All posts by edwardm

Components, Programming Method

Updated: Writing and Reading Text Files Using App Inventor

19 Comments

This post is a major update to a previous post on reading and writing text files using App Inventor. This revision includes information on how to locate the text files you create in your App Inventor apps, plus how to transfer those files from your smart phone or tablet to your computer.

An earlier blog post described how to store data using TinyDB so that an app’s data can persist between uses of the program, or even to share data between screens in a program.

Another way to save data is to write the data to a file on your Android device. App Inventor has introduced a File control that lets us write text data to a file and then read it back, later. As we will see, the File control is not the easiest thing to use but with some work, the control can be used to store data from our program into a file.

Once data is in a file, you could, hypothetically, transfer the file from an Android to device to another computer. Because Android stores the files in a way that they may not be readily accessible – or even visible – we need to use some simple tricks to find the file and transfer the file to a computer.

Update: To learn more about text files and transferring data in the CSV file format, check out Volume 3 of “App Inventor 2 Databases and Files” – thanks!

Continue reading Updated: Writing and Reading Text Files Using App Inventor →

Android Development, Documentation, General, Programming Method, Tips

Update: Reading and writing text files with App Inventor

2 Comments

I previously posted a short tutorial on writing to and reading from text files stored on an Android device, using an App Inventor app.

Unfortunately, as some comments noted, the file being created seems to disappear – the data is written and can be read back – but the file is no where to be found on the phone!

After some research, I now know where the file is – and also how to copy the file from the phone (or tablet) to your personal computer.  While the solution to finding and saving the file to your computer is ultimately easy, I need to update the tutorial and explain some things about the Android file system. You will also need to install a free app on your phone in order to copy the file to your computer.

I have posted an updated tutorial that explains the details and shows how to store your files in the right location, how to find them (they are hidden from most views), and how to copy them to your personal computer.

General

App Inventor Alert: Problems loading projects?

From the MIT App Inventor web site:

Summary: We have been having problems with storing “assets” image, sounds and other objects that you upload to your projects. We are working with Google to resolve these problems as soon as possible.

Things to be aware of:

If we fail to read an asset when you load your project, we substitute a zero-length file. Be careful exporting your projects, as assets may be missing from the “.aia” file exported. Make sure you keep a local copy of your assets on your own computer.

We have been making modifications to the system to mitigate the worst of the problems. In particular we will never serve up a missing asset to the “buildserver” when you package an App. This ensure that if you successfully package an App, the resulting APK is valid. If we fail to read an asset, you will get a “Build Failed” message. If this happens, just keep trying the build. It may work the second or third time around. If it never seems to work, you can remove your assets from your project and upload them again. This may help.

via Problems loading projects?.

App Inventor News, General

December 8-14 is Computer Science Education Week

The Computer Science Education Week coincides with the “Hour of Code” initiative. This example lesson is based on MIT’s Scratch (which is similar to App Inventor).

There are 33 introductory tutorials available for the “Hour of Code” project (teachers may optionally create their own as well).

One of the official tutorial opportunities is based on App Inventor.

Use caution in interpreting the hype over “Hour of Code”. It’s a primitive introduction to some limited programming concepts; many of the tutorials have limited association with computer science. If your expectations are set appropriately, its fine.