Android smart phone native application

• Environment setup
  • Hardcoded values
  • Setting up the project
  • WebSphere Commerce prerequisites
  • Installing APK files
  • Third-party application dependencies
  • Optimizations
• System architecture
  • Android operating system architecture
  • WebSphere Commerce Android native application architecture
  • Sample interaction model
• Functional features
  • Mobile application flows
  • Store locator
  • Check-in
  • Barcode scanner
  • Language settings
  • Development settings
• Application and directory structure
  • Overview of the package structure
  • Android Manifest file
  • Permissions
  • Source files
  • Application Resource files
  • Caching and temporary files
  • Files created by the application
  • Files on the SD card
  • Caching of images
  • SampleSSLSocketFactory

• Madisons-AndroidNativeMobile/src/com.ibm.commerce.android.nativeapp.mobile.activity/Splash.java

<_config:DevelopmentComponentConfiguration
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/commerce/foundation/config ../xsd/wc-component.xsd "
xmlns:_config="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/commerce/foundation/config">

<_config:extendedconfiguration>
   <_config:configgrouping name="StoreIdDefaultCatalogIdMapForREST">
      <_config:property name="10101" value="10151" />
         </_config:configgrouping>
      </_config:extendedconfiguration>
</_config:DevelopmentComponentConfiguration>

• name represents the store ID, for example, 10101.
• value represents the sales catalog ID, for example, 10151.

• Android devices must install the Barcode Scanner application by ZXing Team from Google Play for the barcode scanning page to function correctly.
• Android devices must install the Voice Search application by Google Inc. from Google Play for the voice search page to function correctly.

• Madisons-AndroidNativeMobile/src/com.ibm.commerce.android.nativeapp.mobile.activity.catalog/ProductDetails.java

• android:scaleType="centerInside" to center the scaled image within the ImageView.
• android:adjustViewBounds="true" to adjust the ImageView boundaries to match the image dimensions.

• android:maxWidth to set the maximum width for the ImageView.
• android:maxHeight to set the maximum height for the ImageView.

Note: A maximum value of 160dp (density-independent pixels) for both the image height and for the full-size product images, and a value of 70dp for the thumbnail images width is recommended for the images included with the Aurora starter store sample data.

• The WebSphere Commerce Android native application is a collection of Activities and its interaction with the server and the rest of the activities. Each activity is the representation of user interface screen within the application.
• There are device-specific activities such as the Address Book integration where the application launches the Contacts application from the Android Applications layer. For the barcode scanner feature, it launches a barcode scanner application from the same layer.
• The application uses the underlying Android Application Framework to not only exploit device-specific features, but to also interact with various activities or applications. For example, the application uses the Location manager to fetch the device location, the Content Providers to store and fetch data from the file system, and to retrieve contacts information from the contacts application.
• The communication interface for the application is through the HTTPInvoker. The invoker initiates the HTTP requests for the appropriate REST APIs through the Local AsynchTask, defined in each activity. For a request to the server with a JSON object, the activity composes the JSON request object using the JSONBuilder and the response for the request is parsed using the JSONParser. See the AsyncTask class overview for more information.
  Important: The communication interface uses a SampleSSLSocketFactory that bypasses secure connections. This is designed for test and demonstration purposes only. Therefore, it is not recommended to be used as-is in production. See the SampleSSLSocketFactory section for more information.

1. The LoginActivity is the Activity class that displays the user interface and handles the actions from the user interface. The layout of the user interface is set in the accountsignin.xml file and the login button is defined in the XML:

   
   <Button android:id="@+id/loginbutton"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:background="@drawable/orange_button_bg"
        android:gravity="center|center_vertical"
        android:layout_gravity="center|center_vertical"
        android:padding="10dp"
        android:text="@string/signIn_button"
        style="@style/NormalWhiteText.14"/>
   

2. The onClick action in the LoginActivity class takes the tap action from the login button user interface and invokes the LoginWebServiceTask. The LoginWebServiceTask is invoked using the Login REST URI:

   
   String url = ClientComponentHelper.getRESTfulURL(getBaseContext(),
    R.string.LOGIN_URL, true,false);
    LoginWebServiceTask task = new LoginWebServiceTask(url);
    task.execute();
   

3. The LoginWebServiceTask extends from HTTPRequestAsyncTask which in turn extends from the android.os.AsyncTask. The LoginWebServiceTask builds the JSONObject using the JSONBuilder for Login with the user ID and password captured from the user interface and invokes the HttpInvoker class:

   
   invoker.invokeSecurePostRestServiceWithoutTokens(url, json)
   

4. The preceding method sends the POST request to the appropriate URI with the JSON object using the HttpClient execute method.
5. The HttpResponse that is received from the HttpClient POST request is parsed and the parsed object includes the JSON response and is available as part of the onPostExecute(Object result) method.
6. The JSON response is parsed using the JSONParser. These tokens are saved to include them in future requests such as GetPersonDetails. The following snippet represents a sample login response:

