SimpleConnect

About

The SimpleConnect library is a set of convinence packages for performing asynchronous task, such as http and database calls, in Android.

Getting Started

To get started download the http-connect.jar file from the project root directory and add it to build path and boom! Now you should be able to simple connect to the various android services supported in this library.

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HTTPConnect

Createing a new Request Object

To get started making a HTTP request you create a new RequestMaker object. The object requires an application context so it must be called from an Android activity type class.

RequestMaker http = new Requestmaker(this);

Now that you have a request object, are now free to make get, put, post and delete request. This single instance of the RequestMaker object can be freely passed around your application or you can make as many instances of the object as you require.

Hint: It is advised that you reuse the same RequestMaker object as much as possible to avoid garbage collection.

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Making a HTTP GET Request

Usimg the http object created earlier you can perform a http get request to any url by invoking the get method of the http object and passing as the first parameter the url u wish to get from, and a new HttpResponder object that can be passed anonymously as shown below:

http.get("http://www.example.com", new HttpResponder() {
    ...
});

*Hint: The HttpReponder can be passed as null if you wish not to handle the response.

The HttpResponder is your callback function that receives the http response. This object has one method that you must implement to handled to the server reponse. This reponse is wrapped in a ServerReponse object which has methods you can use to retrieve the server status codes, message and response content.

    @Override
    public void onHttpResponse(ServerResponse httpResponse) {
        // handle the http responses here
    }

Hint: Any Android error, such as WiFi connection errors, will throw an AndroidErrorException. Be sure to handle any exception that might be thrown using try-catch statements.

Hint: The http response body must only contatin string data as the ServerResponse object is only able to replicate string type data (i.e. sending html, xml, or json should work as expected.)

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Making a HTTP POST/PUT Request

When making a post/put request you use the respective method of the resquest object. The first parameter is the url, the second parameter is a json string describing the request body and the finial parameter is the HttpResponder as shown below:

http.get("http://www.example.com", "{\"key\":\"value\"}" , new HttpResponder() {
    ...
});

Hint: This library only supports put and post request to json consuming servers. The http content type is set to appliction/json by default and cannot be changed as of this version.

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Making a HTTP DELETE Request

The delete request works by calling the delete method on the RequestMaker object, passing the url as the first parameter and a HttpResponder as the second paramter as shown:

http.delete("http://www.example.com", new HttpResponder() {
    ...
});

Hint: The library puts RESTful conventions first which is why you don't get to pass parameters to the server the way put and post allows.