Tips & Tricks

Create KML documents using Google Maps

In the previous post, the sample KML document was one I edited by hand.  I could have saved some time by using Google Maps to generate the KML for me.  Here’s a quick guide on how to use Google Maps to generate a KML document very similar to the one in the previous demo. Read more…

Mobile Mapping with Keyhole Markup Language (KML)

I’ve added an implementation of a Codename One mapping points layer to the Vase API for populating a map using data from a Keyhole Markup Language (KML) file. Currently only basic KML support is implemented, but I will add better support over time.  Play the video below to see some of the supported features in action.
Read more…

Open Navigation

I recently installed some free GPS apps on my Android device, because I wanted offline maps when I’m out of the country.  The roaming data charges from my mobile service provider are killer!.  Namely, the apps I installed are NavFree world, and NavFree USA edition (I don’t understand the separation).  The software is quite impressive, and very professional.  My main complaint with NavFree is all the teaser features – where you click a button and it says ‘that’s coming in the next release’. If they were to remove those, the app would appear very feature complete. Read more…

More Mobile Device Simulator Skins…

The simulator skins tutorial was quite popular, 57 likes on the first day, wow!  I finished up the rest of the skins mentioned in that post, and they can be found in the Vase API SVN.  Here’s the current full list, and some screenshot samples:

BlackBerry Bold 9790

(I reviewed this physical device recently)

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Touchscreen, QWERTY, 480x360, 2.45 inch display, ~245 ppi pixel density, BBOS 7.0, optical trackpad, physical back/menu buttons

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multipart/form-data: Uploading files from mobile devices to the cloud

Uploading files from mobile devices to the cloud requires only a few lines when using Codename One.  I’ll demonstrate here by uploading to the webapp created using Spring Roo in the previous post.

The Mime-Types value seen on the webapp side are passed from the mobile app.  I’ve added a new MimeTypes utility the Vase API to handle this. It uses the public domain mime-type registry hosted by the Apache httpd project for mapping known file extensions to associated mime type ids.  For parsing the mime file, I also implemented a BufferedReader for the Vase API since it’s not available in J2ME.

Read more…

Accepting File Uploads in your WebApp in 10 Minutes or Less

Preamble

In a project I’m currently working on, I have a requirement for handling user-uploaded images.  The project uses Spring Roo for rapid development of the webapp, and the choice for cloud plaform service provider has been narrowed to either VMWare’s CloudFoundry, Amazon EC2, or Google App Engine.  The example in this post should run on CloudFoundry and EC2, but to run on AppEngine, there will be some tweaks required to prevent attempts to access the filesystem.  I may revisit this post later to discuss changes required for running on Google AppEngine in more detail.

Prequisites

In this post I will assume the reader is somewhat familiar with Spring Roo, so I won’t be explaining much about Roo itself.    To get up to speed, I suggest visiting the Spring Roo website.  If you’re already a Spring Roo user, please ensure you’re using the latest version, 1.2.1 at the time of this writing, because some of the features I discuss here where very recently added to Spring Roo. Read more…

Create your own device simulator skin using Gimp

Codename One has made it super easy to create your own device simulator, and I’ll demonstrate here using Gimp, the popular Open Source image editing software.

Creating a Device Simulator Skin for a QWERTY Symbian Device

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Finding device key codes

Just a quick post to demonstrate listening for key presses on a physical device and determining the keycode generated by that keypress. This is a non-GUI Builder app, and will display the keycode values to the screen when keys are pressed, released, and long-pressed. It will also display gamefire key values.  When running the app, to enable the exit button, press the game fire button to go to passthrough mode, then press it again to go back to monitor mode. Read more…

Re-Tweet, Tweet – OAuth1 and Twitter API – another enhancement to the Infinite List demo

The newly introduced Vase project contains full OAuth1 support for authentication and authorization in Java/J2ME.

The primary motivation for adding this feature was to provide Sign In With Twitter support to my apps, but it can do much more than that.  For example, you can now add a Share on Twitter button to your app, or access the services of any of these OAuth1 service providers: Read more…

Sharing code between Codename One projects

At the time of this writing, Codename One does not support third party libraries.  This is a limitation that will be resolved in the near future.  In the meantime, I’ll like to present a strategy for sharing code between multiple Codename One based projects without having to copy code all over the place.  The significance of the method presented here is that it will work when sending builds to the build server as well (where simply linking projects through the project properties as presented in a previous blog post will only work on the simulator). Read more…