general.md

Rambling markdown file around mobile project

Questions

• Should user authenticate in the app, or be prompted for a personal access token?
  • Asking for token directly is the simplest approach, but could be cumbersome to the user
  • Not sure how to authenticate using username/password..
  • Possible to implement username/password auth later?
• What library to use for compression
• Mock Github API? Or at the very least minimize requests during development.

sources

• Helpful video explanation of below process for adding a file: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VCN18PMVnw
• Contents api docs (simplest way of adding file): https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/contents/
• Helpful walkthrough of using egit to add a file: https://gist.github.com/Detelca/2337731
• Camera2 overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhqGphh6KPE
• Camera Intent thread: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5991319/capture-image-from-camera-and-display-in-activity
• Walkthrough of Camera intent: https://developer.android.com/training/camera/photobasics.html

Planned external libraries

• (Something for talking with Github API: (one of the following))
  • org.eclipse.egit.github.core
  • JCabi (only jar, crashed on simple test) (might find grade dep.)
  • Volley (barebones)
• (Something to take images):
  • Camera1 (haven't looked at yet)
  • Camera2 (very advanced)
  • CameraKit (convenient, but only does preview ??)
  • Camera Intent (but cumbersome to get hold of taken images) <-- but figured it out!
• Gson
• (Some image compression library (??))

Quickest way to add a file:

"PUT https://api.github.com/repos/:user/:repo/contents/:path" with body:

    {
        "message": "my commit message",
        "committer": {
            "name": "tholok97",
            "email": "anemail"
        },
        "content": "{{base64 content}}"
    }

Doing a commit the hard way:

• Get personal access token

• Add personal access token to postman header "Authorization" with contents "token {{the-token}}"

• Make GET request to find sha of latest commit (HEAD): "GET https://api.github.com/repos/:user/:repo/git/refs/heads/master". Store "sha" property of "object" for later (sha-latest-commit)

• Make GET request to find tree of latest commit: "GET https://api.github.com/repos/:user/:repo/git/commits/{{latest-commit-sha}}". Take note of "sha" property of "tree" object (sha-base-tree)

• Create new tree with "POST https://api.github.com/repos/:user/:repo/git/trees" and body:

    {
        "base_tree": "{{sha-base-tree}}",
        "tree": [
            {
                "path": "filename.txt",
                "mode": "100644",
                "type": "blob",
                "contents": "Some content\n"
            }
        ]
    }
  

  Store "sha" property (sha-new-tree)

• Commit tree with "GET https://api.github.com/repos/:user/:repo/git/commits" and body:

    {
        "parents": ["{{sha-latest-commit}}"],
        "tree": "{{sha-new-tree}}",
        "message": "a commit message"
    }
  

  Store "sha" property (sha-new-commit).

• Set new head (?) "POST https://api.github.com/repos/:user/:repo/git/refs/heads/master" with body:

    {
        "sha": "{{sha-new-commit}}"
    }
  

• Done!