I know it sounds ambitious but our client requires a PDF Reader of his own with some selected functionalities. Can anyone guide me to some good tutorials for paving the way to start this development?
I guess I need to clear some pdf basics and start from scratch OR i would be happy if there is any library which i can use directly and only modify the controls at my will.
In terms of specific Android implementation, I really can't advise you there, I'm afraid.
However, there is a lot of PDF viewing software available that is open-source which would allow you to see the underlying code to learn from.
One example is PDFedit, which is also an editor, but there are loads on SourceForge or Google Code you could have a look at.
This Wikipedia section has a list of multi-platform development libraries which could help you. There is also a bunch of PDF software, much of which is open-source. Perhaps you could find a simplistic one and have a look at how it parses PDFs.
Related
I'm a noob self learning programmer and i'm wondering how can i make an application for mobile. As an example, so you can understand what i need (and easier for me to explain), think of an application where the user can store products and related information by filling forms (an icon, price, name, features, weight...) and then consult stored information.
For me it looks like the best way to create it is by using web related tools like HTML, CSS, MySQL...
The problem i find is that i don't know how to create a web shaped application and then turn it into a mobile app.
I'm sorry if i didn't explain the best way, but hope you guys get my point are able to put me in the right way!
Thanks a lot in advance!!
P.S. Beyond HTML and CSS and a little MySQL i have basic knowledge of JS, C++ and C#.
As a newbie, it's better to do the correct choice at the beginning.
For Android development, the entry point is the developer portal: https://developer.android.com/
The app you've thinking of is quite classic: You won't have troubles to find some tutorials on the web.
You can do that with either SQLite or Firebase Realtime Database, you choose.
I guess, the easiest way will be creating responsive website and then include that in your app as a WebView. However, this might give users the feel that you're just loading the website in a WebView if you don't include some features like, maybe, push notifications, update checker, theme changer, something like that.
You can alos find a lot of easy tutorials and templates to build a WebView app.
P.S.: I myself have made an Android app of my friend's blog by first making a website and then using WebViews.
I've looked at this doc: http://developer.android.com/guide/webapps/webview.html
It seems it might be attractive strategy to use HTML/Javascript to get:
result faster (I can use my browser to create a prototype very quickly, just updating my page in the browser, and not waiting for emulator to be update my changes)
avoid to to learn Android API too deep (but use what I know HTML/CSS/JS instead)
reuse my code, putting it to iOS, BlackBerry (not only Android)
The only question I have.. Is whether someone already did it for real? Because tutorials that I've found - just show how to print 'Hello world!' message in simple HTML.
But what would be more interesting to get is 'how it works with embedded database' in android,
OR better say, as an example what I mean:
How to handle JS' "onClick" to get some data stored to db?
UPDATE:
Yeah.. there are a lot of PRODUCTS. But what if I need just a storage support (need to put and read data from db). no need anything sophisticated like camera support. What I really want to avoid is:
waiting for Emulator updated
write simple and easy components and layout in HTML to get instant result (it seems more natural for me, even though I'm Java Dev.. but it's lame to wait for result building and waiting when working with UI)
I'm looking for someone's existing experience to avoid addition complexity and time gaps between builds/tries while working with UI.
Look into Phonegap to convert HTML, CSS, and JS code into a native phone app for android or iOS. Very useful as it puts a web wrapper around the web code to run it natively on your phone. This should solve storage issues as well, lots of documentation around for phonegap, be sure to check it out!
I just released http://www.protocoder.org under MIT license, give it a try! Its meant to basically do what you mention in the first point (prototype fast), and on the second avoid to learn the Android API to deeply.
Its still a young project but I hope it will grow really fast :)
I want to write an Android application to read and display PDFs. I don't want to use any third-party applications to do this, because I don't want to force my users to download those applications. And I don't want to use a webview, because then users won't be able to use my app when they're offline.
How might I approach this?
Here's a link I used to create one that mostly works.
It outlines how to write (and hence read) all the common PDF parts that are in a .pdf file. It's far more readable than the ISO spec, especially if you haven't done PDF formats before.
http://www.adobe.com/technology/pdfs/presentations/KingPDFTutorial.pdf
Good Luck.
Unless you fancy building a PDF rendering engine from scratch (or including one in your project), you probably are better with using some kind of intent to ask some other application on the phone to view the PDF. I know you do not really want the requirement of having an application installed to handle it, but I suggest that you are probably adding unnecessary complexity to your application by trying to do it some other way.
