This is the situation: We have an android game that has been published for a few years now, that was originally developed in ActionScript3 and built with Adobe Air...
Now, the problem we are facing is that because ActionScript3 is basically unsupported by most advertising and analytics SDKs, we need to update to something newer, without losing our current playerbase. So we started developing a clone of the current game in Unity3d, and also found a way to sign with the old .P12 and the playstore console lets us upload and everything.
Now to the real question: The last and current hurdle we have to overcome is find a way to preserve the current users' save games when they update to the Unity version. We use a SharedObject to store all user preferences and progress.
I have searched forums, here in SO and in the Unity3D forums and found no one asking a similar question.
But we would like to know if someone knows a way for another app, with the same signature and packagename (is basically an update to the AdobeAir app) to read the SharedObject from the AdobeAir App and parse it so it can create a local save with Unity3D (with PlayerPrefs or any other method).
The code we use to Save and Load progress from a SharedObject is this:
public function LoadVal(_id:String, _defaultValue:Object = null):Object
{
if (existSO(_id))
{
return loadSO(_id);
}
else {
return _defaultValue;
}
}
private function loadSO(id:String):Object
{
mySO = SharedObject.getLocal(nameSO);
return mySO.data[id];
}
public function existSO(id:String):Boolean
{
mySO = SharedObject.getLocal(nameSO);
return mySO.data[id] != null;
}
public function SaveVal(id:String,val:Object):void
{
mySO = SharedObject.getLocal(nameSO);
mySO.data[id] = val;
mySO.flush()
}
public function clearSO():void
{
mySO = SharedObject.getLocal(nameSO);
mySO.clear();
}
As part of my app I get a list of apps installed on the device by using ApplicationPackageManager.getInstalledApplications but for some users I get crash reports saying that
TransactionTooLargeException at android.osBinderProxy.tranasact(Native Method)
Can anyone think why I'd get this?
I've found that this was solved on Android 5.1 (proof here, search for "Fix package manager TransactionTooLargeExceptions") as it was reported on multiple places:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=95749
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=93717
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=69276
However, I wanted to solve this for pre-5.1, so I've come up with a solution (and suggested Google to put it on the support library, here) . Here's a short code version of what I've suggested:
public static List<PackageInfo> getInstalledPackages(Context context,int flags)
{
final PackageManager pm=context.getPackageManager();
try
{
return pm.getInstalledPackages(flags);
}
catch(Exception ignored)
{
//we don't care why it didn't succeed. We'll do it using an alternative way instead
}
// use fallback:
Process process;
List<PackageInfo> result=new ArrayList<>();
BufferedReader bufferedReader=null;
try
{
process=Runtime.getRuntime().exec("pm list packages");
bufferedReader=new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(process.getInputStream()));
String line;
while((line=bufferedReader.readLine())!=null)
{
final String packageName=line.substring(line.indexOf(':')+1);
final PackageInfo packageInfo=pm.getPackageInfo(packageName,flags);
result.add(packageInfo);
}
process.waitFor();
}
catch(Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
finally
{
if(bufferedReader!=null)
try
{
bufferedReader.close();
}
catch(IOException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
return result;
}
What it does it to try using the official way first, and then, if failed, it fetches the package names using ADB command, and get the information of each of the apps, one after another.
It is much slower than the official one, but it didn't crash for me. I've tested it on Android emulators (2.3.x till 5.0.x, including), and on real devices too.
The time it took on my device (Galaxy S3 with custom rom of Android 5.1) is 1375-2012 ms (on 197 apps total) compared to 37-65 ms using the official way .
EDIT: people claim here that it's not fixed on Android 5.1 . I hope that it got fixed on Android 6 .
This exception is kind of difficult to reproduce under normal circumstances. You will get this exception when there IPC memory is exhausted when transferring data. This can occur in both cases, where a service is trying to place data to client or a client is sending data to service. Most probably some of your users might have installed huge number of application, which results in a data size greater than 1MB (which is the size of IPC buffer).
I am afraid in this case, you will not be do anything better. But if you are doing something like, applyBatch, you can separate one large transaction to multiple smaller transactions.
