How to connect android to a remote database

Question

I'm working on an Android app that has to store data in a database. This database also has to be accessed by an iPhone app and a web application. I would like to use Mysql for this, because it's open source.

I was looking for some information on this and apparently I need to make a webservice that connects to a database. Probably in php, but I don't have any experience with php...

How do I write this webservice and where do I store it? Where do I make and store the database? ...

Can anyone help me on this issue?

tnx

This is a very broad question. What you want to do is explained in this book: http://www.sitepoint.com/books/phpmysql5/ — Caner, Jul 12 '12 at 10:42

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 12 '12 at 10:42

3

Use SQL server to manage the data on your desktop and create a web-service in .Net on Visual Studio.

Then connect to the web-service in your application and set/get data from the DB.

Link on how to make a web-service in .NET (does not include the implementation in Android) : http://srikanthtechnologies.com/blog/dotnet/wsdaljava.aspx

Links on how to connect your service with Android : http://seesharpgears.blogspot.in/2010/11/basic-ksoap-android-tutorial.html

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/304302/Calling-Asp-Net-Webservice-ASMX-From-an-Android-Ap

http://adrianandroid.blogspot.in/2012/05/access-c-net-web-service-in.html

answered Jul 12 '12 at 10:42

Swayam

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Follow these links and start coding. Post your problems if you get stuck at anything. Cheers. :) – Swayam Jul 12 '12 at 10:44
+1 Also for the webservice <-> client data interchange protocol I would advise to use JSON – Cata Jul 12 '12 at 10:45
Other databases and technologies are available... – Dave Richardson Jul 12 '12 at 10:46
@DaveRlz : Yes, I know that there are many other ways to do so. I was just suggesting one (which I find the simplest). Your views might obviously differ. :) – Swayam Jul 12 '12 at 10:50

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 12 '12 at 10:53

My Custom Class that will contact the localhost Server(WAMP or XAMP Server)

CustomHttpClient.java

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.URI;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.NameValuePair;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.client.entity.UrlEncodedFormEntity;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost;
import org.apache.http.conn.params.ConnManagerParams;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;
import org.apache.http.params.HttpConnectionParams;
import org.apache.http.params.HttpParams;

public class CustomHttpClient {
    /** The time it takes for our client to timeout */
    public static final int HTTP_TIMEOUT = 30 * 1000; // milliseconds

    /** Single instance of our HttpClient */
    private static HttpClient mHttpClient;

    /*
     * Get our single instance of our HttpClient object.
     * 
     * @return an HttpClient object with connection parameters set
     */
    private static HttpClient getHttpClient() {
        if (mHttpClient == null) {
            mHttpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
            final HttpParams params = mHttpClient.getParams();
            HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(params, HTTP_TIMEOUT);
            HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(params, HTTP_TIMEOUT);
            ConnManagerParams.setTimeout(params, HTTP_TIMEOUT);

        }
        return mHttpClient;
    }

    /*
     * Performs an HTTP Post request to the specified url with the specified
     * parameters.
     * 
     * @param url The web address to post the request to
     * 
     * @param postParameters The parameters to send via the request
     * 
     * @return The result of the request
     * 
     * @throws Exception
     */ 
    public static String executeHttpPost(String url,
    ArrayList<NameValuePair> postParameters) throws Exception {

        BufferedReader in = null;
        try 
        { 
            HttpClient client = getHttpClient();
            HttpPost request = new HttpPost("http://192.168.1.38/" +url (pathoffilenameyouarecalling));
            UrlEncodedFormEntity formEntity = new UrlEncodedFormEntity(postParameters);
            request.setEntity(formEntity);
            HttpResponse response = client.execute(request);
            in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent()));

            StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("");
            String line = "";
            String NL = System.getProperty("line.separator");
            while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) 
            {
                sb.append(line + NL);
            }

            in.close();

            String result = sb.toString();
            return result;
        } finally {
            if (in != null) {
                try {
                    in.close();
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        }
    }

    /**
     * Performs an HTTP GET request to the specified url.
     * 
     * @param url
     *            The web address to post the request to
     * @return The result of the request
     * @throws Exception
     */
    public static String executeHttpGet(String url) throws Exception {
        BufferedReader in = null;
        try {
            HttpClient client = getHttpClient();
            HttpGet request = new HttpGet();
            request.setURI(new URI(url));
            HttpResponse response = client.execute(request);
            in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity()
                    .getContent()));

            StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("");
            String line = "";
            String NL = System.getProperty("line.separator");
            while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
                sb.append(line + NL);
            }
            in.close();

            String result = sb.toString();
            return result;
        } finally {
            if (in != null) {
                try {
                    in.close();
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

class calling this will implement like this way.

ArrayList<NameValuePair> postParameter = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
postParameter.add(new BasicNameValuePair("parametertobesent",value));
respons = CustomHttpClient.executeHttpPost("urlofservice",postParameter);

The php files should be present in the htdocs of the XAMP Server

How to connect android to a remote database

2 Answers2