Google I/O 2010 - Android REST client applications

[theonedani]

wave? lol

[metafedora]

This guy has the most annoying voice, I wish they would dub it over with someone like Ian McKellen as narrator.

And like most Google employees, you get that slight I'm-soooo-much-smarter-than-yo­u attitude. Ugh.

[majdijr]

great session, i learned a lot from it

[lobais]

Guys... It's true that there is no use for this " hyper-redundant nonsense to get a simple JSON result back and parse it".

But if you are actually writing a two-way rest app, using put, post, delete and caching, things become a lot more complicated. Unless you are willing to sacrifice performance.

Just saying.

[khaled3anani]

Thanks alot , is there any sample code that we can look at ?

[russellperry]

I'm sorry, but this is Google's engineering culture run amok. REST architecture should never be this complicated. I get mobile small footprint, CPU management, radio, etc. There's still no excuse for this 5-layered, hyper-redundant nonsense to get a simple JSON result back and parse it. This tendency to over-complicate simple operations is all over the Android API, and seems to be the result of a bunch of PhDs writing APIs to satisfy CS theory rather than solve simple problems in a simple manner

[xandy1979]

@russellperry Well Separation of role always comes with a cost. Android System design also makes these worse.. you have content provider but need to execute the operation in a separate Service with a separate thread.

[GirlieBlues]

Cool. Rest Client Applications.

[ontotheos]

I would call them Android strategies for REST service, instead of architecture, also i think he failed mention that this approaches can be combined to have a better structured, specially the last two. But +1 for all the tips we should call this "The Dobjanschi Approach"

[FernandoEscher87]

@ontotheos He does mentioned that you can perfectly come up with your own pattern if you understand the principles behind them. So, this talk is more of an overview on good patterns for RESTful apps than a How-To tutorial. And actually yes, I also found that a combination of the last two could make a better approach on the subject.

[FernandoEscher87]

Pretty useful! Saves tons of time trying to solve the server sync problem by yourself from scratch!

[ontotheos]

@FernandoEscher87 no it doesn't it does not goes deep enough on the SyncAdapter

[geggyusa]

they could have given him some water. this is rough to listen to

[masiminder]

Here's the presentation guys. now let's REST

dl.google.com/googleio/2010/an­droid-developing-RESTful-andro­id-apps.pdf

[pushingprimitives]

@masiminder That link seems rather broken :(

[masiminder]

@pushingprimitives

if everything fails: google for an­droid-developing-RESTful-an­dro­id-apps.pdf

[dharmin007]

Now that I have watched this I have a great feeling to change the architecture of my app that is almost about complete....Thanks a lot..

[rankincd]

he does seem nervous, but I think it's more of a language thing. I don't think English is his first language I detect a faint accent. He sounds like he's European.

[skaldromysarg]

Thank you very much for this info...

[saboteurs1234]

Great info Virgil! I've been searching the web for android REST examples and am so psyched to actually find a video from the guy that writes the apps!

[7105717]

He is a programmer, not a presenter. I understand him :)

[twerdster]

He sounds like Yoda

[TheTurboChan]

@twerdster Damn, once it is heard it cannot be unheard...

[moloxiao]

@twerdster hehe

[GrEEnOneMK]

Real simple stuff in order to exchange data with REST, almost like Google managed to hire all Microsoft COM engineers (pre DirectX 9 anyone ?)

[russellperry]

@GrEEnOneMK Exactly. Look, all you have to do is implement IUnknown, relate the ProdID in the registry to the GUID of your component...OK, let me back up. First you need to...no wait. See, it's very simple. No, wrong hive in the registry! Not HKCU -- HKLM, silly. Can't believe you thought it was HKCU, lol!

They also apparently called in the whole Windows Installer team to help with the architecture as well. This is complicated stuff. I mean you have to call a server and parse the result!

[cciach]

I am happy to see that even google employees can be nervous at presentations. Now I feel not so bad about my own presentations anymore :)

[zyrgzyrg]

Nice Thx for froyo and for speech

[dreamtownuk]

Why can you not zoom on the SCREEN, We dont need to see his face! I prefer to see the screen!!!!!

[mcstarGmail]

Great architecture/design discussion. Use this design for your next Android Restful app (please:)

[850mph]

Ditto below post.

Very useful vid.

Where can we find sample SOURCE for the pattern(s) described here?

[850mph]

Virgil--??

[hosindishouse]

Has anyone seen any example code using the full Service pattern discussed here? I'm assuming the Twitter app will use one of these patterns, but it hasn't been open-sourced yet.

[Snytkine]

Excellent! Did I miss something because I have not seen anything about user authentication and session management. How do you authenticate the user before and during REST calls?

[XNeo2001]

Perfect session with just the exact right level of detail: Not down into nitty bits of code, but with all necessary steps mentioned. Excellent!