Hi.
I was wondering how hard it would be to create a simple application that would connect to a server or website checking for updates. I plan on loading font .apk's on the server or website, and would like a application to periodically check for updates or manually check for updates, be able to preview the font, and then download the .apk if wanted. How hard would it be to create such an application?
Thanks.
Jzero88
jzero88 said:
Hi.
I was wondering how hard it would be to create a simple application that would connect to a server or website checking for updates. I plan on loading font .apk's on the server or website, and would like a application to periodically check for updates or manually check for updates, be able to preview the font, and then download the .apk if wanted. How hard would it be to create such an application?
Thanks.
Jzero88
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, this depends on how you approach it, but I think the easiest way to do this would be to create a feed using XML. So if you were doing your font updater, you would load a file like this:
<FontDetails>
<Font name = "Font1" example = "http://www.myfontsite.com/FontExamples/Font1.png" location = ""http://www.myfontsite.com/Fonts/Font1.apk"\>
<Font name = "Font2" example = "http://www.myfontsite.com/FontExamples/Font2.png" location = "http://www.myfontsite.com/Fonts/Font2.apk"\>
</FontDetails>
The problem with this is that you will have to maintain this XML file, making sure its always up-to-date(Easily manageable with some simple scripts).
If you aren't willing to do this, you could go down the road that is wrongly mislabeled as "The Easy Way" and hard-code the locations of all your APK's and all of your example images, but I would only do this if you were planning on dumping all the APK's and images in the same place(For example, if all your APK's were here: http://www.myfontsite.com/Fonts/). You would request the directory information from the server and parse that into your list of font APK's and correspond them with their example images(probably by naming them the same; i.e. Font1.apk and Font1.png).
If you decide to use the first option, you could do a bunch of cool things with the organization, like break things into categories and apply taggings and it would only require one request to the server per update. If you go with the second method, organization is guaranteed to be a mess if you try anything large scale, and adds a layer of complexity if you try to break things into folders and categories. This would require a ping per folder you have to check, which can have a high complexity factor if you have a lot of folders.
I just want to point out that even though this is directly related to development, this is a type of question that belongs in the General section(Questions ALWAYS belong in General). I'm sure a Mod will come around, scold you, then move the thread.
Anyway, I do hope this helps,
Good luck,
Tyler
Edit: Having a bit of problems getting the XML looking correct. Sorry if it looks ugly :S
Even easier would be to manage the updater as an RSS feed. Then it becomes quite trivial, as there are several examples of RSS readers online already.
Great! Thanks for the reply!
Yeah, the XML approach I think would be the better option as well, just because we could use this thread to hold everything I currently do no have any hosting at this time. Would you be up to making such a application? It seems you have the know abouts to so.... I would be the one to maintain everything and update it. I would monitor this thread and when new ones pop up, I wouldn't mind adding it to in the XML.
Also, how would the RSS feed work?
Thanks
jzero88 said:
Great! Thanks for the reply!
Yeah, the XML approach I think would be the better option as well, just because we could use this thread to hold everything I currently do no have any hosting at this time. Would you be up to making such a application? It seems you have the know abouts to so.... I would be the one to maintain everything and update it. I would monitor this thread and when new ones pop up, I wouldn't mind adding it to in the XML.
Also, how would the RSS feed work?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wish I could...I've got about 50 projects already on the back-burner and no time to finish them Tell ya what though...I've finished a mini project a couple weeks ago with some buddies at school for my friends website. Its an Open-Source RSS reader that was made to read in the latest articles of his site. With some slight tweaking, I'm sure you(or some other dev) could mod it to work in your favor...Here's the github address:
http://github.com/pencilo/Absolute-Android-RSS.git
I don't think this is the latest code, but all the working elements you need are in here.
hello, I'm interested in editing some features of an apk. I've seen many a dev edit stock apps to work better, by removing limitations, or battery thresholds. I want to remove the wifi only option from the crunchyroll app, so that I can use it over 3g. I probably won't be successful, but it'll be a good learning experience. can anyone point me in the right direction of what program to use to start editing an apk? I'm using windows, but if need be, I can install Linux. thanks!
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
The APK Manager is good for decompiling/recompiling and all those things.
Link: http://apkmultitool.com
For editing xml files, use Notepad++
Hey guys,
I have an issue I'm facing at the moment. I have purchased 3 Samsung Galaxy Nexus devices for my family, and one for myself. I wanted to setup all our devices for them and pre-install essential apps for them, and lay it out in a way which makes each device identical so that my family (which is new to Android) can all get the same easy experience from their devices, rather than everyone getting a different LG/Samsung/HTC device and having to deal with differences in skins every time someone phones me with a question about their device.
