[erlang-questions] Erlang4Android

[Erik Reitsma]

On 01/14/2013 11:37 AM, Joe Armstrong wrote:
> This is amazing - works like a charm - fantastic.
>
I am glad it not only works on my own devices. :-)

> Quick comment -
>
>     It would be very nice to make the client and server in 
> fac_example.zip run "out of the box"
> client.erl is a *must read* file. server.erl does not export main/0 
> and should be changed to
> spawn the server - otherwise you don't get control in the shell ...
>
The server was intended to be run on some server, not on the Android 
device. Only the client should run on the device. Of course, the server 
could easily be adapted to run on the same device, or another device, as 
well.
The example was mainly intended for people familiar with Erlang, who 
want to try their Erlang skills on Android. A different example may be 
required for Android programmers who do not yet know Erlang.

> First thoughts/questions:
>
>   - The download is rather large - I'm sure this could be made a *lot 
> smaller

Definitely. As I wrote, I put in as much as I could, mainly to show that 
all those libraries could run on the device. I intend to make a minimal 
installation too. The current download includes almost everything from 
OTP, including things like epmd (which also works, but you will need to 
start Erlang from a shell, probably with root permissions). I think I 
can probably remove the corba applications, the megaco application, 
ASN.1 and many others. I will see if I can make it possible to make your 
own selection of OTP applications, and perhaps even allow other 
repositories with non-OTP-applications.

>   - Need Erlang APIs to the camera, GPS, .... etc.

For now the easiest way to do this is write wrappers around the SL4A 
APIs. Have you looked at those and found them lacking? You can find all 
available functions here: 
http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/wiki/ApiReference I have 
actually only tried a view of them myself.
All functionality from SL4A is available through the module android. I 
have implemented this using a dirty trick: I have modified 
error_handler.erl such that for an undefined function android:F(Args), 
the function android:rpc([Args]) will be called. So I only implemented 
android:rpc/1, which will be called for any other function android:F/N. 
Dirty, but if there is a new function in SL4A, it will be supported 
automagically. This is similar to the implementation for Python4Android.

>   - The client.erl example shows I can make an application *without* 
> eclipse
>      it would be very nice top abstract the details of the layout() 
> function
>      so as not to see the XML :-)
>
Yes. :-) SL4A does not provide an API to dynamically create gui 
elements, so this is a limitation with the current approach. It would be 
possible to write Erlang code that transforms something erlangy into the 
required XML. I would have to look at how generic that could be made, 
because I may be too lazy to specifically implement all possibilities 
for the layout XML. I think it would be possible to make some simple 
XML-generation from lists of tuples records. I will give it some thought.

Regards,
*Erik.