Read HTML file from Website and convert into App

Question

I am looking into developing an App that will convert a website into more readable data for an android app. I am at university and have an online notice board which can be viewed on the web but if possible I would like to transfer this into an app on android to make it more easy to read on mobile devices.

What I thinking is that the app would go to the website where the notice board is held and read in the html code to display each notice in a list adapter view. Each notice is within its own div so I assume I could use that to split each notice up into its own button on the list adapter view. Is this possible and if so how I can go about doing this. I have tried google for an answer but I have not yet found a solution to this problem.

Thanks for your help

Yes it's possible. What are you having trouble with? What have you tried and what isn't working? — Falmarri, Nov 12 '10 at 17:28
Possible duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2188049/parse-html-in-android — j0k, Aug 17 '12 at 14:17
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2188049/parse-html-in-android — Hrk, Nov 12 '10 at 20:54

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

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It seems overly complicated to me. I wouldn't handle all that using Android. I'd crawl the data on a machine (server) and then I'd convert all needed data to JSON and have the Android (client) fetch the data using a simple JSON parser.

In my opinion that would be the easiest solution if you don't have access to the server the website is hosted on to get it generate a JSON feed for you directly.

EDIT: In answer to your comment Boardy.

Here is the official website of the JSON project in order to get an understanding of what it is. Then if you have access to the webserver providing that page (I assume it is a PHP based site) and want to modify or add the functionality of providing a JSON feed then you should also take a look at the PHP JSON documentation.

To parse JSON on Android check out this SO question and also don't forget to take a look at the official Android documentation on their JSON implementation.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

Community

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answered Nov 12 '10 at 17:08

Octavian Helm

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Thanks for your help. Do you have any clues where I can find information on how to do this with JSON, it isn't something I have ever used or know much about. – Boardy Nov 12 '10 at 17:16
Doing it in android is more overly complicated than having a server dedicated to just converting html to json? – Falmarri Nov 12 '10 at 17:29
@Falmarri parsing a HTML file in Android is that easy? Why don't you provide a good example then? – Octavian Helm Nov 12 '10 at 17:30

Read HTML file from Website and convert into App

1 Answers1