Question

I made a simple currency converter, but is there a simple way to retrieve live currency (just the currency, say from Israel shekel to dollar)? For example:

case R.id.euro:
        mDollar.setChecked(false);
        Meuro.setChecked(true);
        exchangeRate = **//live currency from external source**
        exchangeSymbol = "€";

        break;

Here is my whole code

protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

    mResult = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.result);
    mToConvert = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.toConvert);
    mRadioGroup = (RadioGroup) findViewById(R.id.radioG);
    mDollar = (RadioButton) findViewById(R.id.dollar);
    Meuro = (RadioButton) findViewById(R.id.euro);

    mToConvert.addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {

        @Override
        public void onTextChanged(CharSequence arg0, int arg1, int arg2,
                int arg3) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub

        }

        @Override
        public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence arg0, int arg1,
                int arg2, int arg3) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub

        }

        @Override
        public void afterTextChanged(Editable arg0) {
            convertCurrentAmount();

        }
    });
    mRadioGroup
            .setOnCheckedChangeListener(new RadioGroup.OnCheckedChangeListener() {

                @Override
                public void onCheckedChanged(RadioGroup group, int checkedId) {
                    convertCurrentAmount();
                }
            });
}

public void convertCurrentAmount() {
    double exchangeRate = -1;
    String exchangeSymbol = null;
    switch (mRadioGroup.getCheckedRadioButtonId()) {
    case R.id.dollar:
        mDollar.setChecked(true);
        Meuro.setChecked(false);
        exchangeRate = 3.76;
        exchangeSymbol = "$";


        break;

    case R.id.euro:
        mDollar.setChecked(false);
        Meuro.setChecked(true);
        exchangeRate = 5;
        exchangeSymbol = "€";

        break;
    }
    if (exchangeRate > 0 && exchangeSymbol != null) {

        Double stringtoint = Double
                .valueOf(mToConvert.getText().toString());
        double result = stringtoint * exchangeRate;
        mResult.setText("" + exchangeSymbol + result);

    }
}

}

Answer 1

The European Central Bank has a site for daily currency rates in XML.

http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml

Some more info here: http://www.ecb.int/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/index.en.html#dev

You should probably load and parse the XML on startup and also save it for offline usage and so that you don’t have to fetch the values every time(once a day is enough).