My reply essentially focused around the concept that some developer, or group of developers, decided that they would write a Web Service framework and do some programming for the sake of programming, instead of actually solving a problem.  I’ve always been curious as to why anyone would actually want to do that, but hey, some people like work more than I do apparently.  I enjoying designing software masterpieces, not working.  In other words, I don’t like work, I like to create art.

You know, people love creating solutions before there’s a problem.  Well, more specifically in this case, the problem of needing a way to deliver Web Services was already solved with a protocol that was created in the early 1990s called HTTP.  SOAP was just a useless wrapper for generic requests/responses, when HTTP was essentially already a superior wrapper protocol for the same.  I then proceeded to talk about how when REST came out I kind of chuckled, because I was thinking “Gee, you mean the standard web protocol HTTP is really more than enough? Who would have thunk?”

Apparently he liked that reply, lol.

https://github.com/TrentonAdams/openjpa-quickstart

wget http://apache.mirror.gtcomm.net//db/derby/db-derby-10.11.1.1/db-derby-10.11.1.1-bin.tar.gz
tar -xvzf db-derby-10.11.1.1-bin.tar.gz
sudo mv db-derby-10.11.1.1-bin /usr/local/
export DERBY_INSTALL=/usr/local/db-derby-10.11.1.1-bin
export CLASSPATH=$DERBY_INSTALL/lib/derby.jar:$DERBY_INSTALL/lib/derbytools.jar:.

java org.apache.derby.tools.ij

Once you’re in, you can issue the following commands…

connect 'jdbc:derby:MyDbTest;create=true';
drop table derbyDB;
create table derbyDB(num int, addr varchar(40));
insert into derbyDB values (1956,'Webster St.');
insert into derbyDB values (1910,'Union St.');
update derbyDB set num=180, addr='Grand Ave.' where num=1956;
select * from derbyDb;


If you want to help contribute, and make it better, by all means fork it and work away.

https://github.com/TrentonAdams/apache-tomcat-rpm

Of course this method will only work if your database version is incremented by one each time you change the database.  And, this really should be the way you version it anyhow.

    public void onUpgrade(
        final SQLiteDatabase db, final int oldVersion,
        final int newVersion)
    {
        int upgradeTo = oldVersion + 1;
        while (upgradeTo <= newVersion)
        {
            switch (upgradeTo)
            {
                case 5:
                    db.execSQL(SQLiteSet.V5_ADD_LAST_CARD);
                    db.execSQL(SQLiteCard.V5_ADD_FAILED);
                    break;
                case 6:
                    db.execSQL(SQLiteSet.V6_ADD_IMPORT_TYPE);
                    break;
                case 7:
                    db.execSQL(SQLiteSet.V7_ADD_SHORT_FNAME);
                    break;
            }
            upgradeTo++;
        }
    }

Someone asked in a comment, why we do the upgrade in a loop.  I do this because I do not know what version they will be converted from or to. So, I must either put a bunch of logic for every possible upgrade variation, such as 1 => 2, 1 => 3, 1=> 4, 3=> 4, etc, etc, or, I can loop through and do one upgrade at a time, and increment the version through each loop.  This GREATLY simplifies the database upgrade.

If you want to skip the junk, and go straight to the solution, go to the last two code snippets at the end.

One variation, from stack overflow, goes something like this.

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
intent.setType("text/plain");
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL  , new String[]{"recipient@example.com"});
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "subject of email");
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT   , "body of email");
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(intent, "Send mail..."));

The reason this doesn’t work properly, is because it brings up pretty much any app that can handle text/plain content. To expect a user to send an email with bluetooth, or wifi, or evernote, is simply not appropriate. So, if your intention is to have them send an actual email, as opposed to sharing content in some other way, then this won’t work for you.

Another variation from stack overflow, is to replace the mime-type of text/plain with message/rfc822. This results in a list of applications that can handle “email message” content. As a result, if you have ever-note installed, it comes up in the list as well. It will happily store your complete RFC822 email message for you. However, this is a hack, and is totally not appropriate. That mime type implies that you have already constructed a complete and valid RFC822 email message, including headers and what not.

Finally, I was able to find an example on the IT Wizard website, that shows the almost proper way of doing this, using the mailto URI handling.  Theoretically, only valid email applications will ever come up in this list. It goes like this…

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SENDTO, Uri.parse("mailto:someone@example.com"));
intent.putExtra("subject", "my subject");
intent.putExtra("body", "my message");
startActivity(intent);

Unfortunately, that only works with gmail on my phone.  So, I revised it to include everything inside the mailto url.

