What is evaHI?

evaHI is Android application template which allow you to quickly build custom Android app viewer for your mobile web application.

Why do I need this?

Of course, users can just open your web application via mobile web browser.

But evaHI provides additional features:

• Your web-app will look as cool as any native Android app and your custom viewer app can be added to Google Play Store

• You can hard-code connection parameters of your web-app or users can quickly configure it with QR codes

  

• The app can automatically pass basic authentication forms

• The app provides native navigation menu with custom icons and menu labels

• Icons, menu labels and target URLs can be changed dynamically on your web-app server so users don't need to download application updates again and again

• The app can switch URLs depending is current device mode portrait or landscape

Looks cool. How can I build my own app?

Customize app source:

• Download evaHI source (git clone https://github.com/alttch/evaHI)
• Edit prepare.ini file
• Run ./prepare -D <your_app_dir>
• Build your app with Android Studio or other Android build tool

How can I customize launcher icons?

You may either place own icons to <your_app_dir>/app/src/main/res or use --icon and --icon-round (both must be specified) options for prepare script.

Create configuration file on your web server

• Create .evahi directory in your web server http root

• Put there the following configuration file. The file should be named config.yml, config.yaml or config.json (if JSON format is used)

serial: 1
index: /index.html
index_landscape: /landscape.html
home_icon: h.jpg
menu:
- {icon: pages/page1.png, name: Page 1, url: /page1.html}
- {icon: pages/contacts.png, name: Contacts, url: /contacts.html}

All icons should be placed in /.evahi/icons/ dir and have relative paths in app configuration.

The app caches configuration settings and icons, but reloads them if serial field is increased.

Configuration QR codes

User can scan QR codes with settings to quickly configure the app. QR code format is:

scheme:https|address:yourserver.com|port:443|user:test|password:123

Fields user and password are optional.

Authentication

evaHI sends username/password only if basic authentication is set up. However, your web application may detect evaHI client (checking HTTP User-Agent = 'evaHI ...' header) and ask it to provide authentication credentials returning:

HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="?"

The client will repeat HTTP request with authentication headers included.

Any examples?

Our EVA ICS Control Center Android app is fully evaHI-based.

source: https://github.com/alttch/evacc/ app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.altertech.evacc