PeerDeviceNet - Developer API

Developer API

As developers, we find mobile platforms (Android, iOS, Win8) are different from traditional platforms (desktops, servers).

Apps are developed as components glued together thru high level communication / integration mechanisms (intents, custom urls, contracts), which enables ad-hoc reuse and composition of features from different apps.
Cross components API are mostly asynchronous for the responsiveness of apps.
Many issues become prominent in mobile environments such as power conservation, permissions to access device features, network connectivity, etc..

PeerDeviceNet internal design and developer API are native to the mobile programming model. Its simple intent API allows adding remote messaging to apps without any library "gluing"; while its IDL interfaces allow apps fine grained control of messaging and connection.

PeerDeviceNet api exposes the following three functional modules to support connected mobile apps:

Remote intenting. intents and api to enable remote start of activities and services at peer devices, send remote broadcasts.
Group communication. intents and api to do messaging in simple multicast groups.
Device connection. intents and api for peer device connection setup.

Each modules are normally supported in three levels of APIs:

Intent api.

Intent API provides the highest level of access to PeerDeviceNet's features. To use this API, all you need is to have PeerDeviceNet (paid or free) installed on users devices to gain the runtime support. Apps send normal android intents using PeerDeviceNet specific action names and pack message data as intent "extra" data items with PeerDeviceNet specific keys. All the action names and "extra" data keys supported by PeerDeviceNet have been centralized at this file Router.java which you can add to your project for easy access.

IDL api.

PeerDeviceNet's IDL APIs define purely asynchronous methods and callbacks. To use these apis, you need to add their aidl definition files to your project. There is also DeviceInfo class and NetInfo class used at api which defines information about devices and networks. For your convenience, all the necessary files to use aidl api are available from github site, which you can unzip and add to your project.

Messenger api.

Messenger API is also a high level api for apps using android's standard messaging pattern "Messenger". This api defines a group of PeerDeviceNet specific message ids which can be used with android's Message object. Apps use messengers to send message data as a bundle with data items using the same key names as Intent api. All the message ids and bundle data keys are defined in Router.java.