I would like to have a lot of data (quotes of famous people, arround 100 k quotes). And I want that users are able to search, sort on category and sort on authors.
Got a big big xml file at the moment, but what is smart to do? How can i get all the quotes in the app? maybe a sql lite database? or just loop the xml when app starts?
Any tips are most welcome!
Kevin
UPDATE: Thanks for all the replies and tips, I really appreciate it and I am looking forward to program my App, did make a runkeeper-like app yesterday, now starting the quotes app.
I would recommend storing this data on a webserver somewhere and using some SOAP interface of something like this, to access it. I wouldn't be positively surprised when a downloaded application all of a sudden decides to download a big file of quotes.
I would recommend a SQL CE database (.sdf file)
Great overview here: http://windowsphonegeek.com/tips/Windows-Phone-Mango-Local-Database%28SQL-CE%29-Introduction
And here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh202860%28v=VS.92%29.aspx
There's no SQLite on WP7. There's SQL Server Compact though. Read up on the latter, and also on LINQ. WP7.5 only.
Alternatively, store data on the Web server, and use a service to pull it on demand. In that case, read up on services and SOAP.
With the fact that you are looking at a 500mb file I think you have a couple of options.
1) Put all of this data in a database on a webserver, then have your phone application use whatever method you like to contact the database to get specific data that is needed. Obviously your UI would have to be optimised to allow a user to sort by the type of quote and / or the person to whom the quote is attributed.
2) If you want this to be done without the use of the webserver you could have a stripped down basic database of quotes in the application itself, to extend this connect to the database and download more data.
This method may be best as it lets you use the database data to say populate a website if you wanted to (make a bit of money from ad revenue / promote your app) and also it means if your users dont have an internet connection they can still get some use from your app.
Without more knowledge of the platform I couldnt say what would happen if you try load a 500mb application but I doubt it would be good, though having such a large file locally is a bad idea for a mobile device. I can see this going two ways.
1) Im out and see your application, I set it downloading, pay it no attention and then later check to find it has downloaded 500mb over my mobile phone data package. This could mean a big bill.
2) I start to download your application, it hasnt finished downloading after 10mins, I delete it and dont bother trying again.
You can do something like let the user to enter three character minimum before search from webservice ans user the service result to bind the data.
Check the following links
How to connect to a Webservice from a Windows Mobile Device 6.0
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa446547.aspx
Let me know if this helps.
Related
I am currently working on my school project - Android app that informs you about strong lightning strikes near your house in real time.
There are some websites like blitzortung.org or lightningmaps.org (or other), any ideas how can I get nice output file from one of these sites, so that I can obtain geographical data, determine whether it is near your house or not, and send a push notification for user? Displaying the strikes on the map are not needed.
I am using an Android Studio, Visual Studio 2015 as well as MS SQL database.
Thanks
You can get complete source code for this from following URL
https://github.com/wuan/bo-android
It's using data from lightningmaps.org
You can give a try to Open Weather or check this answer.
For Push you can use FCM. Just google "How to implement GCM in android?" you will whole lot of help.
According to blitzortung forum:
Please remember that Blitzortung data may not be used for commercial
purposes. General operator data access info: login to your main
Blitzortung Org account, and click the 'compendium' link under
'project area'. If you haven't already, you might also see
http://www.lightningmaps.org/doc/intro
I am making a C# program that recreates websites in offline mode for use at computers within the company, that are not connected to the internet. These offline websites are identical to their online versions, with all content displayed.
I already have a solution for websites with simple MySQL access, but I need to rewrite the program, so that it can handle Drupal based websites aswell. However, I couldn't figure out how to access Drupal's SQL database, or even what to look for.
The original program uses the website's templates (that are already rewritten in HTML), and places the data mined out of it's database in the templates. Problem is, I don't know where to look for Drupal's templates, or if there aren't any, what data should I gather from it's database.
I use MySQL Connector to reach the database with C#. Should I look for the nodes? If yes, where?
If you want to go down that path you will have to sort of act like Drupal, in order to know which things to read from where. Each module installed has their own tables and functions in a particular way, so not always all the data are nodes with fields.
I you need to work with websites in offline mode, I would suggest using a portable webserver, that way you just copy the website to the root folder and run a script to copy the MySQL database as well, the point being that it's portable, you can carry it around in a flash drive and to run it, you don't need to install anything.
Again, what you want to do is possible, but it will require a tremendous amount of work and you cannot guarantee that things will behave well when you install new modules.
Another approach would be to look into the Boost module, which creates offline, static files based on the request you make to the site, and stores them in a configurable folder.
Another way: build a screenscrapper which reads the HTML from the homepage, and recursively follows the links and modify them before saving the HTML yo your local copy.
