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A collection of 54 posts

Silly BMW Mobile App

Silly BMW Mobile App

The other day I've updated the firmware for my BMW and I was browsing the charging history. I've noticed that the month of February has... 30 days :) Not a biggie, just an UX bug. You can see it in the "March" view: You can

Fix "Multiple dex files define L..." Errors

Fix "Multiple dex files define L..." Errors

Today I got an error when building the APK: Multiple dex files define L/... My scenario is that of a project with 2 modules: a core and an app. Both modules use a plugin named androiddevmetrics, which generate some code, including a class which has the same signature in both

Material Drawer and Toolbar Options

Material Drawer and Toolbar Options

The latest couple of days I've spent in adding the Excellent Material Drawer to one of my applications. In my case, the drawer is shown on the second activity in the workflow. Below, I'll outline my experiments. Preamble First, the requirements are: 1. An android application

Intercept OkHttpClient Response for Debug

Intercept OkHttpClient Response for Debug

I wanted to log the data retrieved by OkHttpClient for debugging purposes. After digging for a while, the process seems quite straight-forward now. First, we create the OkHttpClient: OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient(); client.setFollowRedirects(false); client.setFollowSslRedirects(false); Then, we add an interceptor: client.interceptors().add((chain) -> { /** Interceptor

Access Data Files for Local Tests in Android

Access Data Files for Local Tests in Android

TL;DR: Put your data files in test/resources and access it with: InputStream inputStream = this.getClass() .getClassLoader() .getResourceAsStream(path); I've got an android application with a module performing data processing (HTML scraping in fact). This part is pure java and all its tests are in the src/

GoogleApiClient .connect() Interface or Class

GoogleApiClient .connect() Interface or Class

TL;DR: * If it's your code, check the version play services (com.google.android.gms:play-services-\*). * If you're using a library, check if the library has a version using play services >= 8.1.0. If not, you'll need to clone and upgrade it

Hide Apps in Nova Launcher Drawer

Hide Apps in Nova Launcher Drawer

TL;DR: Select Nova Settings -> App and widget drawers -> Hide apps (scroll down bit) -> select the apps you want to hide. I've noticed that my app drawer started to get cluttered with stuff I'm not really using (like the Audio

Add Wear Notifications to Android App

Add Wear Notifications to Android App

TL;DR: Use android.support.v4.app notification mechanism. Steps are: * Create a WearableExtender: NotificationCompat.WearableExtender wearableExtender = new NotificationCompat.WearableExtender() .setHintShowBackgroundOnly(true) .setHintHideIcon(true) .setContentIcon(R.mipmap.ic_launcher); * Extend the notification mechanism: NotificationCompat.Builder mBuilder = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this) .setContentTitle(titl

Load Glyphs with LibGDX

Load Glyphs with LibGDX

TL;DR: Remember to give the font loader the list of characters to render from the font! I'm trying to get a more resolution-independent mechanism to load simple shapes in place. After investigating SVG loading for several days I got nowhere. Then, I found out that libGDX actually

Generate Amazon Underground Launcher Icons

Generate Amazon Underground Launcher Icons

TL;DR: Use (adapt) the script below to automatically generate the Amazon Underground application launcher icons. I was toying with the idea to build an Amazon Underground version of one of my applications. According to their rules, you need to: * Repackage your app * Name custom permissions (Lollipop) * Apply Amazon Underground

Picking Colours for Your Application

Picking Colours for Your Application

While working to get a theme for my new app Epso View (Play and Amazon), I've identified two types of websites: * Inspiration (like dribbble or materialup) * Combinations (like colourlovers or materialui) You can use the inspiration sites to get inspired; what colours work together, would your app look

Got an OnePlus Two - Cleaning it up

Got an OnePlus Two - Cleaning it up

Today I got a OnePlus Two without an invite, from one of the many crazy providers with European warehouses. Woo-hoo. Unfortunately, recent reports state they come with malware. Since this phone will not be used by me, I'll clean it up. Here are the steps I took: Preliminary

