I want to create a web page that has two links. One that downloads the agent itself (which is pretty easy, just linking to the APK file with the appropriate MIME types set), and the other to start the install process for the APK downloaded in step one.
I know they can just pull down the bar and click on it, but that can be confusing for users (especially in the overall process we are trying to create). Is there a special URI I can use to start the installation, sort of like the market link of "market://"?
Also, is there a way to get meta-data surrounding where the APK was actually installed from? For example, if the link for the APK is "http://company.com/setting=123", that I can pull in the "setting=123" from the URL? I suspect not, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.
You can add url interceptors to your app like it's mentioned here but AFAIK there is no way to do what you are asking.
check open2go.com
it may help you.
example here
http://open2go.com/http://m.getjar.com/mobile/49757/angry-birds-seasons/
open2go.com/ + url
market: schema works to.
Related
Ok, there's a long history behind this one, but the gist is that we need to create and download a little bit of text CLIENT side, into a file called "test.lbl". Assume we can't access the server side.
The following code (coffeescript) does this by creating a Blob, converting it to a data url, and then clicking the link. This works GREAT in a desktop Chrome browser. However, in Android Chrome (not sure what version exactly, but I just installed it as of 3/5/13 from Google App Store) this simply won't work. In Android Chrome, the file starts to download and then just spins. (In fact, it shows in your "Ongoing" for quite some time, even after the browser is closed.)
Anyone know why this might not work in Android? Perhaps a different mime type will make it allow the file to be downloaded? We're dealing with internal tablets so we can relax any site specific security settings we need to.
Or, is there a better way to go about this entirely? (client-side generated text file download)
Thanks
$("#get-label").on 'click', (e) ->
e.preventDefault()
bb = new Blob(['test test test'], {type:'text/plain'})
evt = document.createEvent("HTMLEvents")
evt.initEvent("click")
$("<a>", {download: 'test.lbl', href: webkitURL.createObjectURL(bb)}).get(0).dispatchEvent(evt)
This is a known issue in Chrome for Android. I have raised an issue https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=181032 - if you star that you will be able to see all the updates for it.
I was wondering if anyone has solved this problem. I want to scan a QR code from my android phone that will ultimately launch an Android App. If the app exists, the app is launched with some unique information. If the app doesn't exist then it takes the user the marketplace to download the app. Can this be done?
Any help will greatly be appreciated :)
Sure, you can write an app that can do that. Barcode Scanner actually does some of the things you want (e.g. opening the market from a code), it's open source, if you need some samples take a look there. The project also has a library that you can use to scan QR-/barcodes.
Keep in mind that a QR-code is nothing else than a String in a machine-readable format. You can encode a package name in a code and scan that. When you successfully did that, just test if the app with that package name is present on the device. If yes, run it via an Intent (you can use PackageManager.getLaunchIntentForPackage() for that). If not, link to the market page via Intent.ACTION_VIEW with a market url. You may encode some extras into the QR-codes, depending on which size you choose for these.
The benefit from the package name only is that there are many codes already out there that link to the android market site of a certain app. Their format is
market://search?q=pname:com.example
As you can see, theres already a packagename included (here com.example).
You can parse and use it. If you want extras, you have to encode your own qr-codes though.
We've been asked to create a thin web client on Android for a company with an existing web site, existing users.
They want to send an mms to their users, giving each user their own download URL. This URL will point to an Android apk file that has been created specifically for that user - it will include that user's login, and password, to the website.
i.e. the APK file would have embedded login details.
This would be done in J2ME by storing info in the JDK file.
I can see a simlar question on How to update resources file in apk - but not fully answered.
So:
is there a way to store an "asset" in the apk file that will be a text file, and easily editable by unzipping, editing, rezipping the apk file? (looks like answer is no)
do you know of any similar problems, or have worked on similar apps?
is there advice on how best to accomplish this application? Any sort of embedding of customer info on an automated level would be of interest...
would the best option be to set the app to build with an Ant script, and have the client actually customize the source code and build a new app per user? (this has the con that the client gets the source code, which we'd rather not have)
I have scanned apk tagged questions and can't seem to find a solution to this.
Many thanks,
Richard
I guess you could put it into the apk (or replace a dummy file there) if you use the assets folder for it.
You can obtain the data by filename instead resource-id quite easy:
getResources().getAssets().open(fileName)
Regards,
Oliver
If it absolutely has to be that way, consider distributing two APKs, one with the application and the other containing a file with the handset-specific information. Sign them both with the same key, arrange for them to share a UID and the application will be able to read the file as if it were its own.
The rest of this probably belongs in a comment and not this answer, but I see lots of problems with what you're being asked to do:
The standard behavior for just about every other application out there is to ask for a login and password once when needed and then remember it.
If the user changes his password on your customer's web site, he has to get a new APK for his device instead of just having to reauthenticate.
Any changes to the application will require generation and installation of a new APK for each user.
All it would take is some unwitting user sharing his unique APK with someone else and your whole security model goes right down the tubes.
Less relevant, but still important: If your customer is able to reconstitute a plaintext password from what they have stored, I question their security scheme.
Is there a definitive method of creating either a PDF or a MS Word Doc file within the app and email it immediately (and possibly, also store it).
I have been trying for quite some time and have found out the JAVA libraries: apwlibrary and iText. But both of them dont provide any tutorials of sorts.
Could anyone point me in the right direction?
EDIT: Come to think of it, is could an online PDF generator be used, first by sending the data to the service, then retrieve the result and save it on the phone?
I would recommend apache fop http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/
you can use standard FOP to generate pdf.
Unless it is a core feature of your device to create a pdf file I would suggest not to do it yourself. Adding PDF creation is going to be quite a lot of work potentially depending on your performance needs. Java libraries will be easier to add but less performant. Native libraries combined with Java will be more hazzle to maintain build and bug fixing wise.
If you just need to email some information why dont you create a message text in html and use a intent to email it with the build in email program instead? Or if you want you could e.g. put the PDF generation on a server and just email a link..
I'm working right now with JasperReports, an open source library to create reports in Java and export them to PDF, DOC, XLS... Using it in conjunction with iReport to create a group of templates makes it really easy to create files filled with content from different types of sources (I'm using JavaBeans).
If you don't like the idea of having static templates (That's a bit annoying depending on your needs), you can always take a look at DynamicJasper (The examples on the website are great).
Good Luck!
I have used Apache POI. It seemed to work well. http://poi.apache.org/
This actually, http://poi.apache.org/hwpf/
I want to be able to package data in a apk, which is read by my main app.
Is there a way that I can put the data in apk, and then upon install automatically hook that data into the ContentProvider in my main app?
The other possibility is to have each add-on be a content-provider, and have the app look for it, but then I fragment the authorities and I don't have a pre-built list, although I suppose I could "reserve" authorities for expansions if this is the best option.
The other option I understand I might be able to use for data sharing is to run the separate apk's with the same user_id? Any thoughts how I could get this to work would be great too, I tried this but reflection didn't show my addons classes, and it brings up all kinds of dynamic loading questions.
Edit: If it helps, I already have it working using zip files in a folder in the SD, but I want to be able to put that zip into a apk, and write a simple wrapper so that it can be read by my other app.
I plan to do something similar with each add-on being a content provider. My plan is to have each add-on/content-provider have a common meta-data tag that the main app can look for when iterating through the list of all content providers.
I actually achieved this, by using a set authority and then iterating over all the content providers.
So every addon is in addons.myapp.blah1... and then if it matches the beginning addons.myapp I do the load.