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mFabrik Blog is about mobile and web software development, open source and Linux. We tell exciting tales where business, technology, web and mobile convergence.

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QuasselDroid: Quassel for Android – cross-platform mobile IRC client

Posted on March 28, 2011

IRC (Internet Relay Chat, the description of IRC) is a chat protocol used by many open source and hacktivism projects for real-time discussion and support chat. I myself participate to Python and Plone discussion and now recently to Android chat on Freenode and IRCNet networks.

Quassel is a distributed IRC client. Distributed in the sense that it keeps your chat sessions on the server side: even if you get disconnected you won’t lose any chat messages. This is a nice feature for people who need to be constantly in touch with the communities.  For IRC veterans, Quassel is like the good ol’ screen + irssi combo, but with an user interface which does not require a degree in Perl scripting. This is a short tutorial for getting or building  the mobile version of Quassel, Quasseldroid for Android.

Everyone how has tried it knows that irssi or any terminal software suits very badly for mobile screens. QuasselDroid fixes this: it provides an user interface which is suitable even for touch screens. Also, with Quassel core on the server side, you do not need to worry about disconnections which often happen with mobile networks, With desktop Quassel and mobile QuasselDroid you should be able to seamlessly leave your desktop, go traveling whilst continuing the on-going dispute of the next most important internet thing with your on-line friends and foes.

This tutorial show how to get binary or source from Github and compile the project for your phone. Note that QuasselDroid is still in very early developing phase and the main purpose of this is to drive more development into QuasselDroid. Do not expect it to be ready for your specific use cases yet! Also, these instructions are tested only on Samsung Galaxy S with Android 2.2.

Quassel is originally based on Qt C++ libraries and uses Qt based serialization protocol to communicate between the server (your IRC session) and client (your phone). QuasselDroid implements Qt protocol from scratch in Java and does not use any Qt libraries on Android. There also existed a prior version which required a proxy server, but this has been fixed for now.

Getting and building QuasselDroid

Before proceeding you need

  • A server which allows you to run a background process with more than hundred megabytes of memory usage
  • Quassel core installed on the server side (this maintains your IRC session). Core itself comes with decent command-line help. If you get stuck ask help on #quassel channel @ freenode IRC network.
  • Preferable Quassal desktop client (Windows, OSX, Linux) for ircing from the desktop

Downloading pre-built binary

Note: there exists a pre-built Android binaries for non-Android hackers. Download QuasselDroid Android binary from here. You still need to set-up the server side core yourself.

Prerequisites for building and running QuasselDroid

This is the recommend method of installing QuasselDroid if you are looking for helping in QuasselDroid development. It is not that difficult, as Android tools are quite friendly for newcomers.

Compiling and running

Install Android SDK, Eclipse  Android plug-ins for Eclipse. Note this is several hundreds of megabytes worth of software, so be patient and entertain yourself with some cool music whilst downloading.

Install Quassel client, Quassel core and get yourself familiar with the noveau IRC experience.

Get code from Github:

git clone https://github.com/sandsmark/QuasselDroid

Open project in Eclipse. Start Eclipse, choose or create any empty directory as workspace of just choose the default one. Then choose File -> Import -> General -> Existing projects into Workspace. In Select Root Directory you need to choose a directory above Github checkout directory. Select QuasselDroid in Projects list (which is now refreshed after selecting root directory).

In this point I had to select the project, choose Project -> Clean from Eclipse menu (there were some errors popping up in Eclipse internal console).

Right click Project -> choose Run as -> Android application.

  • If your phone is connected via USB Eclipse will automatically build and install APK directly to your phone
  • If you do not have phone connected QuasselDroid will start in the emulator

Installing QuasselDroid

Creating a core entry

When QuasselDroid is run for the first time. press Android Menu key on the start-up screen(this was little hard to discover) and choose Manage cores. Now you need to configure quassel core for the server – for this process you should already have experience with Quassel desktop client.

SSL

Also, you might need to disable SSL support if you are running a core without SSL compiled in. Again, press Android Menu key, choose Preferences and uncheck SSL.

Debugging issues

When you run an issue and you can repeat it reliably with necessary log traces available, file a bug report on Github project page.

Android has a logging tool called LogCat, showing log output from emulator or device. You will see Android log output in Eclipse in LogCat view when

  • Emulator is running
  • A device is connected via USB, debug mode enabled (from system Settings menu)

Use Eclipse Window -> Show -> Debug perspective to see LogCat window if it’s hidden.

If you launch the application in Eclipse using Debug run (the bug icon) Eclipse will stop on the line where an uncaught Java exception is thrown. This is very useful for debugging crashing bugs (Android pops up force close dialog).

On the server side, you can see quasselcore output in stdout and see how the core reacts to client connection attempts.

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Taking a screenshot on Samsung Galaxy S and other Samsung Android devices

Posted on February 27, 2011

Samsung Galaxy S comes with a internal screenshot capturing feature similar to iPhone. This is not the same as the infamous stock Android screenshot facility which forces you to turn on USB debugging, downloading Android SDK, etc. Captured screenshots can be found from Gallery in their own category ScreenCapture.

To take a screenshot

  • Hold Back touch key
  • Double press Home key

This feature is probably available on other Samsung Android devices, like Samsung Wildfire and Samsung Galaxy Tab.

