Toggling to your Debug/Diagnostic Activity made easy.
android:taskAffinity=”com.handstandsam.app.diagnostic”

AndroidManifest.xml, Activity declaration, add a taskAffinity property…

<activity
    android:name="com.handstandsam.app.diagnostic.DiagnosticActivity"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher_diagnostic"
    android:label="Diagnostic"
    android:launchMode="singleTask"
    android:taskAffinity="com.handstandsam.app.diagnostic"
    android:screenOrientation="portrait"
    android:theme="@style/AppTheme">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>    

I just had a breakthrough regarding the definition of debug activities in your app. If you specify a different taskAffinity for your debug activity, it’ll show appear in your task launcher like a separate app allowing you to toggle back and forth, making it super easy to jump around.

Thanks to the library Chuck for using this method so I was able to figure out! https://github.com/jgilfelt/chuck/blob/master/library/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml

Working with SSL Handshakes is no fun (to an application developer like me), but with an OkHttp 3 Interceptor, and the nicely typed TlsVersion and CipherSuite objects, it becomes a lot less painful.

If you want to know which TLS version and Cipher Suite was ACTUALLY used for a specific request, use this OkHttp 3 Interceptor:

You’ll get Logcat output that looks like this:

OkHttp3-SSLHandshake: TLS: TLS_1_2, CipherSuite: TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA

With OkHttp 3, you can specify what TLS version(s) and Cipher Suite(s) you want your calls to support (But it only works on Lollipop and higher).

Check out the OkHttp 3 documentation on HTTPS for more info.

Note: You can get newer versions of TLS (Like 1.1 and 1.2) working on < Lollipop, but that has to be done outside the OkHttp 3 configuration unfortunately. See how to do that here.  Maybe this is a good reason to bump your minSdk to 21 🙂

The Fragmented Podcast which focuses on Android Development has a new intro song by Blueprint which is pretty nerdy/awesome. It’s new as of February 2017 and is first featured in Episode 72 about app shortcuts.  In case you want to sing along, here are the lyrics:

♫
Null check, inject and bind, APK, lifecycle and design.
Null check, inject and bind, APK, lifecycle and design.
Null check, inject and bind, APK, lifecycle and design.
Null check, inject and bind, APK, lifecycle and design.
It’s time.
♫

Dan Jarvis and I co-presented a talk entitled “Continuous Integration for Android Using Jenkins” at the Android Summit 2016 on August 26, 2016 in McLean, Virginia.  Here are our slides.  Video should be available in the coming weeks and will be posted here and on Twitter.

Some Highlights:

• Automate everything (If you can script it, do it)
• “There’s an app for that” on a smartphone, “There’s a plugin for that” on Jenkins
• The Android Emulator is great for scalability in CI, it’s fast and you can configure it in many ways
• Shard for speed

I’ve seen a few articles about using the “adb reverse” command which allows you to make specific network calls to your laptop over USB, but when explaining this concept to others, they had a hard time visualizing how it worked.  I’ve put together this post to help illustrate how this works and spotlight some use cases.

Android’s “adb reverse” command is available in Lollipop and higher versions of Android (Platform 21+) and it allows you to access a server running on your computer from your Android device over USB without any network (WiFi or Cellular).  This is done through a technique called a reverse proxy.

What’s a reverse proxy? (via Wikipedia)

A type of proxy server that retrieves resources on behalf of a client from one or more servers. These resources are then returned to the client as though they originated from the proxy server itself.

Use Case 1 : Android -> Server running on laptop

Android Device (localhost:8080) -> Server running on Computer (localhost:8081)

adb reverse tcp:8080 tcp:8081

Use Case 2 : Android -> WireMock on laptop -> Server accessible only on laptop (i.e. VPN)

Download the WireMock JAR and run it using the following command in a Terminal

java -jar wiremock-standalone-2.0.8-beta.jar --port=8081 --proxy-all="https://internal.myapp.com"

Android Device (localhost:8080) -> WireMock running on Computer (localhost:8081)

adb reverse tcp:8080 tcp:8081

This allows you to have your physical Android device access resources that are only available through your laptop.

When you’re done, turn off all reverse proxy port mappings:

adb reverse --remove-all

Sources:

• Ben Oberkfell (@benlikestocode) on his site here: http://www.benlikestoco.de/2016/01/19/android-quickie-accessing-local-resources-with-adb-reverse/
• https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core.git/+/master/adb/SERVICES.TXT

by: Brien Buckman

What is MasterCard?
“We are more than credit cards, we are payment experts. We process transactions 2x quicker than the blink of an eye.”

“We <3 Android”

MasterCard is part of Android Pay, but he can’t speak much about that.

MasterCard developer zone
You can play with all of their SDKs and each one has a Sandbox available. There is also documentation and support forums.  Go to “Services” and there are about 20 on there.

MasterPass – Digital Wallet Network
A digital Wallet Service that allows consumers pay with any payment card anywhere on any connected-device.

Simplify Commerce – Accepting Payments
Makes it easy for small businesses to accept payments.

“Low, Fixed Pricing – SDKs – Plugins

Merchant Identifier – Rich Merchant Data

“Provides rich merchant descriptions based on a merchant’s acquiring name.” This makes the credit card statement entry human readable instead of “JOE COFFE 342”, it would be “Joe’s Coffee on 2nd Street”, etc.

*NEW* – “Places” aggregate anonymous spend data to give you relevant merchant-focused information.”
“Say you are traveling to the middle of no where Utah, and you want a good restaurant. They use anonymous transaction data to see what the most popular payments are.

“Masters of Code” is their global hackathon. Running a lot of these events.  One is in NYC November 7-8 this year.  Get one quick, because it will sell out.

“Locations API” – For determining where MasterCard is accepted.