This Live template creates a static TAG string than can be used for logging   

private static String TAG = $className$.class.getName();

 This Live tmplate creates a Toast.

Toast.makeText(this,"$TEXT$", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

 Do you have any Live templates for Android that you want to share?

The documentation says

“Developers should respect this setting, and check the value of this before performing any background data operations.”

The wording is “should”, and I suspect that many developers either forget, ignore or do not know this. Why should your app be polite and respect the setting, when the rest of the world does not?  Even the official Google Plus App totally ignores this and uploads your photos via the “Instant upload”, regardless of the setting. Here is how to test it:

1. Make sure WIFI is disabled, and mobile data is enbaled
2. In the Account/Sync page in your Android settings, disable the "Background data setting".
3. Make sure you have the "Instant upload" setting enabled in Google Plus. 
4. Take a photo
5. In a couple of minutes the image will be available online.

The concept of having a common setting for background data is a great idea and very user friendly. The user shouldn't have to disable background data in every single app. Some apps may even lack a setting to turn data off. 

I suspect that google is stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. If they change the Android operating system to enforce this setting, a lot of applications would be cut off from the Internet, including their own. 

Why not enforce the setting, or remove it? Right now it gives users a false
sense of security. It also adds confusion since a lot of apps ignore the setting. Google could also practice what they preach and respect  the setting in their own applications to set a good example.

Vær obs på at applikasjonen laster ned mye data. Det finnes ikke noe god måte å slå opp UV indeksen for en gitt lokasjon i APIet til yr. Jeg  må derfor lese igjennom hele XML dokumentet til man finner en UV måling som er i nærheten av brukerens lokasjon. 

Denne applikasjonen fikke en noe trang fødsel med en rekke problemer første uken; 

Det er flere pixler på HTC Sensation enn Samsung Galaxy 2 og en del andre "store" Android telefoner. Veldig mange av de nyere og store telefonene har en oppløsning på 480 x 800, mens min HTC Sensation har 960 x 540. Dette gjorde at noe av innholdet i appen ble skjøvet utenfor skjermen.

Lokasjon, Lokasjon, Lokasjon. Hvorfor skal dette være så vanskelig?

Jeg klønet til i konstruksjon av URLen jeg henter UV-XML data ifra. Istedet for 2007-08-01 som var riktig datoformat, laget min applikasjon URLer uten ledende null-tegn på dag; 2007-08-1 (!) Dette gjorde at applikasjonen krasjet 1. August og oppdatering var nødvendig. Unit testing ville plukket opp dette!     

Leassons learned

Enhetstesting er minst like viktig på Android som ved Enterprise

Lokasjon er vanskelig! En ganske god artikkel, som også belyser hvor vanskelig dette egentlig er; ble publisert av Reto Meier. Koden han har skrevet er langt fra perfekt, og inneholder konkrete feil. Når Google kløner det det til er det ikke enkelt!

Stream-basert parsing er nyttig når man ønsker å løpe igjennom et XML dokument helt til man finner det man er interessert i, og så avslutte. Man har to alternativer; SAX Parseren i JDKen, og XMLPullParser som er innebygget i rammeverket. 

    @Override

    protected boolean onTap(int index) {

        AlertDialog.Builder dialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(mContext);

        dialog.setTitle("Title");

        dialog.setMessage("Message");

        dialog.show();

        return true;

