I have couple of initialization classes that do nothing else but to fill initial unchanged data structures. In total about 200k lines in 5 data Classes just doing things like:
x = new Y(13);
xTmp.z.add(x);
allElements.add("just some text");
So basically initializing arrays of my structures - these are all basically "constants".
I was wondering how to best structure the project, for example using libraries or doing anything else so the development of the project can be handled more efficiently than to always compile, link and load the large data classes to the device for testing.
Forunately Eclipse is real fast and compiling takes not more than 1 minute (compared to xCode where it takes over 1,5 hours to compile). However, I am sure the experts with experience of writing large projects have thir tips and tricks how to best get their hands around it.
Many thanks!
I wouldn't hard code all that data at all.
Define a file format for all that data, and build a simple parser for it (or better yet, use an existing structured file format and drive from that). There is no reason to have to rebuild your code when you change the initial data.
Bundle those initialization files with your application (you can even put the inside your jar files and access them as resources).
Related
My app is going to be translated by several amateur translators for several languages. I can send them the xml file with all the strings that need to be translated. But, is there a cleaner way to have two files uploaded, the one in English and the one to be translated, to easily identify the strings that are still missing? Basically is like having the Translation Editor of Android Studio but online.
Maybe using google docs? How do you do this?
You can use Google Docs, but that's quite an outdated way to handle this.
The major cons:
it would be cumbersome to update strings this way
no easy way to make sure the new ones have new translations, not the old ones, etc.
no good way to provide context, if needed (typically translators have questions). You can create a column with context and take any discussions into comments, but it can get messy
A few pros:
it's fast to create (although slow to keep up-to-date)
you cooperate online and have shared access
Most developers use localization platforms, which makes updating content and online cooperation much faster.
Main pros:
it's easy to identify strings that are missing
any number of translators can translate simultaneously
track work that is done by each of translators
you can add a review/proofreading step to the process to ensure the quality of translations
leverage Machine Translations and then just have translators review them (saves lots of time)
update content, as most platforms support agile workflow
you can see who's the top translator (give some rewards, invite to other projects, etc.)
integrations (with your Git tool, Android Studio, etc), so you can automate content updates, no manual copy-pasting
Cons:
some of them are paid (still, if you're open source, you can expect a free plan)
Regarding the tools, I can suggest looking at Crowdin or Poedit.
There are many alternatives you can research, some are listed on Wikipedia.
At my work we had to translate english into Norwegian, we've done that by working with an python script that generated an ui from an csv file, after that the file could be exported in several formates as well. But your question indicates that you would like to deploy only on android, so this might be an overkill.
a simple python xml filter would fit your aproach and you could work as well with git as long as the lines stays in the same order.
if you need an quick example please comment, and ill edit this answer as soon as i get time.
At one point I have also had the same question. I need the translation for my vernacular app, also I had the requirement to maintain such that I could easily compare the translation. Here I could suggest a few things that worked out for me.
First, take the string XML file and convert it in an Excel sheet, You may generate multiple excel sheet and having a copy, paste and merge all the translations into a single sheet.
Going forward it will be easy for you to maintain all the translation. Just share a single sheet which has a string key and multiple language column. So you could easily have a look at all language translations.
In the long run, it will be helpful to you.
Few links for the conversion of XML to excel -
Convert string XML to Excel sheet
Using the below online tool works for me. Free and Opensource easy and best.
https://asrt.gluege.boerde.de/
I have 9000 files in the memory card, I have created an application that read each file and parse it in to a String and put that String in a HashMap in order to avoid repetition,and save the names of only unrepeated files, but that operation is taking about 7 to 10 seconds.. is there any way to make that faster.. I tried to find better method but I didn't find anything...
Object : get the names and Strings of all the unrepeated files..
Is there any way to do that faster using java, new IO, or NDK, is it worth to install NDK and try that using C language and pointers..
I appreciate any help..
Its obviously that even just loading of 9k files takes some time. Imagine there a lot of android devices and there are many devices which are not as fast as device which you are using to test. So the operation gonna take even more time on such devices. The problem is a numerous of small files. Maybe you should pack it in one, lets say a JSON or XML? Reading of 1 file is more faster and reliable.
I am using docx4j library to create/open/edit docx file. But it takes around 30 seconds to initialize this line
wordMLPackage = (WordprocessingMLPackage)loader.get(file);
It takes same time either it simple document(may be empty or single word/line file) or complex document with images and tables.
I have increased memory for eclipse in eclipse.ini and VMHeap for emulator but no effect .It is slow on emulator as well as on real device. Please help!