   
   {
      "userId": "1003",
      "WCToken" : "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
      "WCTrustedToken" : "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
      "personalizationId" : "123456_1"
   }
   

7. After fetching the person details of the user, the next activity to display (for example, MyAccountActivity) is invoked:

   
   Intent intent = null;
   TabActivityGroup parentActivity = (TabActivityGroup)getParent();
   intent = new Intent(parentActivity, MyAccountActivity.class);
   
   parentActivity.startChildActivity("MyAccountActivity", intent);
   

Featured

Includes the e-Marketing Spots, product search, launching the barcode scanner, and the check-in option for location-based services.

Products

Includes the catalog browsing functionality, product search and sorting, and checkout flows.

Stores

Includes options to search for nearby store locations, either by manually searching or by locating nearby store locations using GPS.

• Personal Information
• Change Password
• Currency and Language settings
• My Orders
• My Stores

• android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION
• android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION

<string name="SCAN_INTENT">com.google.zxing.client.android.SCAN</string>
<string name="SCAN_PACKAGE">com.google.zxing.client.android</string>

Account language

This language setting is applicable only for registered users. Once a user has signed in, they can change and update the language in their profile. This information is applicable to the user's account independent of the channel they use. This option is found under My Account > Currency and Language settings.

Application language

This language setting is applicable for both guest and registered users. This option can be used when the user wants to browse the application in a language different from what is set as the preferred language in their account. Registered users can choose to keep the application language the same as their profile language. If they are different, the application language takes precedence over the language setting in the account profile. This option is found under Application Menu > More > Application language settings.

src

Contains Java source files.

gen

A Java source directory for files generated by the Android platform.

res

Contains all external resources used by the application.

General

Minimum SDK level.

Application

Register activities.

Permissions

Access that must be granted for the application to run.

The permissions must be accepted by the user before the application can be installed.

Instrumentation

Profiling information used during development and testing.

android.permission.INTERNET

Requests access to use the Internet from within the application.

android.permission.CLEAR_APP_CACHE

Requests permission to clear the application cache.

android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

Requests permission to write to the external SD card.

android.permission.CAMERA

Requests permission to launch the camera application (for barcode scanner).

android.permission.READ_CONTACTS

Requests permission to read the contact information on the phone book.

android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION

Requests permission to use the location manager to detect location based on network.

android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION

Requests permission to use location manager to detect location based on GPS.

android.permission.ACCESS_MOCK_LOCATION

Requests permission to use mock location providers for testing

android.permission.ACCESS_LOCATION_EXTRA_COMMANDS

Requests permission to access extra location provider commands.

<uses-library android:name="com.google.android.maps"/>

<string name="map_api_key"></string>

Classes in the utils package

These generic classes help the activity classes perform tasks such as communicate with the WebSphere Commerce Server through HTTP, conversion to and from JSON, and utility methods for validation.

Classes in the ui.utils package

These reusable classes help activity classes generate, render, validate and maintain parts of the user interface screen. For example, form validation, list generation, and maintaining activities with a tabbed window.

res/drawable

Contains client-side images and pictures used by the application.

res/layout

Contains the user interface layout files used to render each screen of the application. The layout files are stored in XML format. See Android Developers: User Interface for more information.

res/values

Contains XML files that are mainly name-value pairs. These XML files declare arrays, styles, colors, and strings that are used by the application. Files such as strings.xml and arrays.xml are translated into other languages and enable the application to use language-specific strings at runtime.

res/xml

Contains XML files that are used to define preferences for the application.

res/raw

Contains name-value pairs that can hold files in their raw format. Content in this folder can be language-specific and contain translated files.

res/anim

Contains predefined animations used by the application.

StoreFileList.txt

Used to save the user's preference of stores. Every time the user adds a store to their favorites list, an entry is made into this file.

ScannedUrls.txt

Saves a history of the URLs obtained by scanning barcodes. This helps the user retrieve the scanned information at a later time through the barcode scan history option in the application.

com.ibm.commerce.android.nativeapp.mobile.activity_preferences.xml

The default preference file generated by Android. This default file is used to hold the user's preference of language, currency and other information needed for the session.

login_details.xml

Populated with the user's session cookies and user ID for a particular session. This file is cleared every time the application exits or the user signs out.

Hard cache

As a collection of the bitmaps of the images.

Soft cache

Stores soft references to the bitmaps of the images.

Default SD cache

As images are retrieved from the server, they are written to the default cache directory on the SD card to avoid fetching from the server every time.

<string name="SSL_FACTORY">com.ibm.commerce.android.nativeapp.mobile.utils.SampleSSLSocketFactory</string>
<string name="KEY_STORE_PASSWORD"></string>