Local WebServer – Apache Tomcat

Pre-requisites: You should have Apache Tomcat installed on your machine, downloadable from http://tomcat.apache.org/download-60.cgi  and you should have eclipse 3.6 on your machine

Configure the webserver to be used within eclipse as follows:

1.       Unzip the download into your local directory

2.       Tell Eclipse about Tomcat

First, start Eclipse and go to the Workbench as shown in the previous section. Then, click on Servers tab at bottom. R-click, New, Server, Apache, Tomcat v6.0, navigate to folder, OK. You should now see "Tomcat v6.0 Server at localhost" listed under the Servers tab at the bottom.

 

3. Run Tomcat.

Click on Servers tab at bottom. R-click on Tomcat v6.0, choose "Start". Open http://localhost/ in a browser: you should see an empty page showing a blank directory listing (but not a 404 error). Eclipse incorrectly fails to copy the welcome pages when it sets up Tomcat, so if you want the friendlier welcome page, go to your-eclipse-workspace\.metadata and search for "ROOT". Copy all of the files from C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.28\webapps\ROOT into the ROOT folder inside your-eclipse-workspace\.metadata\...\ROOT. 

If you fail to copy the ROOT files as mentioned above, http://localhost/ will result in an empty directory listing. It is often mistaken for an error page, but if you look closely you will see that it says "directory listing for /" and is not an error at all. However, if you copy the ROOT files, http://localhost/ will give the nice friendly "Welcome to Tomcat" page.

4.  Make empty project.

a.       File, New, Project, Web, Dynamic Web Project.

b.      Give it a name (e.g., "SampleWebServer").

c.       Accept all other defaults.

5. Make a Welcome.html and place it on the ‘WebContent’ folder of your new Dynamic Web App.

6. Now if you type http://localhost:8080/SampleWebServer/Welcome.html in your browser, you should be able to view the page. 

Android Eclipse link Error - New Project

I set up a new environment on my new laptop with Windows7 and jdk1.6.0_21 version. Did the initial setup with eclipse installation, android SDK installation, installing the ADT plugin on eclipse etc. I then imported all the android projects I had created so far. It worked perfectly fine.

Next I created a simple project without any custom stuff, it failed to create with a link error as shown in the image below:

After much trial and error, setting up everything afresh, changing or creating a new workspace, nothing seemed to work. I noticed that the Android package was not visible in the Java build path that you get to see in the project properties. So, finally I found a manual workaround to overcome this problem if you mandatorily want to continue working in the same workspace

Solution: Same workspace:

The manual resolution I found is to make a classpath entry in the .classpath file outside the eclipse environment.

The .classpath file may have such an entry before you edit it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<classpath>

     <classpathentry kind="src" path="src"/>

     <classpathentry kind="src" path="gen"/>

     <classpathentry kind="output" path="bin"/>

</classpath>

So add an entry for the android framework to be included as shown below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<classpath>

     <classpathentry kind="src" path="src"/>

     <classpathentry kind="src" path="gen"/>

     <classpathentry kind="con" path="com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.ANDROID_FRAMEWORK"/>

     <classpathentry kind="output" path="bin"/>

</classpath>

What actually corrupted my workspace, i have not yet figured out. However, while searching on the web for all possible solutions, I came across the announcement on the eclipse forums that Eclipse 3.3 to 3.6 on windows platform is not stable with the JDK version -  jdk1.6.0_21. Hence we need to either roll back to patch 20 or upgrade to 22. I have upgraded and see that eclipse is far more stable now.

Please see this link for more details on the windows and jdk problem mentioned above:

http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=msg&th=171988&start=0&

Solution: Different or new workspace:

Just upgrade your JDK to jdk1.6.0_22 and point eclipse to use this as the default JDK. Create a new workspace and you are done. It fixes the problem.

Hope this helps many not to waste time on searching a solution that is not to do with the way you are coding but with the environment set up itself. I had to spend quite a bit of my precious time before figuring this out. 

Basic steps for upgrading source code from SDK 1.5 to 2.1 using Eclipse IDE

This is a step by step guide to upgrade one’s source code that was developed for an earlier version of android SDK, as is to work on a new version of SDK installed on your development environment



Pre-requisites:
1. You are using Eclipse IDE - Ganymede
2. You have installed SDK 2.1 on your machine
3. You have upgraded ADT to 0.96 on Eclipse IDE
4. You have pointed the Eclipse IDE to the new SDK 2.1
5. You have changed the default JDK compiler version on Eclipse to 1.6
6. You have created an Android Virtual Device (AVD) that uses the SDK 2.1 / Google API


NOTE: Upgrading SDK and Eclipse installations itself is provided in detail at http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html & http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html


For each project that you have in your eclipse workspace that was written for the earlier version of SDK, you need to do the following for basic upgrade (this does not include the upgrade of APIs that have be deprecated):

Step-by-step guide
1. Right click the project and go to Project Properties -> Android
2. You wil see tha right pane showing the ‘Project Build Target’
3. In this pane you will see either or both: ‘Android 2.1’ & ‘Google APIs’ depending on what you chose to install when upgrading your ADT to 0.96
4. Select Google ‘Android 2.1’ or ‘Google API” whichever is required by your earlier project (note you might have used only Android 1.5 for most projects. You would need Google API only for those projects that use google maps)
5. Then, go to the ‘Project’ menu and click on ‘clean’. Note, this is an optional step. You may have to do this if you get the error ‘Conversion to Dalvik format failed with error 1’.
6. Then, build the project by going to ‘Project’ -> ‘build’
7. You are done. You can now run the earlier Android application using the new SDK 2.1

Eclipse Set up and New Android Project

The first steps of configuring Eclipse to create android applications and the steps involved in creating a first android project are very well described in this blog at the screencast site. Hence I am not repeating the same here.