Setting up the Android Emulator for HTTP debugging using Fiddler2

Fiddler2 is a great way to debug advanced HTTP communication and it can be very helpful in capturing and recreating SOAP messages. Getting up and running with the Android Emulator is pretty easy:

Android and XML De-/Serialization

I don’t have a lot of experience with it yet, but at least for the simple stuff I’ve been doing with the Android port, XStream is a great XML De-/Serializer.

Here’s the Android port: http://jars.de/java/android-xml-serialization-with-xstream

To get started using XStream, go for this easy to follow tutorial: http://xstream.codehaus.org/tutorial.html

There’s no I in standard

Coming from C# I personally prefer the I+DescriptiveInterfaceName (e.g. IList) convention, but that “I” seems to be a bit of a sin within the java community.

Imagine my surprise when I came across android.os.IBinder.

Although I’m just a random hacker using a language like C#, one thing I would always adhere to over my own preference in regards to naming, is a standard. I thought java guys were real sticklers for this kind of thing.

Guess I was wrong

Ready for the Enterprise: Setting up a VPN connection on Android

For my current project I needed access from my HTC Hero to a server that is not publicly visible. To my surprise it turns out that Android currently has NO VPN SUPPORT. Rumors say Donut will bring it and others are pointing to Google integrating a library from a company called Mocana. I did find some “workarounds” for enabling VPN. Common for all of them is the requirement of root access and a cooked ROM – not something that most users are going to be familiar with.

For me this puts a dent in the “enterprise readiness” of Android. And there are other things. Like the lack of support for Kerberos and NTLMv2 – in both the browser and the Java HTTP stack – and the previously mentioned unobtainable permissions.

I really hope that Google irons out these “kinks”. They make an otherwise promising OS hard to recommend.

Android documentation

I really like the Android documentation – it’s quite comprehensive, there’s nice API samples and the getting started tutorials are simple and easy to follow. With each class description, the documentation lists direct and indirect descendants – this is mostly a nice feature, but I couldn’t help smiling when I looked up “Object”: http://developer.android.com/reference/java/lang/Object.html

Composite Application Block (CAB) ItemsControl vertical stretch

So we just started using the Composite Application Block for a Silverlight project. Greate stuff. But we quickly ran into an issue where we were unable to make a subview stretch to fill out its containing region. Turned out that a template containing a DockPanel needed to be added to the ItemsControl representing the region.

After lots of playing arround, I finally found the solution here:
http://www.global-webnet.net/blogengine/post/2008/08/09/CompositeWPF-Getting-your-view-to-stretch-vertically-as-well-as-horizontally.aspx