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SENDTO, Uri.parse("mailto:someone@example.com?subject=" +
    Uri.encode("my subject") +  "&body=" +
    Uri.encode("My big long body with spaces, new lines, and all sorts of invalid URI characters"));
startActivity(intent);

Now the only activities that come up are email apps. Now, if you want the complete list of email applications to always come up for the user, whether they’ve chosen a “default” email app or not, then you need to start the activity like this…

startActivity(Intent.createChooser(intent, "your chooser title"));

I do not know how to attach files to an email, using this method; in fact I do not think it is possible, seeing the mailto: URL scheme is pretty limited.  So, unfortunately, if you want to attach files, you’re going to have to use one of the other methods, with the EXTRA_STREAM option to putExtra() and file URI pointing to a file on your android device.  As a result, you’ll just have to live with some non-email related applications coming up.

If someone has a way of making sure ONLY email apps come up, using the other methods, I’d sure like to hear about it.  Thanks.

1. updating proguard
2. not using libraries I shouldn’t be
3. re-importing the project
4. removing duplicate android jars
5. removing all android jars
6. a host of other “suggestions” from Eclipse Android users

Not one of the ones I found worked.  I suddenly right clicked the project, and happened to see a menu called “Android Tools“.  I wasn’t thinking it would do anything for my predicament, but was curious what was under it.  I then saw, and clicked, the item called “Fix Project Properties“, and voilà, the error disappeared.

Go figure, an Eclipse option to fix a problem that Eclipse caused.  KEWL!

Hope this helps someone through their pain.

IntelliJ folks, PLEASE add GUI support for android, so that I can ditch this piece of junk Java IDE called Eclipse.

Before we get started, the code for part 3 is located on github under the tag “part3“.  You should be able to switch to that tag and download a tar.gz of the code.   Or you can simply clone it as follows.

git clone git://github.com/TrentonAdams/HelloAndroid.git HelloAndroid
cd HelloAndroid
git checkout part3

In this video, we will

1. explain the various sections of code
2. explain the semantics of the android R class for referencing resources
3. explain the use of localized resource files

We have one new screenshot from this video in the series.  It is the French version of the application.

If this video fails to play, please check back later, it may still be processing.

Okay, I’ve finished another android development demo video.  Sorry it took so long, I got really busy with a new computer and what not, and life in general.  In the next video in this series, I will explain the details of the hello android application.  So, if you do not understand some of what is happening, stay tuned for the next video in the series.

Before we get started, the code for part 2 is located on github under the tag “part2“.  You should be able to switch to that tag and download a tar.gz of the code.   Or you can simply clone it as follows.

git clone git://github.com/TrentonAdams/HelloAndroid.git HelloAndroid
cd HelloAndroid
git checkout part2

In this video, we do the following…

1. an actual android application with a button that opens a dialog box. The dialog box has a Okay/Cancel button.
2. Handling and implementing events
   1. onCreateDialog(int) – when a dialog is requested to be created in this activity, this method is called
   2. onClick(View arg0) – we tied the click event from the button to our activity rather than making a custom class for it
3. log debug information to the android log
4. use logcat to see the debug information

Below are the two screens that you will see in this application.

This android demo was created using a software package under Linux called “recordMyDesktop”.  It’s terribly slow for encoding the video, which it does after the video has been recorded.  I think it’s recording my whole screen as a series of screenshots, which is probably what takes it so long.  I used it from the command line, as I have not yet attempted to use a GUI tool with it.  I found that I basically required 240 fps, because it did not capture all of my selections if I did not use a high frame rate.  This time I decreased the quality and the bitrate, as it did not seem to make a huge impact on quality.

recordmydesktop –pause-shortcut Control+Shift+P –fps 240 –v_quality 30 –v_bitrate 400 -o ~/Videos/newvideo

This is based in part on the Android Hello World documentation at http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html

All that is required to be able to debug a unit test is

1. configure the maven surefire plugin from within a profile
2. activate the maven profile from the command line

The following XML profiles section will work just peachy for you.

  
 
    
      dtest
      
        false
      
      
        
          
            org.apache.maven.plugins
            maven-surefire-plugin
            2.5
            
              once
              true
            
          
        
      
    
  

Now just run this.

  mvn -Pdtest package