they do it?Are they using any backdoor or hack or something?
Use Jaunt Api .
The Api has easy-to-learn structure and also the code is efficient as well as fast.
You should give it a try.
Try to use a third service like
http://import.io/ or http://www.mozenda.com
As you said apps like Flipboard, Breaking news sport etc are based on services like import.io
With this you can transform information from the web into usable data easily !
Some of this app used JSON in retrieving the content from the web and pass into android app. check this link
They use an API that allows them to retrieve news (load from a server).
For example yahoo, google, etc
Not tested yet but it works (I'm sure) see yahoo API
In your case, You should write another view to display news details according to the news ID: Read their documentation carefully
Some Websites will write their own public API, which everyone can access with some HTTP header values sent. After sending HTTP request, they return the response in XML / JSON formats which you have to parse them inside your Android app and produce them on UI.
If in case they do not provide any API as such, then you need write a server side Crawler which crawls and parses the information(HTML Tagged information) from their websites and store them. Again then you need to write your own Web services(RESTful / SOAP) that send the parsed information to Android app via URL's or something.
This can be achieved using RSS feed.
visit here and see page source, here you can get all news in item tags like this
<item>
<title>..</title>
<description>...</description>
</item>
where each item tag is for each news, you can fetch both title and description from there.
and you can get data from any link using HTTPPOST or HTTPGET mehods