Question

I’m trying to create an Android App that connects to a MySQL database. Is there an easy way to do this? Maybe a guide that I have missed?
This seems like a common task but for some reason I can’t find much information about it.

Answer 1

You need two things

• Web service
• Client

Web service:
This is basically a website, that will get information from MySQL and display it as JSON. You can use XML or something else, but JSON has proven to be the easiest for me.

PHP & MySQL tutorial:
http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_intro.asp

I will assume you can do that, it’s not all that hard. What you usualy get is an array from database. You use that array to make JSON out of it, using

<?php
    echo json_encode($my_array);
?>

What you will get is something like this:

{
"employees": [
{ "firstName":"John" , "lastName":"Doe" },
{ "firstName":"Anna" , "lastName":"Smith" },
{ "firstName":"Peter" , "lastName":"Jones" }
]
}

Client: So far I have only used library called GSON, and it worked great for me. I think you will find all examples there on how to use it. What it does is read that JSON through URL you have provided and fills up your objects.