I'm trying to find a way to scrape data from an Android app on a large scale, ideally legally. I've been an Android Dev for about 12 years now, and this is the first time I've jumped into something like this.
I don't want to modify the Android App. I'm thinking that it's possible for me to take one of the open source emulators, modify it so that all apps are debuggable and hide the fact that it's an emulator. Ideally I'd like to dump the UI and extract the text that I'm looking for, but if that's not sufficient, maybe I can peak at the network traffic coming in and out?
1. Has anyone else done this?
2. Am I reinventing the wheel here? Is there a better way to do this already?
3. Any advice / tips?
bump this back up
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I'm developing a touch screen based system for controlling electronic music. As part of the development, we'll be building our own touch screen, but that's not going to be ready for some time. In the mean time, I need to start writing the software (which will be done in java), and I'm going to need a touch screen to use for testing.
So, I am NOT trying to write an application for the Galaxy Tab. I am writing a application that runs on the my desktop, and I'd like it to be able to get touch information from the Galaxy, in any way practical. I've looked into using an iPad for this, but it looks to be too much of a pain to be worth it. All I need is a way of my java application receiving the list of co-ordinates of touches from the tab, in real time. I don't need any higher level gesture interpretation (as I'll have to do that on my end for the final system anyway), just all the touch co-ordinates. Does anyone have a suggestion on the best way to go about this? Is there something in existence already to accomplish this easily, or is there any kind of java library I can use to make calls to a connected tab from my application? I've been googling around, but haven't found any particularly useful information on the subject, as the tab is chiefly meant to be a stand-alone item, not a pc peripheral. Any tips on where I might start looking would be a huge help. Thanks!
-cullam
cullambl said:
I'm developing a touch screen based system for controlling electronic music. As part of the development, we'll be building our own touch screen, but that's not going to be ready for some time. In the mean time, I need to start writing the software (which will be done in java), and I'm going to need a touch screen to use for testing.
So, I am NOT trying to write an application for the Galaxy Tab. I am writing a application that runs on the my desktop, and I'd like it to be able to get touch information from the Galaxy, in any way practical. I've looked into using an iPad for this, but it looks to be too much of a pain to be worth it. All I need is a way of my java application receiving the list of co-ordinates of touches from the tab, in real time. I don't need any higher level gesture interpretation (as I'll have to do that on my end for the final system anyway), just all the touch co-ordinates. Does anyone have a suggestion on the best way to go about this? Is there something in existence already to accomplish this easily, or is there any kind of java library I can use to make calls to a connected tab from my application? I've been googling around, but haven't found any particularly useful information on the subject, as the tab is chiefly meant to be a stand-alone item, not a pc peripheral. Any tips on where I might start looking would be a huge help. Thanks!
-cullam
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Click to collapse
Ok, well I'm going to try and be brief and not turn this into an Android programming essay so here goes.
You have a couple of different routes you can take.
1. If you use eclipse for development and you hook up your tablet, you can watch the log and see that it prints useful information constantly, basically debug output that tells you whats going on in the background. If you just want to look at it, you can probably see it there.
2. This would be my choice, but I'm a programmer so I love a new adventure. I would recommend you just write a quick app for your tablet that pumps out the location of a touch whenever you touch the screen. If you are familiar with sockets and such, you can just write a simple server Java app that collects packets of data from your tablet, and just have the tablet send out a multicast packet containing the coordinates you touch every time you touch the screen.
There are probably some other ways, but if you are already going to be doing the bulk of the project in Java, you aren't looking at a difficult learning curve to write a basic little android app.
Thanks! I'll definitely try the eclipse trick. And yeah, writing an app on the tab is probably going to be necessary, but MUCH easier than having to learn a new language, and get an official license to do one on the iPad. The thing I'm really unsure about is the available communication methods for getting data back and forth between them. I was hoping there might be some sort of java api to get calls going through the usb connection. So I'll guess I'll see what the Eclipse hook up shows me.
cullambl said:
Thanks! I'll definitely try the eclipse trick. And yeah, writing an app on the tab is probably going to be necessary, but MUCH easier than having to learn a new language, and get an official license to do one on the iPad. The thing I'm really unsure about is the available communication methods for getting data back and forth between them. I was hoping there might be some sort of java api to get calls going through the usb connection. So I'll guess I'll see what the Eclipse hook up shows me.
