Biking Endorphines - Introduction to Android sub-project

Introduction - What's this Android application doing in python project??

You may wonder why use Android application in python project??

Python project was from the beginning only one part of product that I wanted to create.

Second part was always the Android application that will gather data from GPS and show information about Endorphines Badges.

Prerequisites - Android-Studio

1. How to install Android Studio (on Ubuntu)

  • Please download the Android Studio 2.3 (~429MB)
  • Unpack files with unzip android-studio-ide-162.3871768-linux.zip
  • Install JRE if you have not yet done it by sudo apt-get install -y default-jre && sudo apt-get install -y default-jdk
    • If for some reason your default-jdk is below Android-Studio requirements, try to use this:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java -y
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-set-default

Check version:

java -version
  • If you have already installed Java Runtime Environment (JRE) then after typing "sh android-studio/bin/studio.sh" you should see IDE start running.
  • If after installing JRE you see error that says No JDK found. Please validate either STUDIO_JDK, JDK_HOME or JAVA_HOME environment variable points to valid JDK installation, don't panic.
    • Try changing JDK_HOME system variable to proper path of jdk i.e. JDK_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.7.0.21/

2. Android introduction - how to start your first project

Take few minutes of your time and explore "Create an Android Projects" - This will give you the most basic information about how to startup first project with Android Studio.

3. What should be in your git-repository?

All your files that are project resources.

GitIgnore can be generated with gitignore.io i.e. for android, android-studio and intellij.

If you accidentally pushed build files, first do :

  • Gradle build:clean task - this will remove this files so you know what files are not-needed in git status

  • use bfg repo cleaner as described here

  • commit and push cleaned commits to your remote repository

4. Why not use vi/vim and terminal for all your android-development ?

Well... you can certainly use vim for development, but vim-itself is not perfect IDE for the job. You should at least get yourself around some vim-plugins that could simulate some of the AndroidStudio behaviour, i.e. Gradle usage:

Vim-Android Plugin by hsanson

Final result

1. What I've created as initial?

  • Separated git repository available here.

  • Adding android application repository to main repository as a module

    • If you want to know how to do that, please follow this link - for those impatient, use git submodule add GIT-LINK [optional directory to which clone repo].

    • i.e. git submodule add https://github.com/anselmos/Biking-Endorphines-Android-App androidapp

  • Initialized clean empty project for androidapp with minimum API 16(Android 4.1 - JellyBean) - since I've got one device that I'll use for tests and according to Google Play Store information about 95% of devices uses this minimum version of API.

  • Setup en Empty Activity for startup.

2. What are the plans for this android-sub-project?

  • Layout :

    • information about gps -is it on, active and properly initialized

    • starting and stopping/pausing button for biking activity

    • statistics mocked for this time, but eventually gathered from rest-api.

  • Start/Stop gathering data from gps as a GPX file format

  • Make Login-page that will login android-device in backend as a device-id, timestamp, user-id

  • Gather all information about statistics with endorphines-badges!

  • Presentation of Endorphines Badges with fun icons.

  • Divination - Tea-Leaf Reading for your biking-endorphines-badges - what you could do to gather more badges ! - based on analysis of bike-rides. - a pseudo AI for badges gathering

Code commits done for this post:

Tools and applications used:

LL (Lessons Learned)

1. I've added git submodule in a bad way.

Initially I've added android application to project repository in a bad way - I've forgot to add directory path to which submodule should be cloned.

So I've decided to run rm -rf on git-submodule files and the gitsubmodule config file.

Unfortunatelly when I tried to use git add submodule again, I've crossed at error like this :

A git directory for '[HERE GOES NAME OF DIRECTORY]' is found locally with remote(s):

The problem was almost identical as described at stackoverflow

Solution:

I needed to remove .git/submodule/[Directory-containing-submodule] to make git forget about my first attempt to clone submodule.

Acknowledgements

Accomplished:

1. Android initials - how to start-up with Android Projects - and that sort of things.

2. Android Sub-project - plans and draft of application.

What's next

1. Add more tests to GPXReader test cases.

2. Add more business logic to GPXReader - endorphines-algorithms :)

3. Python backend - initial REST-API.

4. Making API documentation - research for best API documentation!

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