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Apps Open Source Android Toolkit

jonbonazza

jonbonazza

Android Expert
I am currently working on an open source collection of Android APIs that will be collected into a toolkit.

Essentially, this toolkit is intended to ease coding pains for developers by simplifying things such as network operations, file operations, etc..

What I need from you guys is a list of APIs you want to see in this toolkit.

I already have a bunch of things planned, such as PHP POST and GET operations, POP3, IMAP, and SMTP operations, File management operations (creating files, downloading files, parsing files, etc...). What other kinds of operations do you all think could be simplified or even just want an alternative to?

I am also looking for experienced devs to work as contributors and/or code reviewers. If anyone is interested, please email me (email can be found in my profile). Expect to be asked for examples of work (to ensure code quality meets the requirements). And before anyone asks, no there is no money involved in this. It is entirely an effort to give something back to the community.
 
I don't have much experience with android, but I work as C++ dev over than 5 years.

I want to help with everything I can.

Just one question. Can I use your toolkit in paid apps?
 
jonathanrz said:
I don't have much experience with android, but I work as C++ dev over than 5 years.

I want to help with everything I can.

Just one question. Can I use your toolkit in paid apps?
Click to expand...

Once I get a preliminary build and some documentation (design and use) going on, I'll start opening development to contributors.

As for whether or not you can use it in paid applicaitons, the answer is YES. the toolkit will be distributed exclusively under version 3 of the GNU GPL license (The GNU General Public License v3.0 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)) and will be perpetually available free of charge to all users. Developers are granted permission to use or modify the source code in their programmers (free or otherwise) at no cost, however, as noted in the full text of the license, if the toolkit source code is modified in any way, the resulting modified code must also be made available under the GNU GPL v3 license.
 
Did some hacking this evening and got a good bit done. So far, capabilities include:

- PHP script communications (complete and tested)
- Low level client Socket communications (send and receive messages to and from a designated server) (Complete and tested)
- basic SMTP client API (Complete but needs testing)
- POP3 client API (Complete but needs testing)

The last item, SMTP client API, only contain very basic functionality atm. For example, the SMTP client can only handle the "To: ", "From: ", "Reply-To: ", "Date: ", and "Subject: " header fields (and of course the message body) until I can finish sorting through the plethora of RFCs to finish it out.

I also started on a simplified file system API, but I haven't gotten very far. Still sitting in the design phase, trying to decide exactly what operations I want to include and how they should be implemented.

Again, I am taking suggestions on what should be included in this toolkit, so please don't hesitate to speak up.
 
I should also mention that the SMTP and POP3 clients mentioned above do NOT use the android email intents. they are a manual implementation that, when finished, should provide for some pretty powerful email operations. With that said, I will be putting together a SimpleEmailClient class that makes use of the various conveniences that android has to offer, such as email intents, in the very near future.

I also apologize for the lack of comments. These are just preliminary sources that I hacked together in a short period of time.

I have uploaded some early source code to the google code repository (droid-kit - Droid-Kit is a toolkit for the Android platform - Google Project Hosting) so everyone can get an idea of how I am going about this. Keep in mind that the code is NOT ready for use**.

**The PhpClient class is actually an exception to this statement. It is working and can be implemented in ones project if they wish, however I cannot guarantee that the structure of the class will remain in tact, so I highly advise against using it until a release build is out.
 
Just as an update, I am still working on this, just don't have a lot of time at the moment with classes and work taking up most of it. At any rate, I removed the POP3 and SMTP clients from the SVN until I get the fully functional.

I do think REST clients would be a great idea, unfortunately I don't have any experience with RESTful connections. If anyone does and wants to contribute a component, then feel free to let me know.

Also, jonathanrz, what kind of JSON functionality are you suggesting?
 
I don't know much of JSON, but I have a tutorial of JSON+REST in my to-do tutorial, so, after I done the tutorial, we can talk about it more.

The tutorial is in PT-BR, if anyone wants, mail-me.
 
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