Develop Reference

Does OpenStreetMap has Point(Source) to Point(Destination) direction uri to use in Android?

In my App I've integrated the OpenStreetMap, in which I've fetched both source and destination coordinates. I need to pass those coordinates to OpenStreetMap App using Intent class, for that I need Uri.
After searching 2 days long I got this Uri
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=latitude&mlon=longitude&zoom=12
which currently supports only one location but I don't want it.
Can anyone please help me with this? Thanks in advance...
Here is my code below
Intent sendLocationToMap = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_VIEW,
Uri.parse("http://openstreetmap.org/?mlat=13.074847&mlon=80.271019&zoom=12"));
startActivity(sendLocationToMap);

I assume you are asking about routing. In that case the answer is yes, there are various online routers (for example GraphHopper, OSRM and MapQuest) as well as offline routers for OSM available. Many of these online routers provide GPX exports.

You need to use /directions endpoint.
Example (following intent will open www.openstreetmap.org website with route between two points):
http://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=osrm_car&route=53.1855%2C18.0272%3B53.0915%2C18.0087
Intent sendLocationToMap = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_VIEW,
Uri.parse("http://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=osrm_car&route=53.1855%2C18.0272%3B53.0915%2C18.0087"));
startActivity(sendLocationToMap);
OsmAnd app doesn't support directions urls:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=osrm_car&route=53.1855%2C18.0272%3B53.0915%2C18.0087
http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=53.0915,18.0087&saddr=53.1855,18.0272
OsmAnd will display only one geo point without route between them.
Source: https://github.com/osmandapp/Osmand/blob/master/OsmAnd-java/src/net/osmand/util/GeoPointParserUtil.java
However Google Maps directions url:
http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=53.0915,18.0087&saddr=53.1855,18.0272
is supported by Google Maps and HERE.

Get current remote or game controller

How can I get the current input device in my application in java? I want to know is the remote or the game controller, that is being used.
It is an android application that I want to run on Amazon FireTV. Unlike the Amazon Kindle there is no touchscreen but you can use a remote or a game controller. I would like to know if it is possible to detect what kind of input device the user is currently using.
The code I have until now is a standard Cordova Application code, but when I know how to detect the current input device I would make a plugin to pass the value to the javascript code. That is not the problem.

As mentioned in the comments you should provide steps you have already taken or code you have already written to address this functionality as that will help us tweak the most appropriate answer.
As a general rule, you can look at the official docs to identify controllers on Fire TV.
https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-tv/docs/identifying-controllers
Basically, you need to write the identification code in your Cordova plugin as follows:
int hasFlags = InputDevice.SOURCE_GAMEPAD | InputDevice.SOURCE_JOYSTICK;
boolean isGamepad = inputDevice.getSources() & hasFlags == hasFlags;
This will allow you to find out if it's a gamepad. For a Fire TV remote the code you need is:
int hasFlags = InputDevice.SOURCE_DPAD;
bool isRemote = (inputDevice.getSources() & hasFlags == hasFlags)
&& inputDevice.getKeyboardType() == InputDevice.KEYBOARD_TYPE_NON_ALPHABETIC;
The InputDevice class is available on the Android developer site:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/InputDevice.html
So you basically need to import that in your plugin class to ensure the above code works fine.
import android.view.InputDevice;

Offline tile caching using MapBox Android SDK

I have a working iOS prototype using the iOS tile-caching technique as shown below (Objective-C code):
RMTileCache * tileCache = [[RMTileCache alloc] initWithExpiryPeriod:0];
[tileCache setBackgroundCacheDelegate:self];
RMMapboxSource * tileSource = [[RMMapboxSource alloc] initWithMapID:mapID];
[tileCache beginBackgroundCacheForTileSource:tileSource southWest:southWest northEast:northEasth minZoom:minZoom maxZoom:maxZoom];
What this basically does is download the map, cache the tiles permanently and make it possible for the app to run offline in the future. Since we're going through the official payed API, this is of course not violating any of the legal restrictions.
Now I'd like to achieve the same on Android. I have the SDK running in Android Studio and a working project with a remote map using the Map ID, basically this (Android Eclipse layout XML):
<com.mapbox.mapboxsdk.views.MapView
android:id="#+id/mapview"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
mapid=“my_map_id" />
This works fine, but the solution has to be completely offline once the caching is done. My question is: is there a Java equivalent of the iOS source code above in the MapBox SDK? I attempted to look in the API, but could not find a solid reference to the tile caching system. And after some painful time trying to get it running based on the method names and code documentation, I gave up.
I'm running the latest GitHub distribution of MapBox along with the latest Android Studio, everything's up and running fine, but can't find the code to accomplish this. I don’t necessarily need an API reference, a few lines of code showing how it’s done would be enough.