Addendum to Installing CyanogenMod 12.1 on a LG 802

Addendum to Installing CyanogenMod 12.1 on a LG 802

Today I got sufficiently annoyed with the stock version of Lollipop on my phone and decided to try (again) CyanogenMod (no longer alive). I've tried to follow the steps in the wiki, but got into problems, so here's my alternative experience. Preparation Make sure you install

Manually Create a Retrofit/OkHttp Response for Testing

Manually Create a Retrofit/OkHttp Response for Testing

I've got a method in an use case which requires a Retofit Response object as parameter and I need to test it. Now, I can use the Retrofit itself and build one with the network, but it would require the full android shebang. I've opted instead

MVP in Android - A Summary

MVP in Android - A Summary

These days I'm reading on architectures. I had a look at MVC, MVP, MVVM and how they are applied (adapted to?) to Android applications. Here are some short points about MVP. Model-View-Presenter has been adapted to Android and is advocated by more experienced people than I. It is

Architectures in Android Applications - Quick Notes

Architectures in Android Applications - Quick Notes

I'm looking at architectures MVP, MVVM, MVC ... applied to Android applications and I find the current state of things a bit of a mess. Everybody has their own preferred architecture, finds another one and claims it's better and refers to Uncle Bob. It's funny

ProgressDialog in AsyncTask: Dynamic Update Text/Title

ProgressDialog in AsyncTask: Dynamic Update Text/Title

Sometimes, you may want to update the text shown in the progress dialog. If you try to perform this in doInBackground() you'll get an exception along the lines: Only the original thread that created a view hierarchy can touch its views The solution is to not do it

ProgressDialog in AsyncTask: Dynamic Update max()

ProgressDialog in AsyncTask: Dynamic Update max()

Sometimes you determine the max of the progress bar in the background task. Unfortunately, there's almost no way to transmit that to an UI thread-executed method like onProgressUpdate() (well, you could, but that'd be abusing the method). Instead you can do something like: public class MyTask

ProgressDialog and AsyncTask: Table of Contents

ProgressDialog and AsyncTask: Table of Contents

Here are some things I've learned on using a ProgressDialog in an AsyncTask. 1. Dynamic Update Text/Title 2. Dynamic Update max()

Butterknife: ClassCastException: Symbol$VarSymbol ...

Butterknife: ClassCastException: Symbol$VarSymbol ...

The other day I decided to update my Butterknife from 6.x.x to 7.x.x. Immediately I noticed some refactoring (e.g. @InjectView became @Bind). I updated my code and got build (from Android Studio's "make"). Unfortunately, when I tried to test it, I

Gradle(w) and Proxy Authentication

Gradle(w) and Proxy Authentication

The recent updates in Android Studio eliminate the possibility of passing JVM arguments to gradle. That's quite unfortunate because I quite liked my solution and now I was getting a (not) nice Connection refused message... So I had to find a different solution. Environment Variable As always, everything

My ProGuard Configuration Base File

My ProGuard Configuration Base File

Following my previous proguard entry, I think it's useful to present my final proguard configuration. I'm starting with my base file (proguard-rules.pro), explaining it along the way (as much as I can understand). Proguard Set-up I have a normal project structure (<fallpaper>/<

Get Access to Files in Genymotion

Get Access to Files in Genymotion

Genymotion is a fine emulator. I'm using it as any normal user and once in a while I need to get a file from the VM to analyse (a DB file or a trace usually). Normally, the way I go is via the Device Monitor (which, in turn

Android AdMob Bug

Android AdMob Bug

I'm trying to implement AdMob in my application as an exercise. I followed the tutorial to the letter (read: copy/pasted code from the sample into my app). I ended up with an activity, where onCreate() had the following code: // Look up the AdView as a resource and

ProGuard and Third Party Libraries - a Strategy

ProGuard and Third Party Libraries - a Strategy

Today I tried to compile my app for release with proguard. Previously, I skipped proguard, but now I wanted a lean package :). Soon, I got into a bit of a mess, because I noticed I have quite a few libs which need custom proguard rules. So, I ended up with