Question

this is my first app and I am trying to help out a business that I work for. Basically I picked up Android Tablet Application for Dummies and have been using it as reference. I am making a sort of time card application for a business I work for. My goal is that I want to take the information that the workers would enter in over the course of the day, and have them email it to the person writing payroll. Is there any way for me to just email the database with all of the contents? Or a simple way to send the contents in another easy to read format? Open to all suggestions and alternatives, thank you for your time!

Answer 1

A raw db file probably is not going to be terribly useful for the payroll person.

If I were you I’d make something that will query your DB for all rows, once you have the resulting cursor you can iterate over it and put the data into some more useful data format.

The data format you choose depends on your situation. XML or CSV seem like good options. CSV perhaps a little bit better since it would be able to be opened in Excel (which anyone in payroll probably has access to)

You could also make your own data format if you want. Some sort of plain txt flatfile would be easiest, and it would be very human readable (Easier for payroll employee)

something like this:

IN Mike 2:31pm 6/14
IN Joe 2:45pm 6/14
OUT Mike 4:55pm 6/14
etc...

Then if you were nice you’d make something to go at the end that will tally up total hours for the day and/or pay period

Total Hours for period
Mike: 25.4
Joe: 22.3
etc...

EDIT: There are many examples of CSV all around the web.

Start Here to learn what it is.

Once you understand what it is you’ll need to learn how to implement the read/write in java. You can do it with plain java using strings fairly easy. But there are also some Libraries out that that make it a whole lot easier for you to interact with CSV data.