Offline Tile Caching support is now available in the Mapbox Android SDK as of version 0.5.1. It was released on 20-December-2014. Here's a basic example of how to get started:
OfflineMapDownloader offlineMapDownloader = OfflineMapDownloader.getOfflineMapDownloader(getActivity());
BoundingBox boundingBox = mapView.getBoundingBox();
CoordinateSpan span = new CoordinateSpan(boundingBox.getLatitudeSpan(), boundingBox.getLongitudeSpan());
CoordinateRegion coordinateRegion = new CoordinateRegion(mapView.getCenter(), span);
offlineMapDownloader.beginDownloadingMapID("MapboxMapID", coordinateRegion, (int) mapView.getZoomLevel(), (int) mapView.getZoomLevel());
To load a previously saved map:
ArrayList<OfflineMapDatabase> offlineMapDatabases = offlineMapDownloader.getMutableOfflineMapDatabases();
OfflineMapDatabase db = offlineMapDatabases.get(0);
OfflineMapTileProvider tp = new OfflineMapTileProvider(getActivity(), db);
offlineMapOverlay = new TilesOverlay(tp);
mapView.addOverlay(offlineMapOverlay);

I asked this question to the support team, here's the answer:
"We don't currently have a release date for the Android SDK or for this feature, because both are in very early stages of development.
--
Tom MacWright
support#mapbox.com"
It's a very good product, I hope we can use it soon in Android.

In your layout file there must be:
<com.mapbox.mapboxsdk.views.MapView
android:id="#+id/yourMapViewId"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
/>
In code where you want to initialize MapView:
File file = new File("your full path to tiles db");
MBTilesLayer mbTilesLayer = new MBTilesLayer(file);
MapView mapView = (MapView) findViewById(R.id.yourMapViewId);
mapView.setTileSource(mbTilesLayer);

Android - Get a contact's Facebook picture

Android platform is really fun to work with especially when it comes to resolving issues. Indeed, there is possibly everything there is to know about Android development on the internet.
Alright, I've been searching for about a week and haven't found anything that was close from working. Let's dive into it.
We are building an Android Application that requires a read/write access to existing Contacts on a device. It has become really easy to read a contact's set photo using this method :
// Returns a stream reading a contact thumbnail
public InputStream getContactThumbnail(int id) {
// Stream reading contact image
InputStream stream = ContactsContract.Contacts.openContactPhotoInputStream(
context.getContentResolver(),
ContentUris.withAppendedId(
ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, id
)
);
// If image is null, try to read Facebook image
if (stream == null) {
stream = new ByteArrayInputStream(getFacebookPhoto(id));
}
return stream;
}
Now, the previous method receives an id as a parameter and returns a Stream making it possible to read the contact's thumbnail. It is needed to be a stream because the phone acts like a web server and has multiple threads running. If a thumbnail is requested several times in the same short time lapse, an OutOfMemoryException will be thrown for sure.
I need to correctly implement the getFacebookPhoto(int) method so that it returns whatever stream reading the Facebook profile picture of a contact that has his or her contact linked with his or her respective Facebook profile. I've tried and failed so many times.
Hypothesis #1
If a contact is linked with a Facebook profile, it has to have the Facebook ID saved somewhere. If this information is accessible, it would make it easy to get a Facebook profile picture using graph. Problem is an internet connection is needed to do so.
Hypothesis #2
Facebook thumbnails are saved somewhere on the SD card. Maybe there's a link between a Contact and those files that can be found through an SQLite request?
Hypothesis #3
sigh, I look desperate. Okay, if I understood correctly, a phone Contact and a Facebook Contact are not the same things in the database. If you query all the contacts from the following URI :
*ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI*
you only get contacts that you created and nothing regarding Facebook links. Is there a way to find all linked contacts and get their respective photos?
Conclusion
Yeah, that's about is. To sum it up, I need to read all contacts information. For each contact, I have to find its photo. If the user has not set a picture to a contact that is linked to a Facebook profile, the profile picture which it was linked too must be read.
Up until now, the StackOverflow community has been of a great help and saved my life and job countless times. It is possible, I've seen it in other apps.
Thank you for spending of your time, it is truly appreciated.
EDIT
Let's not give up! I will start a 100pts bounty as soon as I can.