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Click to collapse
apple stuff is crap anyways, leave them to their pretentious commercials and closed minded development.
as far as the android sdk, I think it will take you a lot less time to just use network communications. google socket client/server java tutorials and you should be set to go in about 2 hours. I have implemented it, its all straight forward, and imho probably an easier app to write that something that pumps out of the usb port
Awesome, thanks
Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?
I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.
A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).
Would anyone else find this useful?
Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.
Thanks,
Cass
cbarnes913 said:
Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?
I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.
A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).
Would anyone else find this useful?
Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.
Thanks,
Cass
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Click to collapse
Yes. I second your idea. i did search for theme builder. nothing of that sort. on a different note , i did find an ancient theme builder for ancient symbian phones. i donot know whether to laugh or to cry. LOL
cbarnes913 said:
Is there a way to build Themer themes (or even Zooper widgets) on a PC or Mac and export them back out, transfer them to the device and import them into Themer?
I have been trying to build a theme but I keep getting frustrated with how cumbersome it is to use these tools on a touchscreen device. I would be able to create a theme a lot more quickly and efficiently if I could drag elements around with a mouse, type on a physical keyboard and make use of a larger screen with more real estate than my phone. I also think it would be much more precise.
A tool like this would be fairly easy to build. It'd just have to have a few basic options for the device like resolution and dpi and could also have presets so that a designer could select the device he or she is exporting to. This would also be helpful for people who are modifying themes to work with other devices or if users are running their phones with custom DPI settings (I do).
Would anyone else find this useful?
Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't come up with anything.
Thanks,
Cass
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, if you are asking if there is an App to build themes on a PC? If yes then the answer is sadly no.
However there is another option. You can use an Android VM such as GenyMotion. It no longer has Play Store access, so you will need to sideload Themer on it, but it does work well. http://www.genymotion.com/features/
the link doesn't work comes back as nothing found,fortunately this one does work https://cloud.genymotion.com/page/launchpad/download/
you wiull need to register and log in before download
ThemerSupport said:
However there is another option. You can use an Android VM such as GenyMotion. It no longer has Play Store access, so you will need to sideload Themer on it, but it does work well.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, I started to do this but as the performance is fairly bad in emulation, I threw in the towel. If there is enough support, is this something that you guys would be willing to build? It's probably even something that could be built in a web app, meaning you could build it once and be done
The benefit here is that having a tool like this would open the door for a lot more designers. The more great themes you have in Themer the bigger your install base.
Thanks so much for responding so quickly
Edit: I misunderstood. I have tried the emulator provided with the SDK, but I'll give GenyMotion a shot also. Thanks for the suggestion.
cbarnes913 said:
Yeah, I started to do this but as the performance is fairly bad in emulation, I threw in the towel. If there is enough support, is this something that you guys would be willing to build? It's probably even something that could be built in a web app, meaning you could build it once and be done
The benefit here is that having a tool like this would open the door for a lot more designers. The more great themes you have in Themer the bigger your install base.
Thanks so much for responding so quickly
Edit: I misunderstood. I have tried the emulator provided with the SDK, but I'll give GenyMotion a shot also. Thanks for the suggestion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We might have a look at an online version in the future, but that will only be once Themer is a lot more stable and we have more resources to work with. Thanks for the suggestion though!
it could be awesome for pc users
I installed Genymotion. Getting it configured with Themer took some doing, but once it was setup I had everything I needed. Thanks so much for this suggestion.
