Nick DiPatri and Arpit Mathur Present on Android Development

An Approach for Communicating with a Struts/XML MVC Server from an Android Client (Nick DiPatri)

The challenge was to create an Android client for a digital home security system's Struts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struts) back-end that traditionally serves up XML to Ajax-based web clients. I developed an API that makes calls to this Struts server and unmarshalls the resulting XML into local POJOs. Nearly all the code and network calls are generated automatically using a combination of external tools and technologies including Trang (http://www.thaiopensource.com/relaxng/trang.html), RELAX NG (http://relaxng.org/), Schema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_schema), and JiBX (http://jibx.sourceforge.net/).

About Nick

Nick has been a software engineer in the Philadelphia start-up scene since Y2K. His recent projects include an acoustic sensor-based nationwide real-time traffic reporting system, an enterprise-grade digital home security system and micro-controlled toys for his kids. He graduated from Rutgers with a degree in electrical engineering in 1993. He's currently working on his first Android application which is a remote control for a home security system.

Custom Layouts in Android (Arpit Mathur)

Layouts are one of the most powerful parts of the Android platform. In this talk we'll look deeper inside the Android Layout system and look into how you would go about building a custom layouts for your Activites. We'll discuss when you should consider a custom layout and briefly compare the layout engines between Android and other technologies as well.

About Arpit

Arpit is a Software Engineer working for Comcast Innovation Labs in Philadelphia with a long history of programming in a variety of user interface technologies including Flash, Flex, SWT, JavaScript/HTML and lately Objective C and Java for Android as well. He is an Open Source enthusiast and is very interested in design and User Experience and bringing better UX to the Android platform.

IMPORTANT: As always, clearance is needed for the Comcast Center. Please RSVP so I can have your name on the list for security. RSVPing also helps us get the right amount of pizza.