Your hypothesises are right to a certain extend. In contact application this things are handled as folows -
Device's Contact & its Facebook account are mapped by Contact's _ID & Facebook's id, this is one-to-one mapping. So from this mapping first you have to find out the Facebook id
of the conserned contact. But in which table this info is stored & wheather that table is eposed to you or not, URL to that table completely dependent on vendors.
From Facebook Id we can get corresponding profile image either from Facebook's server or from Media DB, if it is also cached in.
But this is not supported by all OEMs. And implementation varies from OEM to OEM as Google don't enforce for any common standard implementation of it.
So there is no garantee that a single implementation will work for all devices from different OEMs.

You should really go and play around with Graph Explorer on the Facebook Developers site it will help you a lot in figuring out what you need to do to get certain things. In order to get the picture for an person you just have to do is do a simple GET HTTPRequest with the graph path of /ID?fields=picture (where ID is the facebook id of the contact) which will return a JSON object that contains the link to that person's profile picture. From there it should be fairly simple for you to get the image.
You can also do the same thing to get all of a person's friends with the picture information by sending a GET request to /me/friends?fields=picture. It seems like you are trying to avoid a web connection but if the android contacts do not store the facebook id then you will have to get the ids yourself I'm afraid.
Hope that helps.

Why don't you use FQL, for Android you can use -
String query = "SELECT uid, name, pic, pic_small, pic_big FROM user WHERE uid IN (SELECT uid2 FROM friend WHERE uid1 = me())";
Bundle params = new Bundle();
params.putString("method", "fql.query");
params.putString("query", query);
mAsyncFacebookRunner.request(null, params, new CustomRequestListener());
where CustomRequestListener() extends RequestListener in the Facebook Android SDK.

Android: custom Facebook integration

I need some advice for this matter...
I used the facebook android sdk to create an integration with facebook from my application...I followed this tutorial:
http://www.integratingstuff.com/2010/10/14/integrating-facebook-into-an-android-application/
I would need to implement authentication in one activity and the function postToWall in another.... after authentication i want to send post simply by pressing a button but in other activity, different from that where i do authentication.
is it possible? or with the SDK I'm forced to do everything together in the same activity?
thanks in advance

Yes it is possible. You will get a access token which you can send to the next activity. Use getAccessToken() and setAccessToken().
Here is an example that even saves the needed data: Contact-Picture-Sync

you need to install an extension, similar to the core Android SDK, but no, here is what you need to do:
1.) go to github.com/facebook/facebook-android-sdk
2.) download the facebook directory ONLY! The other directories are only examples.
3.) Put the files from the src (you can copy the drawables too, if you want to) in the package, you are currently working with
4.) You are good to go, you can use the facebook "SDK"
see also this example https://github.com/facebook/facebook-android-sdk/tree/master/examples/Hackbook download it , it is working example provided by facebook

just to provide an alternative answer, there's other ways of implementing sharing on Android.
It allows for more sharing options (like Twitter, QR-Barcodes, blogging and whatnot) without having to deal with the facebook android sdk.
What you would use is a "share" intent, like so:
String title = "My thing"; // used if you share through email or channels that require a headline for the content, always include this or some apps might not parse the content right
String wallPost = "Hey - check out this stuff: http://link.com "; // the content of your wallpost
String shareVia = "Share this stuff via"; // the headline for your chooser, where the phones avaliable sharing mechanisms are offered.
Intent shareIntent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);
shareIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
shareIntent.setType("text/plain");
shareIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, title);
shareIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, wallPost);
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(shareIntent, shareVia));
This is by far the preferred solution on Android if you're looking for simple sharing, as it makes your app future-compatible with new services. And more lean and flexible for the user too, as there's little to no friction from hitting the share button to posting content.
It can also be seen in this blog post: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2012/02/share-with-intents.html
I hope you can use this for your project.