Getting Started with Android

To get started with Mobile Services for Android, visit the Windows Azure Management Portaland then click Create —> Compute —> Mobile Service —> Create.

After you’ve created your Mobile Service, visit the Quickstart and select the “Android” tab.  You’ll have the option to either create a new app or connect a backend hosted in Windows Azure to an existing Android app.

When you choose to create a new Android app, you’ll be able to download the todo starter project and see how changes you make in the emulator are reflected in a table in your Windows Azure SQL database.

Adding Push Notifications

Push notifications are a critical element of an engaging mobile app, yet configuring push can also be the most frustrating part of development.  Mobile Services makes it easy to enrich your app though push notifications without the headache.

Once you register for Google Cloud Messaging using Google’s APIs Console and obtain your API key, simply paste that key on the Mobile Services ‘Push’ tab:

After you’ve entered your API key, you can then send a notification from any server script under the ‘Data’ tab using the following code:

push.gcm.send(registrationId, ‘A new Mobile Services task’, {
success: function(response) {
console.log(‘Push notification sent: ‘, response);
},
error: function(error) {
console.log(‘Error sending push notification: ‘, error);
}
});

Once that push notification is triggered, you’ll see it appear on screen.

Visit the mobile dev center for the full tutorials that cover:

• Completing the Quickstart todo app
• Getting started with data
• Authenticating users
• Sending push notifications

After you get up to speed with Android on Mobile Services, I encourage you to take a look at two additional Android samples—TicTacToe Leaderboard and Feedback.