Connection | Tech Tips & Tricks

Check Internet Connection In Android

July 6, 2011 by blogmeister·0 Comments

Here is a great helper method by MisterSquonk to detect if your app has an internet connection or not.

public boolean hasInternet(Activity a) {
    boolean hasConnectedWifi = false;
    boolean hasConnectedMobile = false;
    ConnectivityManager cm = (ConnectivityManager) a.getSystemService(Context.CONNECTIVITY_SERVICE);
    NetworkInfo[] netInfo = cm.getAllNetworkInfo();
    for (NetworkInfo ni : netInfo) {
        if (ni.getTypeName().equalsIgnoreCase("wifi"))
            if (ni.isConnected())
                hasConnectedWifi = true;
        if (ni.getTypeName().equalsIgnoreCase("mobile"))
            if (ni.isConnected())
                hasConnectedMobile = true;
    }
    return hasConnectedWifi || hasConnectedMobile;
}

public boolean hasInternet(Activity a) {

boolean hasConnectedWifi = false;

boolean hasConnectedMobile = false;

ConnectivityManager cm = (ConnectivityManager) a.getSystemService(Context.CONNECTIVITY_SERVICE);

NetworkInfo[] netInfo = cm.getAllNetworkInfo();

for (NetworkInfo ni : netInfo) {

if (ni.getTypeName().equalsIgnoreCase("wifi"))

if (ni.isConnected())

hasConnectedWifi = true;

if (ni.getTypeName().equalsIgnoreCase("mobile"))

if (ni.isConnected())

hasConnectedMobile = true;

}

return hasConnectedWifi || hasConnectedMobile;

}

Note that this method cannot be used to check if an external site you are trying to access is alive or not.

Enable Emulator Internet Access In Android

June 1, 2011 by blogmeister·4 Comments

It is common for developers who are new to Android to encounter problems with the emulator connecting to external websites. The first thing I did was to include the

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

1	<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

tag in my AndroidManifest.xml file which, turned out not to be the solution since my app still could not access external websites. To confirm that your app is not the culprit for your internet connection woes, try to open the browser app of the emulator and surf to any well known sites like Google.

If it cannot access it, then the emulator does not have any connection at all. To make this work, try doing the following steps in your Eclipse IDE.

Go to Window > Preferences > Android > Launch
Under the default emulator options, add this -dns-server 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4

It worked for me.

Fixing The “Invalid use of SingleClientConnManager: connection still allocated” Problem

May 5, 2011 by blogmeister·6 Comments

I came upon this problem because the site I wanted to access had server problems, meaning the website was down. When my code tried to access it again, it gave out this “Invalid use of SingleClientConnManager: connection still allocated” exception message.

My code uses Apache’s HttpClient 3rd party library and I thought at first calling the consumeContent() method of the HttpEntity class did the trick since I never even closed the InputStream when getting a reference to it. It did not.

Luckily, after much surfing I stumbled upon Jason Hudgin’s site where he created a convenience method that avoids this problem.

public static DefaultHttpClient getThreadSafeClient() {
    DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    ClientConnectionManager mgr = client.getConnectionManager();
    HttpParams params = client.getParams();
    client = new DefaultHttpClient(new ThreadSafeClientConnManager(params, 
            mgr.getSchemeRegistry()), params);
    return client;
}

public static DefaultHttpClient getThreadSafeClient() {

DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();

ClientConnectionManager mgr = client.getConnectionManager();

HttpParams params = client.getParams();

client = new DefaultHttpClient(new ThreadSafeClientConnManager(params,

mgr.getSchemeRegistry()), params);

return client;

}

Tech Tips & Tricks

tech tips gadgets programming software

Tag: connection

Check Internet Connection In Android

Enable Emulator Internet Access In Android

Fixing The “Invalid use of SingleClientConnManager: connection still allocated” Problem