Also have a look at this thread What to do on TransactionTooLargeException
I've built an Android app which is now on Play Market. From time to time, I make updates to it, and I'd like to let users know that a new version is available.
How can I send an update notification to the users of the app?
You do not need to do anything specific for this. Since you mentioned that you are using Google Play, the update notification is taken care of by Google Play.
You just need to update the APK with a higher versionCode and Google Play should do the rest.
Update 2020: now you can use in-app updates mechanism
Docs: https://developer.android.com/guide/playcore/in-app-updates
You can do this in a lot of ways, depending on when you want the user to be able to see that there is an update available.
If you want the user to know about the update when the app is started, just create a utility method (inside the onCreate method of your main/first Activity) that checks if a newer version is available in Google Play. If it does, display an alert dialog with a relevant message and an Intent which opens your app in Google Play when the user clicks on the positive button of the alert dialog.
If you are updating the app regularly, the user will keep getting this alert dialog every time the app is started and hence, may get irritated. Thus, this is not the best approach.
If you want the user to get a notification on the phone (and not when the user starts the app), you can use the AlarmManager class to schedule a background service which checks for an update at regular intervals. If the service finds that an upgrade is actually available, publish a notification with an intent that opens your app in Google Play.
Of course, another approach is to leave it to the OS itself. If the user has not set the "Automatically update" preference for your app, the user will get a notification regularly about an update available for your, as well as any other apps.
But not all users enable background data on their devices, so this is not completely reliable.
In the end, you must respect the users preferences. If the user does not want to automatically update the app, or does not want to see a nagging dialog box whenever he/she starts your app, don't alert the user about the update.
In my opinion, you should create a PreferenceActivity that has a preference like "Check for updates regularly", which can be set from within your app. If it is set, do the needful in your own service. May be even give the user an option to select the period after which the service will check for an update.
I hope this helps!
It is up to each phone owner if she wants to be notified on new versions by google play, and it's up to each phone's manufacturer if this is to be enabled by default.
If you however are in a situation where you "require" the user to update to the new version to be compatible with some form of protocol or you have a similar similar use case where you have a server component somewhere, you might want to notify the user of a potential version conflict in the UI based on information about what is the latest version.
This information can be grabbed directrly from google play, however as #Yahel pointed out in this question google play is a closed system with no official API, and you might need to rely on unpredictable undocumented API. There is an unofficial API library here.
This leaves only one option, which is to keep this information on your own server. If you allready have a serverside this might be trivial. Simply put the latest version in an XML file and retreive that at regular intervals from your code. If the version code is outdated, trigger the notification in your UI. Here is an example implementation for doing that.
I hope this was helpful :-)
I know this is an old question but still if people are coming here to check this question, Google is now providing official support for in-app notification for application update the full documentation can be found here
Use this : https://www.push-link.com/
Google Play will notify your users that the app has an update via the notification bar.
If you set up a notification system yourself, the likely result would be that, although the user is notified of an update sooner, when he/she goes to Google Play to install the update it will not yet be available. This is because there is a lag from the time you "publish" an app/update and the time until it appears on Play. Telling your users that there is an update when the update is unavailable would only lead to confusion and frustration.
My advice: stick with Google's update notification system and don't worry about trying to get users an update 15 minutes sooner.
Some people use Android Cloud-to-Device Messaging (C2DM) to notify their users of updates. I don't think I'd bother, since I think Google Play does a pretty good job of notifying me of updates already, and implementing C2DM adds a whole new dimension to writing an app (because it requires a server component). But maybe you want to offer your users a richer update notification than you get from Google Play.
#Davek804's answer above is wrong. android:versionCode is an integer value that represents the version of the application code, relative to other versions, so using "1.5b" there is incorrect. Use "15" (or "150") instead
Found a nice solution for your problem:
Let´s say you want to check for version updates manually on app start and notify your users for the new Update.
Step 1: Download android-market-api (not the .jar file, the full project!)
Step 2: After importing it to eclipse, write in your activity the following code:
MarketService ms = new MarketService(activity);
ms.level(MarketService.REVISION).checkVersion();
now, we need to modify MarketService.java, because it seems to be broken.