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Qt on Android

Posted on February 26, 2011

I gave the Qt on Android project a try and was happily surprised how easy it was to get everything set up and get my QML Physics project running on Android phone without too much fuss. There was just one issue. Now I can continue the project again, and this time I even have proper device to work with ;)

Actually this is even better than before. While developing for Symbian or Meego, I always had a cloud of uncertainty hanging over my head. My experience with Symbian had taught me to be very skeptical about the platform and Meego devices weren’t out yet(and still aren’t ). And as everybody knows, those fears got some justification by Nokia. Maybe Meego will prevail, but I’m pretty sure Android is not going to disappear very soon.

Native mobile application development with Plone, WordPress and Python

Posted on February 9, 2011

We have just released two mobile applications backed by Plone, WordPress and Python middleware code. In this blog post I’ll tell some background information what we have learnt with mobile applicationand Python development.

mFabrik News – download now for iPhone and Android

Why create a mobile application?

The first question is why one rather create a mobile application when the same task can be accomplished with a mobile site? Most people even prefer mobile sites over applications. From a pure engineering viewpoint, mobile applications are usually just glorified RSS readers that embed Webkit and add some native user interface bling bling over it. With an app, you are limiting your target audience, because an application is limited to one platform. Maintaining application(s) and application developers is more expensive compared to a mobile site which few (cheap) PHP junkies can throw together.

But is not always technology or price which matters. Mobile applications have prestige value – having or showing success, rank, wealth, etc. If you have a high quality brand, you probably want to have a mobile application too. When you see the brand logo swinging forth and back in an iPhone application with smooth animation running 60 frames per second, you see that it is a proper placement for the brand logo. The output is more luxury, more carefully planned, and does not look like it was thrown together by few cheap web developers.

There are even rationale reason for going after applications. First, you are in a business of making money. It is a lot of easier when the platform itself is offering you a payment solution without a monthly fees (iTunes payment). Other good reason is that there exists interaction between the application and your content beyond the browser window.  You can push messages or do things even if the user is not on your site (see more information about the push solution we implemented below).

Mobile application development and Python

As most of this post readers are probably fellow Python developers, here are some thoughts specifically aimed for them. Python itself is not a very good alternative what comes to mobile application development. Though, the application itself may not contain Python code, Python still shines on the backend side of the things. For example, we’ll hope to publish an example application using Google App Engine in the near future.

The only future proof platform where Python is 1st class citizen for building applications, is Nokia’s Meego with its Pyside and Qt bindings. Unfortunately Meego doesn’t have any shipped handsets and looks like it never will.

Android has script bindings, but they are not good enough for real application development, as interaction with the native platform happens over TCP/IP sockets. However, Android has seen some recent exciting development from PyPy project, possibly enabling native Android development for Python in the future.

iOS with Python could be a go, now when Apple has lift ban on interpreted languages. I haven’t heard anybody doing it yet, though. CTypes had some problems long time ago regarding run-time generated code for Python bindings.

Python has also a port for Series 60 (Symbian) – don’t go there if you are not prototyping. It is good platform for students for  playing around, but unfortunately it has never been considered as serious development environment by the handset manufacturer. You have tons of headaches if you actually want to release a product version of your application.  Nokia N900, soon supported. is better prototyping platform for Python than Series 60 as you get full Debian userland.

Mobile application development and wrappers

There exist various wrapper technologies which help you to wrap your HTML5 application to a native application shell. With simplistic APIs provided through Javascript bindings, you can access a limited subset of native platform APIs. Wrapper technologies are mostly aimed for web developers, who do not have any experience on application development and they might want to skip the learn experience of native development.

Wrapper technologies do their job and produce decent apps. But if you are a Python developer I recommend you skip the wrapper step and build your own native user interface and embed Webkit yourself. Designing an user interface is much is easier with Apple’s Interface Builder or Google’s  Android tools than with half-baked Javascript bindings. The fact that you are actually able to insert a real breakpoint into your code is itself worth of skipping wrappers. If you already are a Python developer you already know at least one real programming language and mastering Objective-C or Java should be an easy task for you.

Webkit itself has bugs. You will regularly hit obscrure bugs when the amount of  Javascript and CSS code grows. In the worst cases Webkit just dies under your application without a way to debug the problem – sometimes without a workaround available for the problem. This means dead end for your lovely application. You don’t want to end up to this situation. So, just to have more low level control, using native tools is good.

mFabrik News application

mFabrik News mobile application allows you to follow the latest news of mobile and web development, produced by our hacking team. The applications source the news from our Plone based web site and WordPress blog (which you are currently reading). It uses special RSS streams prepared with our Web and Mobile multichannel publishing solution: news images are optimized for mobile device screens using a handset database (Wurfl) and some other HTML preproessing is done to make the posts look better in embedded WebKit. Processing is done using mobile.sniffer and mobile.htmlprocessing Python packages which are generic Python packages and should be usable in various environments, including App Engine.

iOS mFabrik News application has push notification support. Android doesn’t yet implement push solution, but it is coming for Android 2.2 handsets.  Please see the earlier blog post how we use Apple Push Notifications with Python.

Download, give the apps a spin and report any feedback! (direct links at the beginning of the post)

We may or may not release the source code of the applications, depending if anybody thinks they actually would find it useful.

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