Gideros Forum

Hi all,

First of all, sorry for the late reply. And here are the steps about creating a simple Android plugin:

Part 1 (build your plugin)
--------------------
1. Download the attached zip file and extract to a directory. It contains the sources of BitOp plugin, header files and libgideros.so (for armv6 and armv7) (these files also come with the original Gideros installation).
2. Also this zip file contains BitOp/jni/Android.mk. This is the makefile of the plugin.
3. Go to the BitOp directory and execute ndk-build
4. Now your libbitop.so (for armv6 and armv7) should be ready at BitOp/libs


Part 2 (create your own Gideros Android Player)
---------------------------------------
1. Create a project with name MyGiderosAndroidPlayer
2. Without adding any files, export it as an Eclipse project
3. Delete the directory assets/assets
4. Deploy it to your device. Now you have a Gideros Andoid Player.

Part 3 (adding your plugin)
----------------------
1. Copy libbitop.so files to libs directory of MyGiderosAndroidPlayer project
2. Open your ...Activity.java file and add the line
under the line System.loadLibrary("gideros");
3. Deploy it.

Part 4 (testing your plugin)
----------------------
Test your plugin with this Lua file

please ask if you stuck in any step.

cheers,

@techdojo you owe me a coffee :)

@atilim oh, I think whole Gideros community owes you much more ;)
Thank you

@atilim - the coffee was for Scouser to stop him crying, but this is just for you.

@techdojo uhh.. got it now :) anyway, thanks for the coffee. I can share it with @Scouser :P

Thanks for the coffee :) and also the plugin howto. I can see where I was going wrong now and hopefully I will get to test it at the weekend.

@alexzheng: As I understand it, you run the new MyGiderosAndroidPlayer.apk as a replacement player on your phone. This player would have your new plugin incorporated.

yes,I have tried both.
As I undertand, the orignal giderplayer come with gideros studio is just an empty project without asset just like Part 2, when added some asset to it,it will act as a normal app(will not listen for connection),is that right?

And any tutorial using java code as plugin?

@atilim
I see that, we are lacking of some features in bitop example.

Last few days, I try to write an android plugin which support three functions
(done)
+ LogI: write down a log message in android console by using __android_log_print
+ GetDeviceModel: get Android device model information (by using android.os.Build.MODEL of Android SDK)
+ Popup an alert if press back key.

Bitop is good reference for the first one, but not for last twos. I modified some in source to support. And here is my suggests:

+ we could replace/modify default macros REGISTER_PLUGIN. We need to store JavaVM inside plugin to connect to Java side.
+ Support macros for quick connect from JNI to JAVA side.
+ Support Handler in Java-side to handler UI request from JNI (avoid crash by thread)
+ Add an RelativeLayout, instead of add directly mGLView to content-view. By this way, we could add more view into screen (such as admob view).

My JNI-Java connection template (I used http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9304185/how-to-call-java-function-from-c with some changes)

void Jni_Todo(....)
{
    // step 1: Get environment pointer

    JNIEnv *env = 0;
    int status;
    int isAttached = 0;
    
    if ((status = (*gJavaVM_guava7androidplugin).GetEnv( (void**)&env, JNI_VERSION_1_6)) < 0)
    {
        if ((status = (*gJavaVM_guava7androidplugin).AttachCurrentThread(&env, NULL)) < 0)
        {
            isAttached = 1;
        }
    }

    // step 2: Get JAVA class pointer. For example with Java class  com.gideros.android.MyActivity

    jclass cls = (*env).FindClass( "com/giderosmobile/android/MyActivity" );
    if (!cls)
    {
        if (isAttached) (*gJavaVM_guava7androidplugin).DetachCurrentThread();
        return;
    }  

    // step 3: Get JAVA function pointer. For example with Java func: static void todo()

    jmethodID method = (*env).GetStaticMethodID(cls, "todo", "()V");
    if (!method)
    {
        if (isAttached) (*gJavaVM_guava7androidplugin).DetachCurrentThread();
        return;
    }
        
    //step 4: call java function
    (*env).CallStaticVoidMethod(cls, method); //or others function from  http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jni/html/fldmeth.html
    return;
}

Hi @Rickyngk,

About your suggestions,

1. Totally agree. I'll provide a function so that you can get JavaVM.
2. Yes, JNI is big and complicated. I'll try to provide macros.
3. Yes, rendering and executing Lua codes are done on a separate thread. Therefore, any UI action should be run by using the function Activity.runOnUiThread to avoid crashing (And I should emphasize this in the documentation).
4. Totally agree.

thanks

@SatheeshJM: that's just for testing and my code so messy, waiting for official code from @atilim

About *gJavaVM_guava7androidplugin,

JavaVM *gJavaVM_guava7androidplugin = 0;
JNIEXPORT jint JNICALL JNI_OnLoad(JavaVM* vm, void *res)
{
	gJavaVM_guava7androidplugin = vm;
	g_registerPlugin(g_pluginMain_guava7androidplugin);
	return JNI_VERSION_1_6;
}

it's a VM pointer, that help me to invoke a java function from C