I'm getting hung up on how to handle the data for an app I'm designing. I want to pull a list of items from the net. The data is updated routinely, and I think it would be good to store all the data on the device so the app can load quickly and refresh the data in a background thread rather than have to wait for the network on every start-up.
I think I should make the data available in an XML and have a thread parse and save into a SQLite DB, but I'm not sure if that's the "best practice." Are there other ways that people go about handling this?
The cleanest way (or at least, I think it is the cleanest way) is to implement a custom ContentProvider class that interfaces with your server. You can query the contenprovider and if it doesn't have the data in a local cache (for example a SQLite db as you said) it downloads it from your server and adds it to the local data. Why a content provider? because then you can easily access your data across apps and you have a nice and clean way to get your data when using intents.
Also, I personally prefer not to download data when the app is not running, because it will cost battery life while the user does not actively requests the data.
Sounds reasonable.
If the download of the new data takes more than some seconds, you might want to use a Service. This will allow you to continue the update even when the user has left your app.
Also, think about how you will notify the user that something is going on. Displaying some progress indicator is always a good idea. Otherwise, users might just think the data is not up to date because the app is broken.
Related
I am implementing the client-server communication for an app on android. I have some high-level questions before I start to code. Apologize if the question turns out vague or confusing. I am really new to this (2 days of Google-ing is all I have), and I haven't coded anything because this design issue I am asking.
Background: Our android app records users activities. These activities are, for example, the user bookmarks an article. Eventually we want to synchronize these activities with server's database. However this sync is not time-critical, meaning it is not necessary that we send the activity to the server every time there is a new activity.
Current Design: Every time there is an activity, we get the activities and put it in a Java object, mark as "notSync", then make an update call to the database (SQLite) on the mobile. Every 5 minutes or so we make a call into the database, pull the nonSync items into an array of objects, convert it to JSON, and send it to the server.
Question 1: It seems rather inefficient to put an object into database, then every a few minutes pull it out from database as an array of objects, then convert to JSON. Would that be a better design, if we just append all the activities to an array of objects, then convert to JSON directly from that array and clear that array? My dilemma is that, If we implement the latter, there might potentially be a huge array floating around in phone's memory. How do we choose what is the best to implement?
Question 2 When sync mobile SQLite with server MySQL, is our design (using java to pull the rows out as an array of objects, then converting it to JSON) a reasonable practice?
Thanks in advance!
The first thing to keep in mind is where the bottlenecks really are. In my experience communicating with a MySQL server, the connection takes by far the longest, followed by uploading/downloading data, followed by anything I did on the phone. So even without knowing exactly what you're going to be recording, I think it's a safe bet that using SQLite and creating objects will not have a big time impact compared to your network activity.
I would run some basic tests to measure how long various operations take, but to answer your questions:
If you clear the array properly, you won't have to worry about it growing too big and, if your array ever did get that big, you probably have other things to worry about (uploading many MBs of data). However, if your user does something for 4 minutes, then quits the app or something, they'll lose their data. Storing it in the DB is safer.
JSON seems to be the best way to send your data, it's quite efficient for that, and as I said above, I don't thing the SQLite/object creation time will be too great.
I am planning on writing an application that saves a fair amount of data. Historically, I have simply written data directly to a server, and only used some simple key/value storage with shared preferences for local storage.
I am considering this time, instead, using SQLite to save the information at first, and sync the data to the server in the background later. This will benefit the user in a few ways: 1) can use the app offline 2) don't have to worry about data being saved right away, it happens when ever it can 3) more reliability.
My approach will be to get/set data from SQLite during UI usage, and use a background process to find new rows and put them on the server, flagging them as synced when it happens.
Does this sound reasonable?
You can use SQLIte for your scenario. But, while implementing, you can follow any one of this approach.
Approach #1: Use an Abstract Factory to Instantiate the SQLiteOpenHelper.
Approach #2: Wrap the SQLiteDatabase in a ContentProvider
Refer to this link for how to implement these 2 approaches. http://www.androiddesignpatterns.com/2012/05/correctly-managing-your-sqlite-database.html
Key points to be noted while using SQLite
Sqlite takes care of the file level locking.
Many threads can read,one can write. The locks prevent more than one
writing.
Android implements some java locking in SQLiteDatabase to help keep
things straight.
If we handle the database incorrectly from many threads and mess up the code, your
database will not be corrupted. Only few updates will be lost.
How "Multiple Threads - DB access" can be used for your scenario
The SqliteOpenHelper object holds on to one database connection.
If you try to write to the database from actual distinct connections (multiple threads) at the same time, one will fail. It will not wait till the first is done and then write. It will simply not write your change. Worse, if you don’t call the right version of insert/update on the SQLiteDatabase, you won’t get an exception. You’ll just get a message in your LogCat, and that will be it.
So recommended to write using single thread and read from multiple threads if necessary for faster access.
Does this sound reasonable?
Yes. Note that the synchronization process can get tricky (e.g., what happens if the server hiccups halfway through?), but that has mostly to do with synchronization and little to do with SQLite.
We implemented a solution that used a SQLite db on the device to sync data via a web service to the master database. We did this for a couple reasons: offline, poor connection, manual sync.
For our solution we had a flag on the table that determined if the data was pushed to the web service. Our web service also provided data back to our application to let us know if the data was received and processed correctly. This allowed us to clean up the data on the device, send notifications if there were failures, and resubmit the data if there were previous failures.