Step 3: rewrite callback method and add the following methods
protected void callback(String url, JSONObject jo, AjaxStatus status){
if(jo == null) return;
String googlePlayversion = jo.optString("version", "0");
String smartphone_version = "";
PackageInfo pInfo;
try {
pInfo = act.getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(act.getPackageName(), 0);
smartphone_version = pInfo.versionName;
} catch (NameNotFoundException e) {}
boolean new_version_avaible = compare(smartphone_version, googlePlayversion);
if(new_version_avaible){
showUpdateDialog(jo);
}
}
private static boolean compare(String v1, String v2) {
String s1 = normalisedVersion(v1);
String s2 = normalisedVersion(v2);
int cmp = s1.compareTo(s2);
String cmpStr = cmp < 0 ? "<" : cmp > 0 ? ">" : "==";
System.out.printf("result: "+"'%s' %s '%s'%n", v1, cmpStr, v2);
if(cmpStr.contains("<")){
return true;
}
if(cmpStr.contains(">")||cmpStr.contains("==")){
return false;
}
return false;
}
public static String normalisedVersion(String version) {
return normalisedVersion(version, ".", 4);
}
public static String normalisedVersion(String version, String sep, int maxWidth) {
String[] split = Pattern.compile(sep, Pattern.LITERAL).split(version);
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (String s : split) {
sb.append(String.format("%" + maxWidth + 's', s));
}
return sb.toString();
}
If you want to test it, modify googlePlayversion string to a higher version than your local one.
The source comparison method I used is from How do you compare two version Strings in Java?
There is also a very good approach for checking version and give user in app notification or when you want to forcefully update the application if you can decide the first connection of your app with the server.In the response of the first request you can send the current version of app stored on your server and then on client end you can take the appropriate action.
Advantages of this approach-:
1-No extra request for version no.
2-It is also applicable if you are downloading the app other than the google playstore.
3-you can also use this idea if you want to check the version at particular operation of your app ex- transaction(if you add a new payment gateway.)
Don't know if you want to walk extra miles. You can try out google appengine, which serve version number for your app and let you android app check the appengine to see if there is a new version when the application is launched. That way, it does not matter if your app is in google play market nor amazon app store nor if it is installed on the phone without those two via sideloading. It is not very hard to setup appengine just for serving your application version in json. Replace "Hello World" string with your app version name ...
This can be using a simple webservice just this is one of the way to acheive.
i.e., when ever the app launch hit that webservice with the current version of the user app and on the server you need to check whether any new version is available or not(Must maintain the newest version of the app) and send the corresponding response to the user. If any newer version is available prompt the user to download the newest version of the application and if no newest version is available then allow the user to continue.
Hope so atleast something must be useful to you.
There are two models that are basically used to tackle the issue.
Pull Based
Push Based
Its depends on the architecture or design of particular system that determines whether pull based or push mechanism is used.
For pull based model you just make one http request to concerned server regarding the new version of application. The current application version no can be saved in SQLLite in android application. This can be given to server and new version can be checked against it at the server.
For push mechanism you can use C2DM push notification service.. details of which are given at http://code.google.com/android/c2dm/
Generally when you upload a new application to Google play most users get a notification about an update, some will have the app automatically downloaded to their device, depending on the settings they have.
If you seriously want to make a notification from your app to ask them to update (so that everyone gets the notification, whatever their Google play settings are, then you will have to make a web service which returns the number of the newest version. You can then compare that inside your app and post a notification. You could use Google App Engine ( https://developers.google.com/appengine/) because that works with eclipse and java, which you probably already have.
I would not recommend this approach as it creates a lot of work for you to provide something that most users have already got.