    } 

RROR/AndroidRuntime(29246): FATAL EXCEPTION: main        android.view.WindowManager$BadTokenException: Unable to add window -- token null is not for an application        at android.view.ViewRoot.setView(ViewRoot.java:562)        at android.view.WindowManagerImpl.addView(WindowManagerImpl.java:177)        at android.view.WindowManagerImpl.addView(WindowManagerImpl.java:91)        at android.app.Dialog.show(Dialog.java:265)        at android.app.AlertDialog$Builder.show(AlertDialog.java:802)        at com.norsktrafikkinfo.activities.RoadMessagesItemizedOverlay.onTap(RoadMessagesItemizedOverlay.java:46)        at com.google.android.maps.ItemizedOverlay.onTap(ItemizedOverlay.java:453)        at com.google.android.maps.OverlayBundle.onTap(OverlayBundle.java:83)        at com.google.android.maps.MapView$1.onSingleTapUp(MapView.java:356)        at com.google.android.maps.GestureDetector.onTouchEvent(GestureDetector.java:533)        at com.google.android.maps.MapView.onTouchEvent(MapView.java:683)        at android.view.View.dispatchTouchEvent(View.java:3932)        at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:955)        at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:1015)        at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:1015)        at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:1015)        at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:1015)        at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.superDispatchTouchEvent(PhoneWindow.java:1784)        at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow.superDispatchTouchEvent(PhoneWindow.java:1157)        at android.app.Activity.dispatchTouchEvent(Activity.java:2228)        at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.dispatchTouchEvent(PhoneWindow.java:1759)        at android.view.ViewRoot.deliverPointerEvent(ViewRoot.java:2340)        at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1980)        at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)        at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:143)        at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4293)        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507)        at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839)        at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597)        at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

Litt skuffet når jeg fant ut at den viktigste endringen er Video Chat fra GTalk. Video chat er sikkert spennende det, men min snart to år gamle Nexus One har jo ikke kamera i front. 

Nexus S eiere og andre med nyere telefoner kan jo glede seg!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJAiH5-64sI&feature=player_embedded

Da er jeg om min kollega fra Inmeta Consulting tilbake fra Jfokus. Vi er fornøyde, men kan vel konkludere med at JavaZone fortsatt er storebror til Söta bror.

Ekspo-området som møtte oss var dominert av en diger Oracle stand i midten som flagget budskapet "The future of Java". Ellers var det bare 15-20 stands, og ingen som utmerket seg nevneverdig. Jeg tror ikke Oracle får lov til å kjøpe seg like dominerende stand på JavaZone, som jeg tror er en smule mer leverandør-nøytral. 

Forelesningene var av varierende kvalitet,  men utvalget var bra. De kjørte i fire paralelle rom, hele dager og begge dagene.

Det hele startet veldig lovende med en presentasjon om visualisering av code metrics. Neal Ford fra Thoughworks viste frem en lang rekke verktøy jeg ikke tidligere har sett. Blant annet viste han frem et verktøy som visualiserte kode som en by i 3D med pakker som distrikter, og klasser som byggninger. Jo høyere hus, jo flere metoder, jo større grunnflate, jo flere linjer med kode.

For meg var nok Matthew McCullough sitt satiriske foredrag om GIT et høydepunkt, og frustrasjonen nådde nye høyder i foredraget "Running your JEE6 applications in the cloud". Arun Gupta fra Oracle presterte å vise frem en SUN/Oracle server, som han hadde lyst til å ha på kontoret (Det var et cloud foredrag ikke sant? Hvordan er det mulig?) så presterer han i tillegg å bruke halvparten av tiden sin på å forklare hvor enkelt det erå bygge en JEE6 applikasjon med NetBeans (!).

Erik Hellman fra Ericsson viste også frem de nyeste leketøyene fra Ericsson. Jeg fikk ta på playstation mobilen, selv om den ikke hadde noe spill installert. Han demonstrerte også 3D motoren fra Unity som gjør det mulig å få ganske heftig 3D grafikk på Android mobiler med høy frame-rate.

Gjennomgående var også Oracle sin konstante "pushing" av JEE6. Det viker nesten som om de er litt desperate etter å fortelle alle at det er klart for bruk. Pt. Er vel Glassfish 3 den eneste containeren som støtte hele spesifikasjonen, selv om Websphere (8 Beta) og Jboss ikke er langt unna.

Konferansesenteret var helt nytt og det fysiske miljøet rundt konferansen var upåklagelig, selv om de presterte å gå tom for kaffe i kaffepausene :-) 

Helt på tampen fikk vi begge en presentasjon med Scala vi faktisk forsto. En ansatt i et svensk reklamebyrå viste frem hvordan man kunne snik-innføre Scala i prosjekter ved å starte med testene. Han viste også frem at prosessen med å generere testdata er enklere i Scala. Med enklere mener han da at man må  skrive mindre kode.

