Question

So i’m a web developer by trade but am making an app at the moment.

I’ve got a program on my PC which sends data from my PC to a database on my webhost.

What I’m after now, is to create an app that is able to download that data with a series of queries.

Are there any good resources around that would help me to develop some Java code, to connect to a server through my tablet when I’m out and about and download the information from my webhost when on a different wifi network?

Thanks chaps, any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

The way I handle it is that I just create a web page based on what I want to do. For example if I want to verify a login on an app I create a page that takes in a username and password.
On the device I just post the username and password values by using a HTTP post transaction.

Example:

public boolean LoginUser()
{
    HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("your URL comes here...");

    try
    {
        List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
        DataCrypt crypt = new DataCrypt();

        try
        {
            this.Cryptemail = crypt.bytesToHex(crypt.encrypt(this.Email));;
            this.Cryptpass = crypt.bytesToHex(crypt.encrypt(this.Password));
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            DebugLog.log(e.getMessage());
        }

        nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("Password", this.Cryptpass));
        nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("Mail", this.Cryptemail));

        httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));

        // Execute HTTP Post Request
        BasicHttpResponse response = (BasicHttpResponse) httpclient.execute(httppost);
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
        String response = EntityUtils.toString(entity);


      return true;
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        DebugLog.log(e.getMessage());
        return false;
    }

    return false;
}

EDIT: So you can just make a page that takes in some parameters that you want to base your query on and return the result in some way (for example by XML).

Hope this helps you out! 🙂