i think this is too late but it can be help some one
public enum AppVersionUpgradeNotifier {
INSTANCE;
private static final String TAG = "AppVersionUpdateManager";
private static final String PREFERENCES_APP_VERSION = "pref_app_version_upgrade";
private static final String KEY_LAST_VERSION = "last_version";
private SharedPreferences sharedPreferences;
private VersionUpdateListener versionUpdateListener;
private boolean isInitialized;
public static synchronized void init(Context context, VersionUpdateListener versionUpdateListener) {
if (context == null || versionUpdateListener == null) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException(TAG + " : Context or VersionUpdateListener is null");
}
if (!INSTANCE.isInitialized) {
INSTANCE.initInternal(context, versionUpdateListener);
} else {
Log.w(TAG, "Init called twice, ignoring...");
}
}
private void initInternal(Context context, VersionUpdateListener versionUpdateListener) {
this.sharedPreferences = context.getSharedPreferences(PREFERENCES_APP_VERSION, Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
this.versionUpdateListener = versionUpdateListener;
this.isInitialized = true;
checkVersionUpdate();
}
private void checkVersionUpdate() {
int lastVersion = getLastVersion();
int currentVersion = getCurrentVersion();
if (lastVersion < currentVersion) {
if (versionUpdateListener.onVersionUpdate(currentVersion, lastVersion)) {
upgradeLastVersionToCurrent();
}
}
}
private int getLastVersion() {
return sharedPreferences.getInt(KEY_LAST_VERSION, 0);
}
private int getCurrentVersion() {
return BuildConfig.VERSION_CODE;
}
public void upgradeLastVersionToCurrent() {
sharedPreferences.edit().putInt(KEY_LAST_VERSION, getCurrentVersion()).apply();
}
public interface VersionUpdateListener {
boolean onVersionUpdate(int newVersion, int oldVersion);
}
}
use it on
public class MyApplication extends Application implements AppVersionUpgradeNotifier.VersionUpdateListener {
#Override
public void onCreate() {
super.onCreate();
AppVersionUpgradeNotifier.init(this,this);
}
#Override
public boolean onVersionUpdate(int newVersion, int oldVersion) {
//do what you want
return true;
}
}
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:versionCode="1.5b"
android:versionName="1.5b">
When you re-upload your app to Google Play, if these two attributes have been changed from the previous upload, Google Play will automatically send notifications to users who have installed your app. This is the AndroidManifest file.
Is there a way to start an Intent on the Kindle Fire that will cause the AppStore app to open and display all the apps for a certain developer? For instance, on a phone/tablet with the Android Market installed, I can do this:
Intent otherApps = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW,Uri.parse("market://search?q=pub:\"" + developerName + "\""));
activity.startActivity(otherApps);
And show all my apps in the Android Market. Can I do that with the Amazon App Store? If so, how? I've tried that Intent with other seemingly valid names (such as "ZeptoLab") and I don't get any filtering. It just drops me in the full unfiltered App Store. Looking up a specific app with "market://details?id=package.name" does seem to work.
From https://developer.amazon.com/help/faq.html#Marketing:
To point to your app for marketing purposes use the URL http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=packagename (where packagename is your app package name).
If you want to link to the list of all your applications on the Amazon Appstore use the URL http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=packagename&showAll=1.
e.g. http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=com.rovio.angrybirds&showAll=1
All this can be seen here: https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/in-app-purchasing/sample-code/deeplink.html
Update(deep linking):
amzn://apps/android?p=
Best way is to look at their website (or here), which currently states this :
search: amzn://apps/android?s=amazon%20mp3 or http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?s=amazon%20mp3
detail page using package name: amzn://apps/android?p=com.amazon.mp3 or http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=com.amazon.mp3
detail page using unique ID ("asin") : amzn://apps/android?asin=B004FRX0MY or http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?asin=B004FRX0MY
show all apps of the developer who made the app: amzn://apps/android?p=com.amazon.mp3&showAll=1 or http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=com.amazon.mp3&showAll=1
Amazon supports their own deep links now: https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/apis/earn/in-app-purchasing/docs/deeplink
E.g. you can start an intent with uri amzn://apps/android?p=my.package.name.
From - https://developer.amazon.com/help/tuabg.html
For in-app advertising or mobile browser based linking, please:
Use this link structure: http:// www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=com.example.package/ref=mas_pm_app_name
For a link that directs to a list of all of your apps within our U.S. store, please:
Use this link structure: http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=com.example.package&showAll=1
Now, you think amazon would have this correct on their own website, but the first part that I put in bold is wrong. This is what it should actually be:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=com.example.package&ref=mas_pm_app_name
Notice the & instead of the / between the package name and ref. Hopefully this helps some other people since this little detail wasted some of my time...