Konferansesenteret var helt nytt og det fysiske miljøet rundt konferansen var upåklagelig, selv om de presterte å gå tom for kaffe i kaffepausene. Det er skikkelig ikke-bra!

I have implemented a SAX Handler that overrides the BaseHandler method

public void endElement(String uri, String localName, String name) ….

According to the documentation the values of these parameters will depend on two features that can be set on the sax parser factory:

My code uses the “name” parameter that contains xml element names on Stock Android 2.1 (Nexus one).

In an emulator, running SDK version 4 (Android 1.6) it returns null. (The uri and localname parameters are used instead).

Modifying the code to explicit setting these properties fixes the problem and makes the code robust;

SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
factory.setFeature("http://xml.org/sax/features/namespaces", false);            factory.setFeature("http://xml.org/sax/features/namespace-prefixes", ­true);
parser = factory.newSAXParser();

The documentation says; 

"Any or all of these may be provided, depending on the values of the http://xml.org/sax/features/namespaces and the http://xml.org/sax/features/namespace-prefixes properties"

• the Namespace URI and local name are required when the namespaces property is true (the default), and are optional when the namespaces property is false (if one is specified, both must be)
• the qualified name is required when the namespace-prefixes property is true, and is optional when the namespace-prefixes property is false (the default)

(http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/org/xml/sax/ContentHandler.html#startElement(java.lang.String, java.lang.String, java.lang.String, org.xml.sax.Attributes)

Weird or what? This means that the default SAX Parser features have changed between 1.6 and 2.x.

Jeg jobbet en god del med JSF1.2, i 2007/2008 og hadde generelt gode erfaringer når man kunne tilpasse spesifikasjonen rammeverket. Matraen var å stryke hunden (JSF) med hårene. Det var vanskelig å skrive egne komponenter, og programmeringsmodellen er litt uvant når man er vant med MVC rammeverk som Struts og Spring MVC. Ajax støtte var også begrenset. 

Nå er mye forbedret i JSF 2.0 og den nylig lanserte implementasjonen Open Faces 3.0 ser ut til å ha et vellutviklet komponentbibliotek. Man kan velge mellom å kjøpe en komersiell lisens, eller bruke rammeverket under en LGPL lisens.

Ta en kikk på demoen her.

Lenker

http://openfaces.org/ (Open Faces 3.0)
http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=314 (JSR-314/JSF  2.0)
http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=127 (JSR-127/JSF 1.0 & 1.1)



The keyboard shortcuts in eclipse are a bit like advanced Tekken combat moves, for those who aren't into computer games; Tekken is a very good fighting game for the Sony Play Station consoles. A lot of the cool moves can only be made using insane combinations of the controller buttons, in the right sequence. In that sense, Eclipse and the computer game has a lot in common.

So... I'm using Eclipse for the moment, and have after a long period of swearing started to adapt a way of working that is similar to what I'm used to with IntelliJ. Here are a few painkillers for other Eclipse users that are used to IntelliJ. I guess most of this will be "old news" to experienced Eclipse users, but who knows. Why might pick up a trick or two.

Before starting I have to say that I try to learn keyboard shortcuts for everything I do. Other people prefer clicking around in the interface and I respect that. However, working with mostly the keyboard has some advantages; It's faster, It's better for your health and it's faster (did I mention that?)

Even after a months of using Eclipse, I still get confused on what shortcuts that are available through CTRL+SHIFT and what is through ALT+SHIFT. A good way to remember what is what is to think of the alt+shift shortcuts as "menu shortcuts". To Illustrate; Pressing Alt+shift+s gives you about the same options as pressing "source" on the menu. The CTRL+SHIFT shortcurs are more often helper dialogues like Open resource (CTRL+SHIFT+R) or open type. (CTRL+SHIFT+T)

Anyhow; here's a compilation of my most used keyboard shortcuts for eclipse. If you use these in combination, you can probably put the mouse away entirely.

Ctrl+M (Maximise)

I try to do as much work as possible with the source code window maximised. I try to use the "Navigator", and "Package Explorer" windows as little as possible, as I have found no way to switch to them with focus, without using the mouse.

