Question

I have an upload phone app that uploads either images or audio recordings. The image can be uploaded to a mysql database and displayed no problem in a webpage, The problem i am having is playing the audio on the webpage, i have tested the webpage by playing mp3 files i have placed in the database myself though the webpage. When i upload an mp3 file from the phone or emulator nothing plays. The database is populated with a file size and on the webpage a media player does load, but nothing plays

Edit 1
Since writing this i have learnt that android records in .amr files and not .mp3 which i had been creating the file as. Since then i can play the file on my desktop using either quicktime or real player. When i attempt to play the file through a web browser i get a quicktime logo with a question mark in the middle. Below is my code for playing the file.

header('Content-type: audio/amr');

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM media WHERE media_id= '$idd'"); 

$row = mysql_fetch_array($query); 

echo $row['file'];

Embed code where 110 is $idd in the above

<object data="sound.php?id=110 width='391' height='298'"> <embed src='sound.php' width='391' height='298'></embed>'ERROR' </object>

Edit 2

If i put the same file directly on my server and NOT in the database this code downloads the file

<OBJECT classid='clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B' width="100" height="100"codebase='http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab'>
<param name='src' value="apr.amr">
<param name='autoplay' value="true">
<param name='controller' value="true">
<param name='loop' value="true">
<EMBED src="apr.amr" width="100" height="100" autoplay="true" controller="true" loop="true" pluginspage='http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/'>
</EMBED>
</OBJECT>

Edit 3 upload code

if (isset($_FILES['image']) && $_FILES['image']['size'] > 0) { 

      $size = $_FILES['image']['size'];
      $type = $_FILES['image']['type'];

      // Temporary file name stored on the server
      $tmpName  = $_FILES['image']['tmp_name'];  

      // Read the file 
      $fp      = fopen($tmpName, 'r');
      $data = fread($fp, filesize($tmpName));
      fclose($fp);

      $data = addslashes($data);

      // Create the query and insert
      // into our database.
      $query = "INSERT INTO media";
      $query .= "(file, file_size, file_type) VALUES ('$data','$size','$type')";
      $results = mysql_query($query, $link);

      $mediaid = mysql_insert_id();

    $gender = $_POST['gender'];
    $cat_id = $_POST['cat'];
    $name = $_POST['name'];
    $lat = $_POST['lat'];
    $lon = $_POST['lon'];
    $user = $_POST['user'];


  $query="INSERT INTO instance (name, gender, cat_id, lon, lat, user_id) VALUES ('$name', '$gender', '$cat_id', '$lon', '$lat', '$user')";
  $result=mysql_query($query);


      $instanceid = mysql_insert_id();

      $query4 = "INSERT INTO media_link";
      $query4 .="(media_id, instance_id) Values ('$mediaid','$instanceid')";
      $results4 = mysql_query($query4, $link);

    }

// Close our MySQL Link
mysql_close($link);
?>

Answer 1

So if you have an AMR file (I haven’t tested this, so you’ll have to try this out) you will need to extract the AMR audio and convert it to MP3. Unfortunately it appears to be rather rare in Java, but a (rather painful) Google search turned up this link: http://www.benmccann.com/blog/extracting-amr-audio-from-android-3gp-files/ which claims to demonstrate extracting the audio from a 3gpp video file, so they at least have an AMR parser. I would look at the underlying library they use, isobox4j (discussed at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/245c9de4132c2ab0?fwc=1) and see if you can either:

1. Extract the audio in the phone app, convert to mp3 and then upload the mp3 (probably the easiest option, frankly: keeps the server simple).
2. Extract the audio on the server and convert to mp3 before streaming the mp3 to the web page (probably harder, frankly).

Good luck.

EDIT: or you could hope the client has an appropriate browser plugin: the broken quicktime mark indicates quicktime doesn’t have a codec for it.

EDIT 2: You probably need to set a content-type for the plugin so it knows what to do. For AMR try adding

header("Content-type: audio/amr");

before the echo statement in your PHP and if that isn’t enough add a mime type to your embed like this:

<object data="sound.php?id=110 width='391' height='298'"> <embed src='sound.php' type="audio/amr" width='391' height='298'></embed>'ERROR' </object>

See if that works.

EDIT: try this. Not sure if the $row[‘file’] is considered a string or an array, but the trim might do what you need.

<?php

header('Content-type: audio/amr');

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM media WHERE media_id= '$idd'"); 

$row = mysql_fetch_array($query); 

echo trim($row['file']);
exit;