Using Google Authentication - via AccountManager - to access Google services on Android devices

* Attention *      This is a Work in Progress (WiP)      *Attention *

This post will cover the use of AccountManager (available in Android 2.0 and onwards) to access Google Accounts online.

It is a research article I am putting together mainly for my own use but my preliminary research revealed very few postings on the net, so I thought I'd keep it available online, so that it is accessible to more people as well as being a note board for myself.

It is possible to authenticate Google Accounts using HTTP requests but this requires the user to supply the app with both username and password, which is neither comfortable or convenient for the user. Using Google Authentication it is possible to use information already stored in the Android device to authenticate towards Google services without the Application needing access to username or password.

And authentication handled by AccountManager is handled in a generic way regardless of application.

I am performing this research in order to use it in my own Apps, primarily Analytics 4 Android (Free), but  hopefully general application in your instance should be fairly easy. Please feel free to comment.

In this article I will be citing other works. I may/may not have asked for permission to do so, but I am hoping that if You are an author and/or publisher of any said works will treat them as fair use. I will try to provide adequate attribution and reference for any works used. If You feel that I am violating your copyright, please feel free to contact me on janholbo(at) gmail (d ot) com.


References:

1. AccountManager (Android Reference material), http://developer.android.com/reference/android/accounts/AccountManager.html
2. AndroidAccountManager (google-api-java-client), http://code.google.com/p/google-api-java-client/wiki/AndroidAccountManager
3. Authenticating against App Engine from an Android app (Nick's Blog), http://blog.notdot.net/2010/05/Authenticating-against-App-Engine-from-an-Android-app

Links to be researched:

1. Android: Account Manager: Step by Step (Final Concept), http://www.finalconcept.com.au/article/view/android-account-manager-step-by-step-1 & http://www.finalconcept.com.au/article/view/android-account-manager-step-by-step-2
2. Android example source code file (AccountManager.java) (DevDaily.com), http://www.devdaily.com/java/jwarehouse/android/core/java/android/accounts/AccountManager.java.shtml

Other links:

The most beautiful Ubuntu Manual.

Muktware.com has released <a href="http://www.muktware.com/ubuntu-manual/1110">The most beautiful Ubuntu Manual.</a>

It covers the new Ubuntu 11.10 oneiric ocelot and it is targeted towards beginners and looks quite promising. It covers the basic areas and more will be added if interest is shown.

Preview of Google TV Add-on for the Android SDK

Preview of Google TV Add-on for the Android SDK - http://pulse.me/s/1ifb4

Ubuntu Studio 11.04

Having played a bit with debian, I decided to try Ubuntu once more.

And thankfully Ubuntu Studio have decided to stay without unity as the default workbench. So I installed 11.04 i386.

Installation was pretty much event-less except, that the WLAN (Wireless Network card) was not recognized during the installation process. I decided to skip the network setup and installed all the 5 predefined application categories; 2D/3D creation and editing suite, Audio recording and editing suite, LADSPA/LV2/DSSI audio plugins, Tone generation and editing suite, and Video creation and editing suite.

When the installation was done, the WLAN card was recognized and I was prompted to log on to one of the present wireless networks. Thus my screen looks something like this:

Next I ran the update process, as it did not run during installation due to the lack of network coverage. I also added Chromium (Google's web brwoser), and OpenJDK (an Open Source implementation of Java), which I need for Android development.

I also installed LibreOffice and missing UbuntuOne files. And I have forgotten all about MediBuntu, need those as well :-)

Next is downloading and installing the latest Eclipse Helios (3.6), which I also need for Android development as well as the ADT (Android Development Tools) and git for version control.