Here's the solution I came up with using the advice below from chiuki:
I added a boolean to one of my resource files that indicates whether or not the app is published in the Amazon AppStore or Android Market. Yeah, you have to change it whenever you publish your app, but think of it sort of like remembering to set debuggable to "false" when you publish. Put it on a check list. It goes like this:
In resource file:
<bool name="app_is_in_amazon_app_store">true< /bool>
In code:
public class SomeUtil
{
private static Boolean isInAmazonAppStore;
public static boolean isInAmazonAppStore(Activity activity)
{
if (isInAmazonAppStore == null)
{
isInAmazonAppStore = activity.getResources().getBoolean(R.bool.app_is_in_amazon_app_store) ;
}
return isInAmazonAppStore;
}
public static void startOtherMarketAppsActivity(Activity activity)
{
try
{
Intent otherApps = null;
if (isInAmazonAppStore(activity))
{
otherApps = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW,Uri.parse("http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=" + getPackageNameInAmazonAppStore(activity) + "&showAll=1"));
}
else
{
otherApps = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW,Uri.parse("market://search?q=pub:\"" + getAndroidDeveloperName(activity) + "\""));
}
activity.startActivity(otherApps);
}
catch(Exception ex){ /* error handling */}
}
I want to use Flickr API for downloading the images on Android Phone, can any one give or tell, me about the working sample of Flickr API on Andorid.
I have add the flickr.jar as the external library, and i have the "Key"and "Secret" but i do not know how to download the images.
All it takes is just 3 steps and you will have it implemented.
Step 1: Find your user id.
The easiest way is to use this service http://idgettr.com/
Step 2: Acquire you flickr api key
Just log-in to you account and click this link http://www.flickr.com/services/api/misc.api_keys.html
Step 3: Get the code from the example project from our blog
http://www.quintostdio.com/blog/archives/1117
Add you user id and api key on the FlickrActivity class (in the package com.quintostdio.test.flickr.ui) and run the example. You can copy paste the classes and add it to your project, with no more changes and it will work.
Hi I have built a Flickr Java library for Android: http://code.google.com/p/flickrj-android/
You'll need to look in their documentation on the Flickr site. Most likely will use the Java library and import it into your Android project.
Probably have to instantiate an object, using the Key and Secret. Once you have a valid authentication object, you'll use a provided method (from the docs) to get a picture.
Have a look here: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/
#Todd DeLand answer is pretty accurate even nowadays.
However, I'll speed you up the search and tell you that the flickrj-android is not anymore up to date, as you can check in the Downloads page https://code.google.com/archive/p/flickrj-android/downloads
The other project that is listed in the Flickr API page ( http://www.flickr.com/services/api/ ), Flickr4Java, it's definitely working nowadays since I just tested it today and so far is doing it's job pretty nicely.
Github repo: https://github.com/boncey/Flickr4Java
Gradle config to add in your project (be careful, since in the README it appears another Gradle configuration, which is for the project that Flickr4Java is based on, and is NOT working):
implementation "com.flickr4java:flickr4java:2.17"
As of today, Flickr4Java was last updated on Nov 11, 2017, which is not bad.
This is an example of how I sent a query to get the pictures around a certain location (latitude,longitude):
Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
String apiKey = "MY_API_KEY";
String sharedSecret = "MI_API_SECRET";
REST rest = new REST();
Flickr flickrClient = new Flickr(apiKey, sharedSecret, rest);
SearchParameters searchParameters = new SearchParameters();
searchParameters.setLatitude(exampleLatitude);
searchParameters.setLongitude(exampleLongitude);
searchParameters.setRadius(3); // Km around the given location where to search pictures
PhotoList photos = flickrClient.getPhotosInterface().search(searchParameters,5,1);
} catch (Exception ex) {
Log.d(MapApplication.LOG_TAG, ex.getLocalizedMessage());
}
}
});
thread.start();
I would avoid flickr4java. I assumed it worked at first but after incorporating it in to my project I have found that it crashes the app intermittently. very annoying and has been a big waste of time :(. probably works fine under other java apps but does not seem to play well with android :(