Summing it up.. avoid accessing the database yourself and try to read the HTML already rendered.
I want to create a very simple online high score table for my recently developed game in Windows 8 (C# and XAML).
What's the easiest and fastet way to do this?
WITHOUT A DOUBT WINDOWS AZURE MOBILE SERVICES, and yes I'm shouting :)
All of the infrastructure you need is provided in the cloud, and you get a client SDK that makes recording the score literally a one-liner. Take a look a my blog post on doing exactly this (along with incorporating push notifications). The post covers an HTML 5/JavaScript game, but I think you'll easily be able to translate to C#/XAML.
Windows Azure Mobile Services is free*, you can get access with the Windows Azure 3-month trial offer, and after that expires you're service remains free (although you will pay for data, in your case probably $5 a month)
I would use HttpClient and simple PHP script that would be reciving scores with post method and second one that would be displaying these scores.
The first thing you need is a server that is up ALL the time and able to handle the traffic. I use Godaddy hosting. Its cheap and great service and easy to ftp to.
Next you need a php page.
The php page should grab GET data out of the URL regarding the score and user info
There are a couple ways you can implement the score recording.
1. You could have the receiving php page alter and sort a master file that contains a userid and score list
2. You could have the receiving php page save a unique txt file for each player id and stick their score in it. Then when your app calls for the scores it can pull all of the txt files and sort them on the phone.
Personally I prefer way one.
Finally you need a domain name that you can point your app too. You will need a directory for sending info and one for receiving.
I glossed over a TON of stuff. An experienced developer could do this in a day. To debug it though it would take some time. Good luck
If you're used to C#, build an ASP.NET MVC web application. You can develop and test this locally without going live. MVC may have a tough learning curve, but it's a great framework, and uses technologies you may already be familiar with as a C# coder, such as Linq. You need a database, and Visual Studio should help you get started with all of this.
You want a post or get controller action, with a url like http://server.com/scores/player1. An HTTP GET on that url could return the view of the scores, whereas a post to that url with parameters of, say, difficulty=easy and score=1100.
Your game client could use either WebClient (simpler) or HttpWebRequest for finer control. Build a class that encapsulates the scoring interaction, with a method that can get all high scores, and another method that sends a new score to the scoring server with args playername and score.
Get that up and going as a demo on your localhost, then maybe think about how to restrict players from posting their own scores, like having the game client authenticate with the server.
use service , or httpclient to update the score
Xbox live services have leader-boards support. Since you have a Win8 game you should look at this video from //build 2012 : Building Cross-Device Xbox Games, they get into useful details around 30 min into the video.
Please answer for Dummies ;) ... Absolute newbie to web programming, especially new to Drupal. We have some modules written in C#, that access a database in MySQL and works on it (it's a student information system actually. We have some forms created in C#, through which interface student's can enter their details onto the database and we have desktop applications which work on those data). Now we need to create a website so that student's can enter information through the internet. We can not re-write the whole modules in PHP, and we want to use Drupal to create the website. So how to do that?
Not really a direct answer, but some points that you need to consider. How complicated this will be depends on how much interoperability you need between the C# code and Drupal.
Does Drupal need to use the forms written in C# in order to enter the data in the DB, or could data entry be done directly from PHP (As in, is there any validation or processing of data in the C# forms that needs to be done?) If not, it seems like the easiest way would be to build a page in Drupal that can enter the data directly into the MySQL database.
Otherwise, the easiest way to get the programmes to talk to each other might be outputting the data to another format — e.g. XML or JSON. (Here's a similar question with someone using JSON as the intermediary data type) You could have your PHP form create an XML document in a temp folder, with the C# programme polling this folder for new files every X minutes and use them as an input into its application.
It will really depend on your workflow — how immediate does the processing of data need to be? Is the flow of data in/out, or in only — i.e does there need to be a set of results returned to the user?
Let's say I'm writing a eBook reader for Windows Phone 7. Now the first thing that the user will need to do is add some books to his device, and since I don't offer a online book store or similar service, the only option is file transfer from his PC to the phone. Is he able to do this, how? Then how do I access this file. Can this file be placed in Isolated Storage of my app? I was searching around and didn't find any solution, in fact I believe that similar scenario is currently impossible but I just wanted to hear your toughs on the problem and probably some workaround ideas.
I haven't seen any way to add files from the desktop the phone is connected to. However, you can build your own software for the desktop that uses a WCF service and allows connections from the phone. The phone can download files from the desktop WCF service. See a similar concept here, you can implement the concept discussed in the post the other way round.
HTH, indyfromoz
Would you not be able to download the ebooks using some kind of webservice/http?
(Obviously you'll need a website, somewhere for this)