Ctrl+F7 (Switch views)

In IntelliJ U can easily hide and show windows like the project navigator using the ALT key and number in combination, when you want the window to go away, you can press the same key, or escape.

Using the Ctrl+F7 and Ctrl+M (see previous) in combination makes navigating the different windows a bit easier. This shortcut lets you switch between the editor, navigator, console and all other views. I use it a lot to quickly go to the editor and almost always follow up with a CTRL+M, to use the entire screen area for code editing.

Ctrl + . (Next problem)

This navigates you to the next "problem" (red or yellow marker in the sidebar).

Ctrl+Shift+T (Find Type)

Finding a class in the package explorer or navigator can be like finding the famous needle in the haystack. It is often faster to hit this combo, and start typing the name of your class.

The good news is that wildcards and camel-back searching works like a dream.

Ctrl+Shift+R (Find Resource)

Same as above, only for resources that is not java classes. (JSP files ,properties etc. )

Alt+Shift+T (Refactor)

This shortcut is pretty neat as it pops up all refactoring options, given the context of the cursor position. The action you want to take is available in only one more keystroke. In full "Tekken* style" the shortcut key for "rename" is the key 'n', instead of using for example 'r' (that is unused). Don't ask me why.

Ctrl+F6 (Open files)

This is probably my single most used Eclipse shortcut. It pops up a list of all the recent files you have edited. An annoying "feature" of this key is that the CTRL key has to be pressed while doing a selection, or at least for a period of time for the window to "stick". If you briefly press Ctrl+F6, you get your last window. The design idea is probably that you often swap between the two most recent files.

I always use the combo "alt+right/left key" for that, so for me this extra "intelligence" is just annoying.

Alt+Right and left Arrows

The alt key in combination with the left and right arrow keys can be used as a "back" and "forward" in the file history.

F3 (Go to declaration) and "Ctrl clicking"

The entire source code can be navigated as a hyperlinked system. If the cursor is over a class name and you press F3, you immediately go to the declaration of that class.. Pressing F3 while the cursor is over a variable takes you to the declaration of that variable.

Similar navigation can be done by holding down the ctrl key and moving the mouse around. When the mouse pointer is hovering over a class name or variable, the name of the class or variable turns into a clickable hyperlink.

other usefull shortcuts that you're probably used to from IntelliJ

Ctrl+Shift+O (Optimize Imports)

This is one of many features that IntelliJ has implemented a bit smoother than Eclipse.

In general, the "Auto import" feature doesn't work to well if your code has compilation errors. This can be impractical if you let's for example say you want to copy / paste a block into your code from somewhere, and get a lot of "red markers" in your code as a result of the unknown classes.

In Eclipse you should avoid typing entire class names, it's better to type half way through and ctri+space to auto complete. This is because it imples an automatic import.

Ctrl+Shift+F (Format code)

This key combo formats your code according to default of project specific format.

Alt+Shift+X, T (Run as unit test)

This is one of many Tekken moves in Eclipse. Press Alt+shift+X after a while, a hint-box should appear with your choices. Press T to run the current class as a unit test . A disadvantage of using this shortcut is that the class currently in the editor has to be the unit test. This shortcut is best used in combination with the CTRL+F11 shortcut explained later.

Ctrl+F11 (Run last launch config)

If you run your unit test once using alt+shift+X (something that can and will break your fingers over time) there is no need to press the same combo again. Just use Ctrl+F11 to re-execute your last "run" or "debug" configuration.

Alt+Shift+Z

The nifty surround with functionality, also the home of the automatic collection iterator shortcut.

Alt+Shift+S (source)

Here you'll find shortcuts to all the nifty things like implement/override methods, generate getters/setters etc.

Ctrl+F8

Working with perspectives is important in eclipse. The whole editor changes it's window layout when working in debug mode. The Ctri+F8 shortcut enables you to switch back to java view (where I usually work) after a debugging session.

Ctrl + T

View Implementation/type hierarchy. If your editor is showing an interface, and you want to know all available implementations, this shortcut is handy. It also works if your cursor is located over an interface declaration.