edx-app-android: A Java repository from Olddays

This is the source code for the edX mobile Android app. It is changing rapidly and its structure should not be relied upon. See http://code.edx.org for other parts of the edX code base.

It requires the "Dogwood" release of open edX or newer. See https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/display/COMM/Open+edX+Releases for more information.

License

This software is licensed under version 2 of the Apache License unless otherwise noted. Please see LICENSE.txt for details.

Building

This project is meant to be built using Android Studio. It can also be built from the gradle command line.

Check out the source code:

git clone https://github.com/edx/edx-app-android

Open Android Studio and choose Open an Existing Android Studio Project
Choose edx-app-android.
Click the Run button.

Configuration

The edX mobile Android app is designed to connect to an Open edX instance. You must configure the app with the correct server address and supply appropriate OAuth credentials. We use a configuration file mechanism similar to that of the Open edX platform. This mechanism is also used to make other values available to the app at runtime and store secret keys for third party services.

There is a default configuration that points to an edX devstack instance running on localhost. See the default_config directory. For the default configuration to work, you must add OAuth credentials specific to your installation.

Setup

To use a custom configuration in place of the default configuration, you will need to complete these tasks:

Create your own configuration directory somewhere else on the file system. For example, create my_config as a sibling of the edx-app-android repository.
Create an edx.properties file inside the VideoLocker directory of edx-app-android. In this edx.properties file, set the edx.dir property to the path to your configuration directory relative to the VideoLocker directory. For example, if I stored my configuration side by side with the edx-app-android repository at my_config` then I'd have the following edx.properties:

edx.dir = '../../my_config'

3. In the configuration directory that you added in step 1, create another edx.properties file. This properties file contains a list of filenames. The files should be in YAML format and are for storing specific keys. These files are specified relative to the configuration directory. Keys in files earlier in the list will be overridden by keys from files later in the list. For example, if I had two files, one shared between ios and android called shared.yaml and one with Android specific keys called android.yaml, I would have the following edx.properties:

edx.android {
    configFiles = ['shared.yaml', 'android.yaml']
}

The full set of known keys can be found in the org/edx/mobile/util/Config.java file or see additional documentation.

Additional Customization

Right now this code is constructed specifically to build the edx.org app. We're working on making it easier for Open edX installations to apply customizations and select third party services without modifying the repository itself. Until that work is complete, you will need to modify or replace files within your fork of the repo.

To remove the edX branding you will need to replace the edx_logo files in standard locations under res/drawables. These come in a number of resolutions. See Google's documentation for more information on different app icon sizes. Additionally, you will need to replace the edx-map images used in the login screen.

If you need to make more in depth UI changes, most of the user interface is specified in standard Android XML files, editable from within Android Studio.

As mentioned, the app relies on the presence of several third party services: Facebook, NewRelic, Google+, SegmentIO, and Crashlytics. You must remove references to each of these services you choose not to use. You can comment out the lines that mention these services. We're working to make those dependencies optional.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I see an error that mentions "Unsupported major.minor version 51.0". How do I fix this?

A: Our build system requires Java 7 or later. If you see this error, install Java 7 or later.