Can an Android App connect directly to an online mysql database

Question

Android 3 3 API 18   Hello   I am developing my first App using android  The App will have to connect to an online database to store user data   I am looking for a cloud storage with a MySQL database included  However  can my App connect directly to this MySQL database and push and pull data from it  Or is there other things I need to do   Many thanks for any suggestions

User · Answer

What you want to do is a bad idea  It would require you to embed your username and password in the app  This is a very bad idea as it might be possible to reverse engineer your APK and get the username and password to this publicly facing mysql server which may contain sensitive user data   I would suggest making a web service to act as a proxy to the mysql server  I assume users need to be logged in  so you could use their username password to authenticate to the web service

User · Answer

Yes you can do that   Materials you need    WebServer  A Database Stored in the webserver And a little bit android knowledge    Webservices  json  Xml   etc  whatever you are comfortable with    1  First set the internet permissions in your manifest file    lt uses-permission android name  android permission INTERNET    gt    2  Make a class to make an HTTPRequest from the server   i am using json parisng to get the values   for eg       public class JSONfunctions        public static JSONObject getJSONfromURL String url            InputStream is   null          String result               JSONObject jArray   null              Download JSON data from URL         try               HttpClient httpclient   new DefaultHttpClient                HttpPost httppost   new HttpPost url               HttpResponse response   httpclient execute httppost               HttpEntity entity   response getEntity                is   entity getContent               catch  Exception e                Log e  log tag    Error in http connection     e toString                           Convert response to string         try               BufferedReader reader   new BufferedReader new InputStreamReader                      is   iso-8859-1    8               StringBuilder sb   new StringBuilder                String line   null              while   line   reader readLine       null                    sb append line     n                              is close                result   sb toString              catch  Exception e                Log e  log tag    Error converting result     e toString                        try                jArray   new JSONObject result             catch  JSONException e                Log e  log tag    Error parsing data     e toString                        return jArray            3  In your MainActivity Make an object of the class JsonFunctions and pass the url as an argument from where you want to get the data   eg   JSONObject jsonobject    jsonobject   JSONfunctions getJSONfromURL  http   YOUR DATABASE URL     4  And then finally read the jsontags and store the values in an arraylist and later show it in listview if you want   and if you have any problem you can follow this blog he gives excellent android tutorials AndroidHive   Since the above answer i wrote was long back and now HttpClient  HttpPost HttpEntity have been removed in Api 23  You can use the below code in the build gradle app-level  to still continue using org apache httpin your project   android       useLibrary  org apache http legacy      signingConfigs        buildTypes        or You can use HttpURLConnection like below to get your response from server  public String getJSON String url  int timeout    HttpURLConnection c   null  try       URL u   new URL url       c    HttpURLConnection  u openConnection        c setRequestMethod  GET        c setRequestProperty  Content-length    0        c setUseCaches false       c setAllowUserInteraction false       c setConnectTimeout timeout       c setReadTimeout timeout       c connect        int status   c getResponseCode         switch  status            case 200          case 201              BufferedReader br   new BufferedReader new InputStreamReader c getInputStream                  StringBuilder sb   new StringBuilder                String line              while   line   br readLine       null                    sb append line   n                              br close                return sb toString             catch  MalformedURLException ex        Logger getLogger getClass   getName    log Level SEVERE  null  ex     catch  IOException ex        Logger getLogger getClass   getName    log Level SEVERE  null  ex     finally      if  c    null          try             c disconnect            catch  Exception ex             Logger getLogger getClass   getName    log Level SEVERE  null  ex                  return null       or You can use 3rd party Library like Volley  Retrofit to call the webservice api and get the response and later parse it with using FasterXML-jackson  google-gson

User · Answer

you can definitely make such application  you need to make http conection to the database  by calling a php script which will in response run specific queries according to your project  and generated the result in the form of xml  or json formate   whihc can be displayed on your android application   for complete tutorial on how to connect android application to mysql i would recommend to check out this tutorila

User · Answer

You can use PHP  JSP  ASP or any other server side script to connect with mysql database and and return JSON data that you can parse it to in your android app this link how to do it

User · Answer

step 1   make a web service on your server  step 2   make your application make a call to the web service and receive result sets

User · Answer

It is actually very easy  But there is no way you can achieve it directly  You need to select a service side technology  You can use anything for this part  And this is what we call a RESTful API or a SOAP API  It depends on you what to select   I have done many project with both  I would prefer REST   So what will happen you will have some scripts in your web server  and you know the URLs  For example we need to make a user registration  And for this we have  mydomain com v1 userregister php   Now from the android side you will send an HTTP request to the above URL  And the above URL will handle the User Registration and will give you a response that whether the operation succeed or not    For a complete detailed explanation of the above concept  You can visit the following link      Android MySQL Tutorial to Perform CRUD Operation

User · Answer

Look at this online backend   Parse com  They offer push notifications  social integration  data storage  and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app   s backend with Cloud Code

User · Answer

Yes definitely you can connect to the MySql online database for that you need to create a web service  This web service will provide you access to the MySql database  Then you can easily pull and push data to MySql Database  PHP will be a good option for creating web service its simple to implement  Good luck

[android] Can an Android App connect directly to an online mysql database

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