You can use push notifications as well if you have fixed the issues on the backend and have the device resend the data to the web service. This worked really well for us.
I am having one web service in which i have list of countries, state and corresponding cities of it. Now I am little bit confused in pulling this data in my Android app. Right now I have only 2(USA,Canada) Country data with me but it might be increased in future. Also I have list of state in this country and yes the cities in every state.
I have one splash screen in my app in which I have written the logic of getting country and on the basis of that i am getting state and then cities for every state. But its long process and if i publish this a user will be frustrated by waiting time. So I don't want to use this way which takes longer time for pulling data. Is there any other way or suggestion for me to achieve this.
All suggestions are welcome.
you should use AsyncTask to perform any web data downloading (and uploading), it works in the background and does not block UI thread, so your user won't notice.
also, it might be a good idea to supply default country/city data along with your application and then download only changes/updates.
Use a Service or intent-service, to download the data in background. and when the download is complete you can display the downloaded data using onbind. service runs on a seperate thread.
You could simple use the system DownloadManager to get the files from your sources and later process them. The DownloadManager will even inform you when the file is fully downloaded.
Take a look a https://github.com/commonsguy/cw-android/blob/master/Internet/Download/src/com/commonsware/android/download/DownloadDemo.java for a simple example code using DownloadManager.
Why do we use the sqlite data base in android.I am developing an android application where the data is to be fetched from the server and do some data calculation and show it on the UI.
Is it good for me to fetch the data into the sqlite DB and update the UI on regular interval from the sqlite in evry 20 minutes or will it be good to sent the Http get request to the server and update the data from teh response on the UI.
I wanted to know which one will be better and why?Why to involve sqlite DB?
The data corresponds to some 40X40 table data on which some heavy mathematical processing is to be done and then displayed on the UI(similar to Stock market application) and data needs to be cleared after every 12 hours.
plz advice
Rgds,
Raul
It is good to use database in your case.
Pros:
If your application gets closed the in memory data will be lost, but after that you will be able to restore the state from the database if you have one
Especially for the case of complex calculations it is good to store the result once in the database and not recalculate it multiple times on demand
The database will untie your UI from the internet connection and thus you will be able to display results even if there is not internet connection
Using database you will be able to fetch the updated data from a background service, without impacting your UI
Organizing your data in database usually makes it a lot easier to manage all the application data.
Cons:
Adding database will require a bit of additional effort on your side
As you can see my list proves you SHOULD use database in your case. Maybe I am biased, but at least I provide you with things to consider.
It's really a design decision, SQLite offers a very robust way to organize and persist your data, you're only other options are to write to a file, or to save in SharedPrefs, both methods become a lot harder to manage once the size of your data begins to grow, as you must manually keep a list of objects and manage their names etc etc. 40 x 40 table data is large enough to justify using SQLite, even if you are dropping and recreating the table every 12 hours.
You might want to consider using an ORM library to make fetching and saving data from the DB simpler, ORMLite is good and compatible with Android
http://ormlite.com/
If your application relies heavily on an internet connection you don't need to buffer information in the database. However if you want to use the app where you have bad or no signal you might want to used cached values from the sqlite database.
With slow internet connection your application may be unresponsive so caching may be a good idea - but it doesn't necessarily be in the sqlite database. You should use the sqlite database for data that is required by the device frequently and that is irrelevant to your server component.
If the data is updated frequently but only while the application runs you might want to cache in the devices memory. I assume your app is not running all the time within the 12 hours but is called regularly instead to check something.
12hrs is a long time, so rather than leaving your data wander in RAM, i would suggest you to use database. Because you never know when you may need to read it again.
Otherwise, if your purpose is only to downloaded data, process it and display in activity, then you dont need to involve database because if your app is closed (due to user or low memory), in anyway your app will be downloading fresh data from server... am i right?
> update the UI on regular interval from the sqlite in evry 20 minutes
Dont expect your app to be open for such a long duration.
To precisely suggest to your case
Avoid DB
Fetch Data at app start or at appropriate time when app is opened
and save it in plain java objects.
Define Methods within it that perform operation in it.
Make map or list to save those POJO
Define Seprate Controller Classes within your project to update map of pojo at any
specific change to make fresh data available to UI.
I am developping an application that retrieves some data from a server.
I have two options:
Get the whole data set from the server and then work with it using the pattern 'singleton' to reduce the number of queries
For each query, get the corresponding data set from the server
What is the best choice?
In my opinion it depends.
It depends on the size of the data and if it even makes sense to return data that your user may not even need.
Personally, in my app that I am building I will be returning only the data that is required at that time. Obviously though, once I have the data I won't be fetching it again if it makes sense to keep hold of it for good or even just temporarily.
I agree with C0deAttack's answer. Your goal should be to minimize network traffic within the constraints of your app being a "good citizen" on the phone. (That means that your app does not negatively impact the user or other applications by using too many resources — including memory and file space.)
From the sound of it, I'm guessing that the data are not that voluminous. If so, I would recommend caching the response and use it locally, thus avoiding repeated queries to the server. Depending on how often the data changes, you might even consider making it persistent, so that the app doesn't have to query the server the next time it starts up. If the response includes an estimated time before it is considered outdated, that would help in establishing an update schedule. (Google's license server uses this idea.)
P.S. I don't see that this has anything (directly) to do with a singleton pattern.
How about storing your data in an sqlite database and do your queries with sql? Since you get sorting and ordering for free, it can help you writing less code. Also you have instant offline functionality if your user has no internet connection. :)