I am writing an app that allows the user to take a picture with their android phone and then upload it to an image hosting site (picassa, flikr, or some other free site that can have public URL’s (the public access URL part is important) ).
The catch: the picture is uploaded to a “global” account — as in all of the users of the app upload their pictures to the same account.
The second catch: the upload process should be transparent, a URL should be returned, but no login / auth process should occur. (the user’s can’t know the pass).
I have looked up how to create a web instance and then have the user log in, but I don’t know how to avoid the auth process and make the whole thing transparent to the user, or even if it is possible.
So you want to store user credential (login and password) and using it to authentificate against the serveur.
You should use the dedicated apis of these services:
– FLickr : http://www.flickr.com/services/api/upload.api.html
and authentification api : http://www.flickr.com/services/api/auth.spec.html
– picassa : http://code.google.com/apis/picasa/
So with these apis the user don’t have to know the login/pass. Upload is transparent. And you should get the url of the uploaded picture.
But one thing : with this solution, the android HAVE to know the pass. The only workaround is having a server between your android application using the api (and storing the password).