For those who want to do the same thing, there are some things you need to know. First, you need either a Google account or a Facebook account to log into Themer. That means that after you install GenyMotion, you need to do one of two things: either you need to 1) flash a Google apps package over the GenyMotion VM (a 4.3 apps package that works with Cyanogen mod works best), then log into Google, then update everything with the Play Store, and then install Themer; OR (and I didn't do this, so it might be more complex than this) sideload Facebook and sideload Themer, log into Facebook, then setup Themer.
The reason you need to do this is because in order to use Themer, you need to log in using either a Google account or a Facebook account, and Themer uses a list of accounts already on your phone (or in this case, the VM) to populate the dialog box that asks you to log in. That said, you want to have either a Facebook account or a Google account set up on the device (or VM) prior to launching Themer. Since I'd rather not ever use Facebook to do anything, that limits my option to Google.
It might be the case that if you exported themes from Themer and wanted to import it, that you might not have to go through any of these steps. However, if you want to be able to download existing themes from Themer and work with them as a starting point for building your theme, or even just pick them apart to figure out how they work in order to learn, you need to log in.
Someone correct me if I made this way more complicated than it needed to be.
As for developing a web client for theming, maybe this could be a community-led effort? I don't have the skill or time to do any of it, but if this is a popular request, perhaps we could organize a project and try to contribute to it. Is anyone interested?
Hello,
I have a couple of Galaxy S3's that I want to mess with. I'm going to write my own messaging app to use on the phones.
Here's the thing though: I want to make it impossible to make phone calls or use regular text messaging. I want to make it so that it can't be re-enabled in any way via Settings or anything like that.
In other words, ideally, I want to have the android phone with no apps except for mine. (and no option to use anything else) Think of it as a specialized tool designed only for one thing.
What is the best way to go about this? Do I need to root the device and install Ubuntu Mobile or something? How difficult would it be to modify the Android system itself?
I'm an experienced developer but I'm completely new to the mobile space so I'm looking to learn about how to do this the best / easiest way.
Thanks!
Hi all,
So here's the situation: I have a Pixel 1 with stock (read: overbloated verizon) android. Whatever, I'm lazy and I haven't gotten around to rooting it. I installed a firewall recently for giggles. I'm going through the system apps and merrily blocking verizon junkware when I come across this thing (bear with me for the complete description, as XDA's spam filters are blocking my image links)
It's a system process called 'nobody' with a version number of 10. The Netguard app also gives a number above the name (i don't know what it's supposed to mean) that for most apps seems sort of random, but for this app is 9999.
I try to find this thing in my system app manager, and it's nowhere to be found.
So I keep on keeping on, thinking 'weird, but whatever', and then I come across another app called 'root' with a version number of 10 and (maybe it's a process id?) of 0.
Also, nowhere to be found.
And here's the thing; there's a gear icon in Netguard, that for _every other app_, opens up the system app manager page for that app. For these two? Nothing.
Now, I am not super proficient in android stuffs. My questions for you smart and pretty people are these:
1. How can I go about digging around in my phone to find the files that are running this thing?
2. What's the best way to get more information on what this is? (and yeah, I tried googling 'nobody' and 'root'. It went predictably).
3. How can I prepare a report / who would I send this to? There's gotta be security researchers who could use logs pertaining to this ****.
Yeah, I know that I need to nuke & pave the device. I will. I want to try and recon a little first. So, what do you got?
I use a Qin 1s+. I like the simplicity and I think the absence of cameras is pretty cool. One of the major downsides to me is there seems to be a real lack in updates. There has been *one* since I've had the device, but no matter what I try I get consistent errors trying to apply it.
I am new to Android development, but not web app development. What is the best way for me to download the update and try to apply it manually?
Are there any different Android distros (not sure if this is the right word) that might work with a phone of this "simplicity"? The primary feature (besides calls and SMS) that I'd like to keep is the hotspot ability. There has got to be a way to install some other version of Android and maybe has more customizable menus or whatever. I am primarily interested in getting this update to apply correctly, but any information on this other more general OS question would be really appreciated too.
I don't need you to necessarily "hold my hand" and walk me through it. I just need like a general blueprint for how to achieve the solution or even just a direction to start looking. Thank you.