I'm creating this thread to discuss some things about MI Chat and hopefully start an effort to develop a native Android client (we could consider other platforms later).

Basically, this is how the app would be laid out in the beginning:

- Main activity, showing the ever-populating list of chat messages and post them
- A service, to load new messages in the background if the app is left open
- Depending on the API, probably a ContentProvider to maintain a local database of requests to the server (could probably be cleared after every session)

The architecture of the app will mostly be based on this implementation of an Android REST client, https://github.com/aug-mn/restful-an...ee/catpictures

I know Ownaginatios has developed an API so hopefully if we get that code, it will cut down some work. Otherwise we'll need to figure out what requests to make to the server before anything else. If we can have the server response be anything but the whole page source, that would be brilliant.

To try out HTTP requests to a server, use the Postman app for Chrome.

Anyone who wants to help can post in this thread, once we have an idea of the requests we need to make, I'll start a repository and start with a skeleton to build upon.

Here is a link to what I've got so far: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13297304/mec.tar.gz

All it really does is handle the logging in, sending and receiving messages. It wraps messages into a Message class with all the info the chat client sends as well as the list of users.

What it doesn't handle is getting kicked, logging out, muting or any of the admin functionality (mostly because I just never had the opportunity to look into it). It shouldn't be too hard to add that stuff in I don't think. Logging in is what took a while to figure out :/.

And yes, the responses aren't the whole page source .

Also, I used some Apache Commons thing to do the HTTP REST calls which really sucks. You may want to replace it with something else, lol.

That'd be cool to setup a git hub or something and have anyone on the forum interested make contributions.

Fantastic! I will check it out.

This is great Dillon! All the data is already in XML.

Here's the repository:
https://github.com/AfzalivE/MI-Chat

It has your code as well, if there's a license you want it to be associated with, please let me know.

Feel free to fork, modify and do a pull request.

Dillon, how do we plan to persist session over multiple days? All these cookies expire the next day.

Persisting the session over multiple app instances is easy, just store the cookies in SharedPreferences.

This is great guys! What's the next step, how can I help?

The Chat plugin used is https://blueimp.net/ajax/ which you could pick apart to see how the admin functionality works.

Originally Posted by Chad

This is great guys! What's the next step, how can I help?

The Chat plugin used is https://blueimp.net/ajax/ which you could pick apart to see how the admin functionality works.

Thanks Chad, I guess that'll help to get some of the other features in later.

Dillon figured out that adding the ajax=true param to the url gets the xml response so showing the messages should be trivial using Dillon's parser.

I'm just trying to save the cookies for successive calls after login right now. Once that's done, we'll be able to list the messages and users and post messages.

I'm following this thread a little bit too closely. I cannot wait to see the end product. Could possibly help with the testing if need be. Keep it going !

I have to make something till the 12th. The only thing that's left before we can view messages in the app is parsing the XML.

Anyone wanna help? I know Dillon's code can be reused a lot for this part. You can already retrieve messages in XML format and the code for loading the list is commented in MessagesActivity.

You will probably need to write:

- an XML parser, maybe derived from Dillon's code
- Use that parser in GetMessagesRestMethod .parseResponseBody() to make a Messages object
- Modify the Messages constructor to take XML and create Message objects from it and modify Message accordingly

Once you've done this, I'll do the rest (updateContentProvide r and the MessagesCursorAdapter )

And then we'll have a list of Messages, no it won't update automatically yet.

Hey guys!
Code looks great! I am developing the android app for forum functionality of macinsiders. Do you mind if I use some of your code? Specifically Login and some http request stuff.

If it makes a difference Ill be eventually making the app open source.

Originally Posted by qwerty91

Hey guys!
Code looks great! I am developing the android app for forum functionality of macinsiders. Do you mind if I use some of your code? Specifically Login and some http request stuff.

If it makes a difference Ill be eventually making the app open source.

Go for it. Might as well maybe even merge the projects at some point.

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

Go for it. Might as well maybe even merge the projects at some point.

Sweet and yup makes sense eventually

Originally Posted by qwerty91

Hey guys!
Code looks great! I am developing the android app for forum functionality of macinsiders. Do you mind if I use some of your code? Specifically Login and some http request stuff.

If it makes a difference Ill be eventually making the app open source.

Go ahead, the license is mentioned so that you don't have to ask for permission.

A short version of the Apache v2 license: http://www.tldrlegal.com/license/apa....0-(apache-2.0)

Well, it lists messages now with all the crude details.



Obviously, design to be cleaned up later. Can't be bothered with that stuff until posting messages is done.

Any multimedia students wanna take a shot at some UI designs for this?