Tuesday, October 4, 2011

[android-developers] Re: Thanks, Android Developers are the BEST! Another question about databases?

Since you are looking to access the data on multiple devices, I would definitely suggest a server of some sort.  I personally use Fedora Core (http://fedoraproject.org/), but there are quite a few options available. You could even make sure of Google App Engine (https://appengine.google.com). Google has helper code for using it with Android, but not sure it would be something that would help you with printing.

Fedora (and most Unix/Linux systems) is a LAMP (Linux,Apache,MySQL,PHP) setup. It is pretty much everything you need to host and serve data in just about any form you would be comfortable with.

Android works very well with this type of setup. You can pass XML, JSON or custom formed information in a simple HTTP request between the server and Android. The server would also give you access to a lot of technology to print. I personally use PDFLib (http://www.pdflib.com/) and really like it.  I can build templates in just about anything, import them, put information on them and save them as a new PDF.

If you do choose that type of setup, Fedora (not sure which others) can automatically print a PDF just by aiming it at a system printer. A simple LPR command on the server sends the PDF to any printer you have configured. Any device could print, it wouldn't have to be reserved for the tablets.

If you don't want to use a server setup, you'll have a lot more of a challenge printing and sharing database information. I personally have not tried to print using only Android, so I wouldn't be a good source of information for that. Maybe someone else that reads these has already worked out the type of setup you are looking for.

Steven
Studio LFP
http://www.studio-lfp.com


On Tuesday, October 4, 2011 3:33:25 PM UTC-5, Sam wrote:
I was planning for everything to run on both a phone and tablet. The
phone would be used by field workers to do the documentation and the
tablet would be used by another to setup schedules, and among a lot of
other things also be used to select a report and have it print. The
printing would not be such a big deal if I could just give the tablet
user the ability to just hit the button and have a report created.
That is the only part I don't know how to do for my app.

Like say the phone user entered all this data about a "patient", all
that data gets put into a database, that database should be able to be
accessed from more than one device. For instance have a tablet user
select a "specific report" from say a dropdown list then select a
"patient" from a dropdown list then hit ok and then in the background
have the tablet grab that "specific report" layout and the data from
that "patient" and produce a report. It's hard for me to explain what
I want.

I just want to make a few report layouts then when a user selects that
layout and a "patient" the phone/tablet  grabs the data inputs the
data in the right spots of the already made layout then produces a
file for the user to email/print/view whatever they want.

If I can just get pointed in the right direction I'm glad to do all
the reading and practice to learn how to do it.

On Oct 1, 8:44 am, Studio LFP <studi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Android, along with most mobile OSes, don't excel at printing quite yet. I'm
> seeing movement toward more printing functions, but I doubt we'll see an all
> out print manager style functionality any time soon. I guess they might
> surprise us with it in the next version, but we'll have to wait and find out
> there.
>
> That being said, do you have a support infrastructure planned with your
> application? Or are you planning on it being stand-alone on the
> phone/tablet?
>
> I ask that because there are a lot of good ways to get files into certain
> formats if you have a server planned. Pushing the data to the server and
> asking it to format and print would produce significantly better results in
> speed and ease of use.
>
> If not, a quick and easy way to get "pretty" formatted output would be a
> bitmap backed canvas. You could just toss text, lines and images all over
> and save it to a JPG or PNG.  It wouldn't produce the best printing results,
> but it would be a start.
>
> Canvas:http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/Canvas.html
> Bitmap:http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/Bitmap.html
> Bitmap Factory:http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/BitmapFactory...
>
> For nicer printed output, you could also look up the PDF spec and implement
> a slimmed down version of it in your code. Also, SVG may be an option as it
> is something that more and more browsers are supporting. You could then use
> a browser on a desktop to view and print them.
>
> PDF:http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html
> SVG:http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Steven
> Studio LFPhttp://www.studio-lfp.com

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