21 May 2012, 16:05

Hello Juan,

You need to activate the mobile upload functionality in the Site configuration under General settings.

Cheers

Kristina

23 June 2011, 4:10

We've had a request where I work for mobile support of mahara, so will be upgrading to mahara1.4 at the start of summer now I've seen this app! Also found a generic iPhone app that will talk to mahara, will try that with it also.

Are there plans to add in features like Friends, Groups, Pages viewing etc? We're trying to not allow facebook here, so want to push the social networking side of it - on mobile ideally.
If there are no plans for a fuller 'app', I plan to put together a facebook for smartphone-style GUI that'll run in web browsers on any smartphone. Just not sure if I can embed picture uploading functionality within that.

Dave

23 June 2011, 5:59

Hi David,

Just some personal comments from an Android MaharaDroid developer angle.

I am interested in ways of using the Android device to enhance users experience of Mahara. So the focus for me (as a developer) is to look at Android functionality such as Camera, GPS, Accounts & Sync and the Notifications framework. Consider you authenticate to Mahara on you Android and it background syncs regularly to raise a notiication if you have any new Mahara activities (of any sort .. someone posts on your wall adds a comment on an file/artefact, etc). Clicking on the notification would take you to the appropriate place on Mahara. What I have been playing with so far on MaharaDroid is to utilise photo/video upload capability which just makes use of build in device capabilities to add value to Mahara (the backend Mahara application could be extended to support geotagging, etc).

When I said "take you to the appropriate place on Mahara" I (personally) don't see huge merit in duplicating Mahara on iPhone/Blackberry/Android, etc, etc (app versus mobile web argument). My thoughts (from years of working with mobile technologies) is that it would be good to see some CSS/themeing work undertaken so we could have a mobile Mahara (i.e m.mahara.org ;) .. a lightweight version sytled / themed for on device but running off the same web-server.

So .. your plan to put together a facebook for smartphone-style GUI that'll run in web browsers on any smartphone .. sounds like a great idea to me ;)

Cheers,

Alan

23 June 2011, 7:54

A fellow developer voting the idea, excellent! In return, your idea of notifications alerts in-app is good and makes it more like our end goal - more like facebook!

I thought about the theme thing but from what I heard about a moodle mobile development effort, it was easier to come up with new gui code and some backend scripts acting like a web service providing data to it. Also I believe it will be quicker to do it that way than to learn the ins and outs of mahara's code, although using their existing library code may well be necessary if I can't figure out the database side of it.

We authenticate to our mahara using single sign-on from moodle exclusively, so the mobile token idea (if I can figure that out) would be good. Can Android browsers 'browse' the pictures on the device for upload?

I should also have mentioned the iPhone app seems to be purely about uploading photos, similar to yours (think I read yours can upload text artefact files also though?).

Dave

23 June 2011, 8:50

There is growing interest (well murmurs) in the idea of developing a set of common APIs [1]. The basic token method I use is a very simple but I believe is not secure enough for read (hence is push only). So the current mobileupload.php API does no reading .. just allows arefact upload. I don't know why the iPhone app limits itself to photos .. artefacts can obviously be just about anything (within Mahara) whether or not you can do anything with them once uploaded to the site is another matter ;).

Check the API documentation http://code.google.com/p/maharadroid/wiki/MaharaUploadAPI this (along with a authbytoken user method) is all I committed to Mahara to get the push working.

[1] think lightweight restful JSON for example .. or a fully async / Ajax style UI. Consider GET or POST on /api/comment/1234 or /api/profile/87654/ and expand for all required operations

24 June 2011, 1:59

You could also consider creating a mobile GUI using Mahara Themes. The dwoo templating there provides the possibility to structure it so that only certain parts of the site appear to a mobile user.

I suppose, with that, you'd need to add some scripting to load the mobile theme on detecting the mobile browser.

I started drafting one out (really not focusing on aesthetics with it yet!) , see here: 

but won't be finishing it off for a while. It was more of a proof of concept for me. 

29 June 2011, 6:39

Proof of concept is still interesting. Shame your link doesn't link!

16 July 2011, 12:30

Hi Alan,

if I understand you corretly you are developing the app so it takes advantage of the built in android capabilities such as 'share' and 'notifications' etc. as opposed to have a app that duplicates a mahara environment. i think thats great for many reasons.

One observation I have: When I upload a file, it deletes it on my phone. The file makes it to the mahara of course. Not sure if thats intentional or if its operator error. It would be nice if after uploading into mahara, the file would still be available to share into various other places.

Cheers

16 July 2011, 21:30

Hi Dirk,

That sounds unusal .. there is nothing in the MaharaDroid app that deletes the source file (that I'm aware of - bugs are always possibly but there is definitely no delete, rm or unlink, etc called). I certainly have access to the files afterwards on my phone (regardless of file type and apps I've tested 'sharing' from etc) .. I'm using an old Nexus One. The only case I can think of might be if the file is 'shared' after being taken maybe your phone thinks you're done with it... while this isn't an Android phone forum, etc I'd been keen to hear more about what phone you're using and what app you 'shared' the file from etc .. even if to document that it can happen, etc.

On the duplicating Mahara functionality .. I agree doesn't make sense (API's do however, where required). Hopefully it will be possible to browse Mahara on tablets and smartphones with style changes or templating (though I'm personally not super familiar with how this is done in Mahara, etc).

Cheers,
Alan

17 July 2011, 2:06

Hello Dirk,

Like Alan, I still have the images and videos I take on my LG Optimus 1 after they have been uploaded to Mahara.

Cheers

Kristina