Share My Creation UPNP Browser - Source Files Included

My first ever published app! I'd be grateful if you could download and rate it on the Play Store, just follow this link... UPNP Browser

It's been a long while in creation and I've been promising to post the source code for quite a while. Hopefully all the bugs have been ironed out, the only issue that I am aware of is a problem navigating back through the menus whilst downloading items (only happens on very large lists and does not cause the app to crash therefore only a minor problem). I'd like to be able to use threading on the XOM parser but up till now I've not managed to make it work.

The code is extensively commented and hopefully not too difficult to follow. I've tried to streamline it as much as possible. There's also plenty of information written to the log as demonstrated in this video (admittedly not the most exciting of videos )...

I have a few improvements planned but wanted to release this now as I think its good enough for general use. All comments on how to make it better will be gratefully received.

And here's the promo video as listed on the Play Store...

Kind regards,
RandomCoder

PS. Source code for B4A versions 3.82 and 4.0 attached (just incase you've not upgraded yet!).

@Erel @JakeBullet70 and @klaus I've used a couple of your routines and given credit to you. And to everyone else in the forum, thanks for the fantastic level of support without which I probably never would have been able to complete this!

 

[RandomCoder]

Just to note that I've updated my app on the play store... UPNP Browser

It's only a minor change related to the intents for playing video files and the time waited whilst acquiring UPNP devices. I also realised that I hadn't credited B4A for being such an excellent development tool. So now at the bottom of my listing it says...

This App was written using Basic4Android also referred to as B4A. The best Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool for developing native Android apps.

Having searched for Basic4Android in the Play Store I was surprised not to find more apps making reference to B4A!

On a plus note, my app has had 205 downloads and is still installed on 69 of them (maybe not being used though). I'd never have hoped of achieving that as it's so basic compared with what else is out there. Just goes to show

 

[WAZUMBi]

About 1/3 retention rate. Better then any of my apps. Awesome.

 

[hookshy]

Good luck ... 5 star from me for the the fact that the app does not ask for any permision

 

[RandomCoder]

Good luck ... 5 star from me for the the fact that the app does not ask for any permision

In creating the app I had three objective...
1. Parental controls so that my five year old son had easy access to the films on my server.
2. Minimal permissions and no adverts (I personally hate adverts, but then again I'm not trying to make money from my programming).
3. Little or ideally no persistent storage. Obviously the settings for parental controls may need this unless I were to store them remotely. But this also means no nice cover art, and hopefully a faster experience certainly the first time it's run.

I managed to achieve points 2 & 3 but in learning a little about UPNP protocols and acquiring the info from various devices I've discovered that the certification for films is not always present in the information received. Thus making point 1 very difficult to achieve!
However I've not ruled it out and was thinking that if I can improve on UPNP Browser and it gets enough interest then I may create another paid for app that incorporates parental controls. I don't believe that this is available on the play store at all yet. But it will have to limit the type of devices it connects to as Windows shares don't appear to send this info and there maybe others.

Thanks for the stars though, I really appreciate it and if you encounter any problems at all then be sure to let me know!

Kind regards,
RandomCoder

 

[RandomCoder]

A PLEA FOR RATINGS

Since launching my first App at the beginning of January I've now reached +1000 downloads and the top 10 Apps listed when using the search term "UPNP". On top of this I have only had 3 Crash reports (two of which are hopefully fixed and 1 that eludes me as I am unable to re-create or work out how it is even possible). The retention ratio is also pretty good, it seems to remain at around 1/3 of total downloads.

My problem is that I have only 15 ratings and 3 of those are from family/friends!
Please can I ask my fellow B4A users to try my app, if you haven't already, and to rate it? Thanks also to those that already have. I notice that the source code has been downloaded nearly 200 times, it would have been nice if some of those downloads had resulted in Play Store ratings

The App can be found here... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=b4a.upnpBrowser&hl=en_GB
I've just updated it to allow all countries (not sure if this is a wise move?). I'm also wanting to make it listed "Suitable for Tablets" but at the moment I'm unable to provide any 10" screenshots although it should scale perfectly well on any size of screen.
And here's a screenshot of my stats...


Thank you for taking the time to read, and an even bigger thank you if you have taken the time to rate my App

 

[Sergio83]

Hello there,
I know I'm talking about an old thread but ...
First of all many thanks for your very good job Ramdomcoder.
I'm trying to implement your UPN Browser on an Amazon Fire Stick it works perfect but I wonder about the way to highlight the CLV selected items with remote up or down. I tried many feature but no one is working ... so, I'll be very happy to get some help to setup a friendly GUI using your app on this kind of device.
Thanks by advance for any help.