Here is what I have done:
1. Unlocked bootloader, root, installed CM10.1.2 + gapps onto my own personal device. Clean install, wiped everything.
2. Setup android with a temporary Gmail account, installed about 20 apps, setup the homescreen, changed a few settings for simplicity, change wallpapers, etc.
3. Once I was satisfied, I removed the google account, rebooted to recovery (CWM 6.0.3.2) and made a Nandroid backup which was later copied to my home server.
4. Unlocked Bootloader, rooted and installed CM10.1.2 + gapps on all the other devices, booted the device then transferred the Nandroid backup from my home server to each of these other three devices. Restore the backup, reboot, all seems fine so I setup new individual google accounts, and away I went. Everything works fine, at least so it seems.
Now the issue is that I'm having came a day or two after I got everything setup on each device. At the moment I'm having serious issues with the Google Play Store and Push Notifications. Almost all devices intermittently have issues with this. The play store issue I'm getting is [RPC:S-5:AEC-0], and prevents me from downloading or updating apps. Push notifications is not working either. For example, Google hangouts notifications don't notify me of messages on devices intermittently unless I manually check the app. Same goes with facebook and snapchat notifications. Very annoying. Tried all sorts of fixes such as removing the Google account, rebooting and adding it again, but no luck.
It seems like there is some sort of conflict with each device, but I don't understand why. I changed the Android ID on each device hoping that would help, but still no luck. If anyone could offer an explanation why this issue is occurring I would love to hear it!
Cheers.
Edit: Tried making a titanium backup of one device and moved it to a rooted Galaxy S2 running CM10.1 nightlies, and no such issue. Also, updated one nexus device to the latest nightly, still no fix. Hopefully this information will help someone be able to point out the problem somewhere.
Okay, so I've been playing with a couple of these devices today, and by removing a google account, rebooting the device and then adding the google account again, it makes the play store work on that device, but breaks functionality on the other devices. Would someone with a low-level understanding of Android care to explain why this is?
I'm going to try doing a factory reset on one of these Nexus devices and restore a Titanium Backup and see if that helps, unless anyone has any suggestions?
The different accounts are linked to the play store separately, you are best off to just downloaded each app and set up each phone with its own gmail account. I know it sounds time consuming but it would take less time than you've been spending already.
As you learn more about android there are lots of ways of doing almost exactly what you want here, but learning right now will take less time and effort than downloading 20 apps to three different phones
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
demkantor said:
The different accounts are linked to the play store separately, you are best off to just downloaded each app and set up each phone with its own gmail account. I know it sounds time consuming but it would take less time than you've been spending already.
As you learn more about android there are lots of ways of doing almost exactly what you want here, but learning right now will take less time and effort than downloading 20 apps to three different phones
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the advice, but at the same time I'm using my family as guinea pigs to test whether it's possible to clone devices like this, as I'm in charge of the IT department at our organisation and I suggested it may be possible to deploy a large number of identical rooted android devices through the organisation (probably around 30-40 devices to start with). At this stage though, there seems to be some issues with doing this. Would you be able to point me in the direction of how I could clone Android to several devices, or at least deploy an identical setup to several devices? Perhaps I'll need to customize my own ROM based on Cyanogenmod? Chances are I'll be having to support different hardware as well. This may include the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Xperia Z and the LG Optimus 4X HD.
Well the absolute best way, in my opinion, would be to create your own ROM.
And by this I don't mean you need to learn how to port or build from source (at least not at first) just some simple zipkanging will do for something like this
Take the ROM.zip, open it, take out apps and such you don't want, add it the ones you do, rezip and sign
Now flash this to each phone and they will all have the same ROM and can just add their Google account.
Now if you want to have certain settings or the system ui look different than this you will need to learn how to decompile some apks and edit xml files, but start slow, do what is easy and what you can't figure out let me know and I'll try to help
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
demkantor said:
Well the absolute best way, in my opinion, would be to create your own ROM.
And by this I don't mean you need to learn how to port or build from source (at least not at first) just some simple zipkanging will do for something like this
Take the ROM.zip, open it, take out apps and such you don't want, add it the ones you do, rezip and sign
Now flash this to each phone and they will all have the same ROM and can just add their Google account.
Now if you want to have certain settings or the system ui look different than this you will need to learn how to decompile some apks and edit xml files, but start slow, do what is easy and what you can't figure out let me know and I'll try to help
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thought this might be the case.
Is it relatively simple to copy the changes I make to one ROM (eg for a Galaxy Nexus) for another ROM (eg. for a Nexus 4)? Is there some sort of Android virtual machine I can test or build this in?
Not simple at all, I was referring to multiple phones of the same type. Its easy to create identical ROMs to be flashed between 30 n4s or 30 genexs, but to create the same identical ROM to work in both types of phones would require source builds matched to each device tree
Which if you know little about android, java, c++ etc, then you have a real long journey ahead of you.