It's worth mentioning that quite a lot of Android handsets already have PDF viewers preinstalled, and incidentally, I think even WebView requires that the phone has a PDF viewer installed!
New to the group and new to Android development. At our site we are starting to look into Android application development and as I have the most programming background here I have been tasked with learning to develop on Android.
My programming background includes RPG and CL, (AS/400), Pick DataBasic, Paradox ObjectPal, Basic in a variety of flavors, (of course), a little C and C++, Comal, a little dabbling in Visual Basic and AutoIt scripting language. I have worked a lot in Oracle, Informix and some MS-SQL.
I have installed and configured Eclipse and the Android SDK.
I have an idea for what I think would be a fairly simple application to get my feet wet as it were.
We have a variety of documentation that is in PDF and Epub.
I would like to create an application where the APK contains all the specified documentation for a given application with the following criteria. When the user installs the APK file it would do the following:
Create a folder on the SD card called SystemDocs,
Create a subfolder under System Docs for the a given system say Accounting for example
Create two subfolders under accounting one for PDF files and one for Epub documents
Check to ensure that the user has a suitable application installed for reading PDF and Epub documents and if not find it on the Android Market and ask the user to install it.
Copy the Epub and PDF documents to their respective folders
Exit
Based on the above I was looking for some recommendations as to where to go from here. I am the type that likes to just dive in and start trying to write something useful as opposed to the
10 For x = 1 to 10
20 Print “My First Basic Program”
30 Next X
40 End
Kind of thing. Any thoughts, advice, recommendations, or example code would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Gordon
I would suggest visiting the following link:
http://developer.android.com/resources/index.html
One nice thing about a few of the tutorials, is that they give you base code to start with, and have you add in extra information. This is nice because it cuts out some of the repetitiveness, yet if you wanted you could still type it all yourself.
After that if you have questions, stackoverflow is a great place to get advice on code or any troubles you may have.
Other than that, searching google for tutorials (or blogs that main contain tutorials,) and I'd even recommend youtube. Good luck with your ventures!
I would like to create a custom open source information management application, that I could adapt to practical needs of a psychiatrist. (and also would really like to avoid inventing the wheel). Could someone advise me what would be a good way to start? I have some amateur programming experience (see below), but I have little experience with java and eclipse (which I have set up with Android SDK plugin on my linux PC).
What I would like to achieve is a simple app where I could relatively easily re-program/rearrange information presenting screens. I would like the major development stages to be something like:
Basic framework of the app is done Main information is added
through the programming environment
basic formatting (bold, color, lists) should be supported
I imagine this would be through HTML/CSS markup Hierarchical (not
too deep) screens with concise information about conditions,
treatments; easy, not too cumbersome navigation is a must.
Possibility to attach own notes from android device
on every piece of information (e.g. on medical condition, on medication,
list of differential diagnoses, etc)
A desktop application that allows for easy adding and editing
of the content
initially could be even sqlite manager or something similar
possibility for adding images,
possibility to add rating scales, which would calculate scores
maybe also possibility to print through some android print driver
* in essence I envision this as a sort of an integrated website with a relatively simple database behind it (sqlite?) running on android. My models would be epocrates and medscape apps, but the content would be more specific to everyday psychiatric practice. It would include aspects of psychological therapies as well.
In about a years time, I think, the content would be interesting enough to see whether the app should go on the market.
My (limited) experience:
I am a MD - a Psychiatrist. I have some amateur development experience (php, html, css, Perl, bash, sed, sql, Access and some time ago - AS/400). I would like to start an app that I could modify as I go - in order to have the most useful info at my fingertips, when I need it in my work. I have considered some databases (e.g. HandDB) but my experience with them is that you get very constricted with their user interface and this hinders fast information retrieval when you need it. Adding information can be clumsy as well.
Why I am asking for help here
Most of tasks above seem pretty standard. I imagine that people with lots of programming experience here, probably would be able to point me towards some information that would help me to get started.
Many thanks for considering this :)
Are you going to develop this app? Everything you mentioned can be easily done by reading the android documentation. Although if its you doing the coding i recommend buying a book
You will find a lot of samples and other support in the android doc
Printing can be also setup using Google Cloud print
If you want to open source your application you can always use google code.
You have asked a really broad question here. But i guess the above information is good to get you started.