I've just published an updated to my Betan application for sharing beta copies of Android apps. It now includes a server-side app that I implemented using GAE so that other developers can take advantage of it.
Do I use REST or simple HTTP post/get? These aren't really in opposition. I would generally recommend REST on several grounds, in part because it encodes what is being read/modified within the URL, which is where that information is best recorded. If your server-side API is not public then it isn't something I would get too hung-up on it since it isn't necessarily architecturally significant - you can evolve it easily. Do I use JSON or XML? I personally shy away from either for my Android applications. For mobile applications, you're looking for two characteristics in my opinion: compactness of representation and speed of parsing. If you're dealing with very complex or very general data, or if it needs to be consumed by other services (say AJAX) then either of these will be well suited, but often you can be very specific within an Android application and a custom mode of serialization can provide many benefits. One grudge I have against JSON is that it encourages developers to tie their serialization directly to their object model. This is very convenient in your early iterations of a project. But when you need to evolve your server-side domain objects maintaining compatibility with older versions of your application can get sticky. Do I use java or Python. I think Python is very well suited to GAE. I use Java because it allows me to maintain a separate 'model' jar containing the domain objects for my application that I can reuse in both the Android application and on the server. This is a great convenience. Even though I have plenty of experience with both, I shy away from JDO and JPA for GAE, and use the 'native' datastore API, I simply find it much more convenient; I don't have to think my way through all the partial abstractions. Can anyone point me at a usable system for connecting my Android to the GAE? I think at this stage, it's still a case of writing the connecting code oneself. But you're communicating simple data, the good news is that it's not really much work (in my experience). Tom. On 26 August 2010 08:43, Droid <rod...@gmail.com> wrote: > I have spent two days trying to decide on a way to upload and download > data to the Google App Engine. > > Do I use REST or simple HTTP post/get? > > Do I use JSON or XML? > > Do I use java or Python. > > I am thinking probably use python and probably use REST. But which one > out there? > > There are so many to choose from. None seem to work out-of-the-box, > but need faffing around with bits of code from here and bits of code > from there. And is not clear at the outset what am taking on or what > the limitations are. > > Can anyone point me at a usable system for connecting my Android to > the GAE? > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Android Developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<android-developers%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
