fieldmarshallhradek.com » Android

Strange Shared Preferences Loss

Michael — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:15:45 +0000

Since recently deciding to try and avoid developing on the emulator I’ve come across a super annoying bug within Android which would basically lock you from being able to write to the shared preferences of your app. Examples are abound but basically installing your app over an existing version of the app on your device will potentially muck with the permissions in the shared preferences space. This may not always be a problem except if you read/write from that space. The reason it has suddenly become noticed since trying to avoid developing on the emulator is that I use the “Run” button as I did with the emulator and I believe that using this way of overwriting the existing version eventually causes this issue.

However, according to some of the posts with similar symptoms, end users were experiencing the issue on app upgrade!

While developing recently I ran into this problem and it drove me crazy. I had spent some time trying to trouble shoot restarting the device, my dev machine, Eclipse, the ADB; all to no avail. Uninstalling the app didn’t work either.

I eventually got a work around where I was able to delete the shared preferences directory and its contents which then reinstalling the app allowed it to function correctly. After this point I am trying to uninstall the app and then install it — via command line script.

Some Testing Revelations

Michael — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:33:55 +0000

Testing in Android is tricky. First off, the emulator is a wonderful development tool but that is where it stops. It should never substitute testing on actual devices. That wasn’t apparent to me until recently. The HTC Evo, for example, handles pre-main activity launches much better then the MyTouch 4G. The Nexus S has got a super processor which may encourage race conditions to show up. HTC Sense devices don’t handle redirects. Emulator is perfect. Devices not so much.

Another testing revelation is slowing the machine down for network tests. I have been using wi-fi to get through my tests quickly and 3G/4G are still pretty quick. A neat trick is to do that on the computer the device is connected via wi-fi or USB to.

Set a pipe to something really slow:

sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 5KByte/s

Set that pipe to port 80:

sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 src-port 80

When done delete it:

sudo ipfw delete 1

When testing I’ve made a habit of uninstalling the app and then reinstalling it. The DDMS is quite annoying but it disconnects much less frequency when using an actual device rather than the emulator. Unfortunately, the file interface doesn’t always allow us access to delete files. The OI File Manager is an easy tool to get onto the device and manage cache files, etc.

Using the ADB Monkey tester has its share of things you can discover about your app. The Google documentation suggests using static classes and boy have those come to haunt me. Monkey has helped a lot in that it backgrounds your app in ways you’d never think to test. This can help destroy references which you are relying on giving you an opportunity to discover and fix issues before loosing your creation upon the world.

Back In The Game

Michael — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:02:12 +0000

Yeah, so I’m playing Age of Conan (and totally loving it!), but what I really wanted to post is that I am doing my first full code-a-thon today and it feels good. I feel like I am back in the game.

For today we’re working on a couple things. I want to make Flicka be able to upload pictures and take pictures with the camera. Maybe even fix some problems with the search and the menu button. Koa is going to be fixing some layout stuff and hopefully sexify the search.

D’oh Too Much

Michael — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:56:54 +0000

We’re planning on releasing a video on the 26th to show off Flicka. We’ve got some issues to fix and tomorrow’s Code-a-thon would have been perfect to set up and get ready to do this.

And tomorrow at noon I’m headed down to AboutUs for a sort of developer exchange. It’s more like they have a great understanding of Agile and we at Domaintools would love to learn a little more about their immensely productive sprints.

I remain cautiously optimistic. Our products are vastly different and so is our code base so I fear that also their process may be great, it’s great for them.

So with me being gone tomorrow and most of Friday I am afraid we won’t get to release the video. It’s a little demoralizing. We started talking about Flicka a while ago and although I know we won’t hurt people by delaying the video by a couple days it’s super nice to stay on target. Here’s to late nights and willpower.

Rox0r Gamez y0 & Other Stuff

Michael — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:58:22 +0000

I’ve been super busy, first off, so although I’m about to go off about how awesome Dragon Age: Origins is keep in mind I play a few hours a week. Anyway, the story writing and just everything is awesome. Some of the modeling for when characters are speaking is off. There are some wonky parts in the story. Overall, though, it’s been fun.

The expansion (Dragon Age: Awakening) came out yesterday and it looks like it’ll continue where I left off. Inside was a curious card with 2.11.2011 printed on it. I am a little worried about a sequel being rushed out. I haven’t played any of the Mass Effect series. With how good this has been I might have to broaden my horizons.

Now for some interesting viewing. It’s long but chalk full of so-called conspiracies and stuff. I dig it. I know Alex Jones and some of the Prison Planet/Infowars stuff can go off the deep end but I appreciate some of the things these guys point out.

It’s been a stressful couple weeks. Work issues. Church issues. The office has been fairly quiet this week since most of the team is out on vacation or sick. As a lead developer I’ve seen my code time drop significantly. I still have a lot to look at and learn but my contributions are more about what I can provide for the team rather than lines of code I can push out.

I’ve been working on Flicka and it is coming along quite nicely. The library we have been using has been relegated to a wrapper for the Flickr API. It’s disappointing how limiting it has become especially since it doesn’t offer a lot of the functionality offered up by the API itself. The developers are probably busy but I actually wouldn’t mind helping out and working on the library. Might be neat to be part of an open-source project.

It’s a good learning experience. I’ve gone in and torn apart and added functionality to the source, learned a lot about Java and the Android SDK, and managing my time even when I don’t really want to go through and test that bug for the 100th time! Right now I am fleshing out the Groups and Group Info sections. After that I need to rethink the caching for Contacts and Contact Info sections. Then off to working out notifications and uploading pictures.

I recently subscribed to The Economist to get my fill of news and analysis. It has some bias but overall seems fairly comprehensive without all the useless sports and celebrity gossip you find elsewhere. I’ve been reading Good Soldier Švejk. It’s been quite a hilarious journey. The translation isn’t the best but the gist is all there. It’s actually got me contemplating finding some more stuff to read by Czech authors.