Question

I’m making in house application that download data via xml files from external server. This server is under my control but I don’t want the XML file that it present to be available to anyone but the android app.

I use for now classic code to get XML like this:

XMLhandler parser = new XMLhandler();
String xml = parser.getXmlFromUrl(URL); // getting XML
Document doc = parser.getDomElement(xml); // getting DOM element
.
.
.

What would be the best way to implement security, very simple would do. The information in XML is not that sensitive, just I wont them not to be available to whole net.

Some kind of authentication to the server or would it be possible to zip it with password and open inside the app ? I’m just guessing here…

Answer 1

There are many solutions to this problem. Some of them are

1. Use authentication on the server, which requires password for download the xml file.
2. Encrypt the xml file with some secret key on server, and reserve them on android app.
3. Which one you said, zip the xml file with password.