Vido - Social Video sharing App Template

This documentation will help you familiarise yourself with the 'Vido - Social Video sharing App Template' Android App and the web based Admin page. It is suggested that you first upload the admin page to your server and make sure it is working before continuing to the Android App. The Android App will work fine using the demo server, however it is required to setup firebase for it to work well without errors. The setup of Firebase is explained in the Admin Page Video Tutorial.

Before You Start

1. Make sure your have Android Studio 2.2 installed and in the Android SDK Manager make sure you have the following installed:

   • Build tools v24.0.3
   • Google play-services v9.6.1
   • Android SDK Tools 25.2.2
   • Android SDK Platform-Tools 24.0.3
   • Google USB Driver
   • Android API 24 SDK

2. Try to place the project file as close to root (C:/) as possible as windows has a path character limit of 240chars. So, if you get the error:"Failed to crunch file...", reduce the path length.

Importing and running

• Step 1 - Open up Android Studio and click 'open an existing Android Studio project'.

  



• Step 2 - Drag and drop the 'Android Studio' folder in the dialog to go quickly to the folder.

• Step 3 - Make sure 'Vido' is highlighted and click 'ok'.

  



• Step 4 - Go to your Firebase Console and download the 'google-services.json' file and replace the placeholder in app/google-services.json. This step is included in the Admin Page video - If you skip this step you will encounter an error during compile time.

  



• Step 5 - Press the Play button to test the app on the emulator or connect your phone via usb to your computer to try it on your phone.

  

Changing Package name

This step must be done else you will have problems uploading to Google play and the Rate feature will not work.

• Step 1 - Make sure the 'Compact Empty Middle Packages' option is deselected as shown below.

  



• Step 2 - Rename the package id by right clicking on 'neurondigital' and selecting 'refactor' and 'rename' as shown below.

  



• Step 3 - In the popup menu type in your company name. Then press 'refactor' and in the next popup window press 'Do Refactor'. Do the same for 'vido'. The package name should be in this format: com.yourcompany.AppName

  



• Step 4 - Open app/build.gradle and put in the same package id as before instead of the 'com.neurondigital.vido'. This is shown below.

  

App Customisation

• Step 1 - Put in your Server url in Configurations.java.

  



• Step 2 - Replace the share url with your server url. This is like the above. This was done seperate, since you might want to use a different domain for the public and point it to the server domain. Or perhaps you wish to use the ip directly for the Server url but for the share url you wish to use the domain name.

  

Replace icon

1. The icons can be found in app/res/mipmap. Notice that there are different sizes. To replace the icons just right-click->new->Image Asset and select your image.

   

Add AdMob interstitial Ads (optional)

• Create an interstitial Ad on AdMob and paste the AD unit Id in the strings.xml file. The Ad displays when the user clicks a category in the Browse Tab. Make sure to add this to start making money from your App. The display rate can be changed from strings.xml from the ad_shows_every_X_clicks parameter.

  

Add AdMob Banner Ads (optional)

• Like the interstitial Ad, create a Banner Ad on AdMob and paste the AD unit Id in the strings.xml file. The Ad displays in the bottom of the screen. Ideally to not annoy the user, it's either the banner or the interstitial ad, so you may wish to leave one of the Ad IDs in strings.xml empty.

Google Analytics (optional)

• Create a new google Analytics property and you'll be provided with a tracking id which should have this format: "UA-xxxxxxxx-xx". Put this tracking id in strings.xml in the 'google_analytics_id' field.

  

Facebook Login

The App uses Facebook Authentication for User Login. So you need to create a facebook app.

• Step 1 - Go to Facebook for developers. and Create a new App ID.

  

• Step 2 - Get the generated Facebook App id and put it in strings.xml.

  

• Step 3 - In the Facebook Page, click the '+ Add Product' button to add the Facebook login Feature. Then Go to Settings and click the '+ Add Platforms' to add the Android Platform. This will ask you for a Key Hash. To get it run the app, while your phone/emulator is connected to Android studio and in the Android Monitor/logcat search for 'hash'. Remember that you need to do this twice. One for the debug app in Android Studio to test while Running in Android Studio. Secondly, you need to do this after generating your .apk file, since the exported .apk file will have a different hash key.

  

Translation

• All translatable text is contained within the strings.xml file.

  

Export your App as a .APK for Google Play

• Go to Build| Generate Signed APK... and export the .APK file.