See forum post wordprocessingmlpackage-load-file-is-extremely-slow
The JAXB context init time is unavoidable (unless you remove some of the packages listed, or hack your JAXB implementation to do some funky on demand type loading), but only needs to be done once.
So, I have a lot of strings (I reckon more than 100, easily.)...
I have 6-7 XML files across which these strings are spread out.
Now during development, it was obviously easier to put some similar strings into one file for convenience.
But now that I'm going to put my app on the market, I want it to be as efficient and fast as possible, even if by mere milliseconds.
Here's what I did :
I just made a copy of my project, exactly same , except I just made another XML file, copy-pasted all of the other files strings , and deleted all the other files.
Now I got 1 XML file.
Problem is My development device is new, and has 1GHz CPU...So I didn't really notice a difference, I want to know whether having just one XML file would be better for low end (and also high end) devices...
To be honest, this falls into the category of problem where readability would be more important than performance. The performance difference between reading 6-7 files or just 1 would be barely anything, definitely nothing noticeable to the user.
I'd go with whichever makes your code cleanest as the readability will be worth more in the long run than saving 1 nanosecond of performance if it means losing hours of dev when you revisit it an it's just a mess of xml.
Im thinking about trying to build a complex android app structure for a game maybe or just for practice reasons. Im used to code in objective-c, so im not that much experienced in android...
Anyway in work, we structure our app on ios like this:
-core framework: handling all core items, navigation, datahandling, mechanisms, etc. its the same in all of our project
-project framework: its files are mostly relying (including) the core framework's files, extending/modifying them, and doing the project depending stuff
-skin framework: this contains all the resources and images, if we want to do a re-skinned project, we only have to alter this
-main project: this includes everything just bashing together everything into an app. just starts the application, nothing more, anything else is done by the different frameworks
So I wanted to do a similar structure on android, but I'm not sure that I'm even able to do it... I see that there is android project and library project, I can include them into eachother... but my questions are:
1: can I build a similar structure as on ios?
2: can I make for example a "core" library what contains the basics of mechanisms, and another library containing only the resources, and a third one (or the third could be the actual runnable project), what can get resources from the resource library, can distribute jobs to the core library, etc...
3: can I organize the resources as I like (so not to throw every picture into the drawable folder root for example). For example to have somehow a characters folder (i know i cant do forlders in the res folder), and map files into map folder, etc... My only chance to name them "properly"? (map_sheet_type_1, map_sheet_type_2, character_sheet_type_1, etc) (if its going to be a game, it would use opengl, lots of sprite drawing, etc)
or I should do everything in a single project, dividing everything into a lot of packages, and use libraries only for jobs like "how to transcode "A" object into "B" object" ?
Thanks for the answers in advance
although I've never developed a game before, but an app is an app:
yes
as you mention you have executable projects and libraries projects, libraries can use other libraries and the only thing that goes to the device is whatever the executable project is building. It's just important to remark that compiled libraries *.jar files resources cannot be used in your executable project (that's why the ActionBar Sherlock have to be used as a library-project). In order to use a resource placed in a library project the project must be with its full source code open in the Eclipse so it can be compiled together. That is because inside an app, there's only one R (resources) object, and during build all the resources from all the projects are put together.
unfortunately no. As you mentioned yourself the resources cannot be in subfolders and even their file names are restricted as they can only use lower case letters, numbers and _ (underline). Just be clever and organised, write a spec or something.
packages IS the way to organize a single project in Java. If you gonna use multiple or single is your choice. Usually you can encapsulate in a library-project stuff that can easily be re-used in different projects, and the final project will contain everything that is specific to that one app/game. I'll give you an example on the place I work, we have a KicthenLibrary that is a library-project that we use in every single Android app we do. That library already contains an excellent multi-threaded bitmap download and cache classes, we used to have a MapFragment (now deprecated) before Google released their MapFragment, easy Http GET/POST methods, etc. As you can see, all of those are stuff that can easily be re-used in several different projects.
And just as a last trick, http://www.eclipse.org/egit/ IMHO is much easier to use GIT directly from inside Eclipse.
Here are a couple links that should help you get started on this.
http://kasperholtze.com/android/how-to-best-organize-your-android-source/
http://bartinger.at/organization-tips-for-android-projects/
Also, when I worked at a start-up, we made an app for both iOS and Android. We started creating native apps for each, and ended up having somewhat different structure. Global information/variables were handled different, and I couldn't structure my files quite like iOS did. That said, Android structure isn't terribly hard to figure out, and I made a fair amount of sub-folders in my assets folder (for libraries and js and such). And yes, you can definitely have several libraries.
As for having several projects in several in one app, see this link How to create a single application from multiple Android projects