Sending over WFi

[Mike Brooks]

Hey guys,

I am new to android development and I am trying to find out how to send files over WiFi. I have failed to find any tutorials on the topic and was hoping you could help or point me in the right direction.

Regards
Mike

[Ulf Dittmer]

What do you mean by "send files" - what protocol do you intend to use? If you're talking about an HTTP file upload, then I think there are versions of Apache HttpClient for Andoid out there.

[Mike Brooks]

Hey what I was planing on doing was using HTTP in a program to send a file to another phone which would use HTTP to receive.

What I'm not sure on is if you can use sockets to send a recive files between androids phones. Or is there a better way to do this.

Regards and Thanks
Mike

[Ulf Dittmer]

Does the receiving phone have a static IP address? It would need to have one in order to be reliably addressable through TCP/IP. But somehow I doubt that most (or any) phones have that.

Maybe you could compose an MMS that contains the file contents? MMS are something that phones know how to send and receive; I foresee a lot less problems that way than if using HTTP.

[Mike Brooks]

Would it be possible to do using bluetooth and if so is there any good tutorials on the topic. I just thought it would better due to the higher speed to send between phones over 802.11.

Thanks
Mike

[Gregg Bolinger]

I haven't dug deep into 2.0 to see what is new, but previously, this wasn't something google provided in the SDK (file transfer over BlueTooth), however, this site looks like it has some promise:

http://www.androlib.com/android.application.it-medieval-blueftp-qAFE.aspx

[Tim Holloway]

Sending files via Bluetooth is commonly done via OBEX, which, alas, Android 1 doesn't support. Google has improved Bluetooth for Android 2.0, but it's unclear as to how extensive the improvements are.

Another alternative would be PAN. Fedora 10 (Linux) automatically adds a bluetooth PAN device to the collection of network devices when it detects Bluetooth hardware (I'm using a dongle). However, I'm not optimistic that my current handset can run tcp/ip via Bluetooth.

When you network two computers (for networking purposes, a phone is a "computer", too), the normal mode of operation is that the network stack selects the interface(s) that it deems most suitable. This can be based on whether a path from one computer to the other is physically available and how "expensive" it is. You don't normally open an interface, you open a connection. So whether the phone opts to go via WiFi, the carrier's own data services, or both can vary. But the point is, since all that is transparent, the app doesn't need to worry about it.