Gideon Dsouza - android

Time Predict

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:15:00 GMT

Time Predict is finally out! I've been working on it for sometime now and bothering my friends and colleagues to test it out for me.

It's a simple application I wrote, pretty much a port of http://easyclock.appspot.com/ but it's on Android.

This app came more out of a need I myself had. Hopefully it will be useful to other people too.

Get it from the market here.

I'm very open to any Comments and Suggestions :)

How to get the current location, address and send it to a server on android

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 18:24:23 GMT

Location, Location, Location! Well this article isn't all about location.

Things I will cover in this article:

Get the location of the users device (via the NETWORK). This will be latitude and longitude.
Reverse-Geo code information from the first step and get an address
Send that off to a server via Http GET. (This is typically what you would want to do given a location ;) )

Getting a location

So first off, how do we get the users current latitude and longitude? There are two options (1) We could use the Network (2) Or the GPS. Somehow, getting a location from the network is quite accurate (I tested it a couple times) and it's fairly fast. Getting a location from the GPS then isn't too difficult.

So in a default Android application you would want to add the following permission in your AndroidManifest.xml :

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION"/>

This is if you're using the network, to use the GPS you would need:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION"/>

I have an AddressActivity.java and a main.xml. My view looks like this:

The first button gets my location and the code is below. This is pretty straightforward and the snippet is plagiarized straight from the Android docs here. I have two activity level variables lat and lon, I store the locations here so I can use them later.

To get a location from the GPS you would just change this line:

locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER, 0, 0, locationListener);

To:

locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER, 0, 0, locationListener);

Getting an Address

The magic for reverse geo-coding comes from the Geocoder class. You would need the Internet permission in your manifest and this results in an internet call.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"/>

I encapsulate all my geocoder stuff into a GetAddress() function which I call from my btnAddress. It looks like this:

Send to the Internet

Now typically when you get this far, you want to send this information off to your server somewhere and then do something useful with it. So the last function postData() sends a latitude and longitude to my server. I made little dummy program on AppHabour in ASP.NET-MVC3. It sends the data via GET through a URL.

No doubt you need the INTERNET permission as I described earlier. The code looks like this:

And there you have it!

You can download a fully runnable project of all this code from here.

Hopefully soon I will use an AsyncTask to wrap up all of this code, so it happens asynchronously.

Android Sdk gives failed to fetch url http://dl-ssl.google.com/.../repository.xml

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 07:16:01 GMT

Are you trying to update your Android-SDK and get:

get the “Failed to fetch URL http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/repository.xml”

Searching stackoverflow suggested an internet problem of some kind, but when I tried the URL in the browser itself it didn't work.

Then I looked closer:

The SDK tools themselves have an update, so just select it and hit install.

You'll land up with a new Android SDK Manager:

Happy Coding! =)

Windows Cannot Find Drivers - Setting up Android USB Debugging

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 08:56:45 GMT

So if you're trying to get Android USB debugging to work with your phone and it says:

Windows Cannot find Drivers

Its probably a samsung phone? Yes?

If it is then all you have to do it install Samsung Kies and voila! You'll get everything up and running.

If you're wondering how to debug a device on your phone.

Make sure USB Debugging on your phone is turned on (Mostly under Settings>Applications>USB Debugging)
(If you have a samsung phone install Samsung Kies)
Connect your phone via USB
In eclipse : Under the Run Menu > Debug Congfigurations you should have a configuration under Android Application, if you don't double click Android Application to create a new one.
Select your configuration and then select the Target Tab.
Choose Manual then Click Debug
You will be presented with a list of your connected devices and your virtual devices.

Happy Android Programming!