LensRocket (formally PikShare) is a picture / video sharing application built on top of Windows Azure.
- Eclipse - This sample was built with Eclipse (Kepler version).
- Android SDK - You can download this from the Android Developer portal.
- Windows Azure Account - Needed to create a Mobile Service, Notification Hub, and Storage Account. Sign up for a free trial.
The Android-LensRocket repo currently includes the following resources:
- source/client - The android client source code. This encompasses all client side code necessary to run LensRocket on Android excluding one third party library mentioned below.
- source/server - The Mobile Services scripts which are tied to the endpoints the client application talks to.
#Setting up your Azure Services In order to run this application, you'll need to set up several pieces within Windows Azure. Start by creating the following: a Mobile Service, a Storage account, and a Notification Hub. You will need the Storage account name / key as well as the Notification Hub name / access signatures later on.
After creating your Mobile Service in the Windows Azure Portal, you'll need to create tables named AccountData, Friends, Messages, RocketFile, and UserPreferences. You'll also need to create custom APIs named AcceptFriendRequest, GetRocketForRecipient, Login, Register, RequestFriend, SaveUsername, and SendRocketToFriends You'll also want to enable Script Source Control on the Dashboard page.
After creating your Notification Hub, you'll want to set up Google Cloud Messaging by following the first two steps in this walkthrough. Note that you'll need your Project Number from the Google Console later for the Android client's Sender ID.
Return to your Mobile Service and go to the Configure tab. Under the app settings area, add the following name-value pairs with the appropriate value from your Storage Account or Notification Hub:
- STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME
- STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY
- NOTIFICATION_HUB_NAME
- NOTIFICATION_HUB_FULL_ACCESS_SIGNATURE
These values will be used by the scripts you upload later in the instructions.
#Client Application Changes In order to run the client applicaiton, you'll need to change a few settings in your application. After importing the project into Eclipse, open com.msted.lensrocket.Constants.java. Use the values from your Mobile Service / Notification Hub to set the following properties: MOBILE_SERVICE_URL, MOBILE_SERVICE_APPLICATION_KEY, SENDER_ID, NOTIFICATION_HUB_CONNECTION_STRING, and NOTIFICATION_HUB_NAME.
Finally, the LensRocket Android appliation relies on the ActionBar Pull To Refresh library. The easiest way to put this library in the client application is to clone the ActionBar-PullToRefresh repository and import it's library folder into Eclipse. You can then right click on the project, go to Properties, select Android, and fix the library path at the bottom of the panel (it should be pointing to the library in an incorrect location).
#Script Changes After cloning the Mobile Service script repository locally, you'll want to copy over all files from the source/server folder to replace what you cloned locally. Once that is done, push your repository changes back up to your Mobile Service.
For additional questions or feedback, please contact the team.