If you want to have an identical ROM (based off one already in existence) be flashed to 30 identical phones this is relatively easy depending on what all you want
Like I said, start small, learn what's easily obtained, then try for something bigger
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
demkantor said:
Not simple at all, I was referring to multiple phones of the same type. Its easy to create identical ROMs to be flashed between 30 n4s or 30 genexs, but to create the same identical ROM to work in both types of phones would require source builds matched to each device tree
Which if you know little about android, java, c++ etc, then you have a real long journey ahead of you.
If you want to have an identical ROM (based off one already in existence) be flashed to 30 identical phones this is relatively easy depending on what all you want
Like I said, start small, learn what's easily obtained, then try for something bigger
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The idea was to use CM10.1 as a base and simply add in some apps + app data and change some settings. Setting up the homescreen in a certain way would be part of that. The Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Xperia Z, and LG Optimus 4X HD all support CM10.1 stable.
If I setup a device the way I want it, would it be possible to extract some of these custom configurations from the live device to a flashable ROM?
Just because there is the same ROM for each phone doesn't mean they are exact, but in your case probably good enough. But the change you would make would be to each individual ROM (on computer not on phone) and then flashed these new versions of your ROM to each phone.
You can not make changes to your phone when running the os and extract these changes and flash them to another phone easily, near impossible to do it to a different phone make
Like I have been saying, take a ROM, open it up on PC, change what you need, flash to phone. The simpler the changes the easier it is to do. This will have to be done on a case by case basis if you are doing it to multiple types of phones
Now if you give me a list of what you want to change exactly there may be a few things you can do on your phone but in reality this is the harder way, doing all the work on PC is the easier way
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
Yes, I understand that. I think what I'll have to do is record the changes I make to one ROM in a changelog of some sort, and then simply recreate these changes manually to other ROMs. Through the PC of course.
demkantor said:
Just because there is the same ROM for each phone doesn't mean they are exact, but in your case probably good enough. But the change you would make would be to each individual ROM (on computer not on phone) and then flashed these new versions of your ROM to each phone.
You can not make changes to your phone when running the os and extract these changes and flash them to another phone easily, near impossible to do it to a different phone make
Like I have been saying, take a ROM, open it up on PC, change what you need, flash to phone. The simpler the changes the easier it is to do. This will have to be done on a case by case basis if you are doing it to multiple types of phones
Now if you give me a list of what you want to change exactly there may be a few things you can do on your phone but in reality this is the harder way, doing all the work on PC is the easier way
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well for example, here are the outdated and rough changes I need to make to the settings (this is just a note of the changes in the settingsof the ROM to make it run way I wanted on the device). Attached it as a PDF as I couldn't copy the formatting.
Most of that should be doable by decompiling systemui.apk and settings.apk, somewhat time consuming and depending on your experience a steep learning curve, but should be able to do it
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
I am 99% sure this isn't possible but figured I'd ask in a more general forum (GS8+ was a bust) on if there is a way to replace system apps without root(or an easy way to change a system apk to 'clone' and install on the user side by looking like a different app.)
I've figured out what needs done to force the Samsung Dex app to run without the dock, but due to many reasons cannot side load the altered apk. Changing the app name, installation directory, etc. the phone still sees it as the same apk/app and will not install it. Can't change the version and overwrite from what I can tell because I can't sign it with the samsung key obviously.
thoughts? Directions?
Only thing I can see to do, is rewrite the app complete (names, folder structure, etc. of the needed parts) to actually make it a completely new app to the phone. This looks to be many many hours of work and the route I least want to go. If I can help it.
i know its a old thread, but what needs to be done to force Dex? I have a hard time on my note 10+ it keeps saying faulty usb-c port due to some kind of water not there.
I downloaded and started using "terminal-launcher" as my homescreen (available from Google Play Store); it's amazing, simple, and has super-low-memory usage, but...
If you have multiple apps with the same name (I have two called Calendar and two called Messenger) it can only launch one of them (due to being text based and the names sharing text). I asked the developer if he could remedy but he (very politely) said he'd moved on and I should develop it if I wanted to. I have enough knowledge of java to know roughly what is going on in his script (roughly!), but not enough knowledge to make the change required, recompile, or pretty much anything really useful.
His script is on github.com/mattpvaughn/terminal-launcher but I can't post the link as I'm a newbie (but that basically was the link).
My theory is that either:
it appends app names (where multiples exist) with ~1, ~2, etc
it lists app ids next to the names (it lists app names when you type "apps" on your homescreen) and allows launch via app id
it does something more clever than I can come up with (this is the more likely option
To be honest, this is a great launcher that just needs a final polish (TUI console launcher crashes too much as it's script is too involved, this launcher has tried to keep script to a bare minimum); unfortunately there aren't enough comment lines to guide an inept idiot like me through adjusting the script.
Any ideas?