Overview
This guide will walk you through creating an EMDK For Android application that will use some new MX features introduced in EMDK for Android API to perform device configurations. MX represents a suite of Enterprise Features on top of standard, commercially available Android Open Source Project. So this tutorial will focus on configuring Power Key Manager parameters such as Airplane Mode, Touch Panel, Safe Mode and Auto Screen Lock using Power Key Manager feature of Mx.
The PowerKey Manager feature allows your application to control which options appear on the power menu on the device. Out of different available power key parameters, we would control Airplane Mode in this tutorial.
So now we will create a tutorial to disable the "Airplane Mode" option from the Power Key Menu using MX Power Key Manager feature on your Zebra Android device.
Creating The Project
Note: 1. Provide "PowerKeyManagerTutorial" as the project name for this tutorial. 2. This feature requires Zebra device with Android KitKat 4.4.
Start by creating a new Android Studio project.
Adding The Power Key Manager Profile Feature
Click here to see how to add a specific feature to the Profile Manager.
Provide "PowerKeyProfile" as the Profile Name for this tutorial.
Note: You can provide any Profile Name but make sure to access it with the similar name in the Android code.
Now, you can see all these MX features on the left hand side of the Profile Editor window. Select the "Power Key Manager" feature from the list and click "Right Arrow".
Provide some name in the "Name" field (Ex. MyPowerKeyManager). The "Name" field is used to identify each feature, which is required when editing features programmatically. You can also keep the "Name" field empty.
Power Key Manager allows you to configure following options in the Menu Option:
Airplane Mode - Select whether the Airplane Mode option should appear on the Power Key Menu.
Touch Panel - Select whether the Touch Panel option should appear on the Power Key Menu.
Safe Mode - Select whether the Safe Mode option should appear on the Power Key Menu.
Auto Screen Lock Option - Select whether Power button instantly Locks option should appear on Settings UI.
Auto Screen Lock State - Select whether screen lock should automatically be required if the device is powered OFF using the Power Key.
So as discussed, we will disable the "Airplane Mode" option from the Power Key Menu through Profile Manager Wizard using Power Key Manager feature of Mx. By doing so, the user will not be able to access Airplane Mode option unless it is enabled back through Profile Manager. So click on "Airplane Mode Power Key Menu Option" drop-down in the wizard and select "Do not Show Menu Option".
Click Apply to apply the settings we provided
Click Finish and your Power Key profile for disabling Airplane Mode Menu Option is created.
Click "Close".
Note:
Now the "EMDKConfig.xml" is created under "\assets" folder. This file will contain a definition of all of your profiles that you create.You can inspect the EMDKConfig.xml to see it is reflecting the changes made to the parameters via EMDK Profile Manager GUI earlier. However, it is advised that this file not be manually updated and only be controlled via the Profile Manager.
Enabling Android Permissions
Modify the Application's Manifest.xml to use the EMDK library and to set permission for the EMDK.
You must first enable permissions for 'com.symbol.emdk.permission.EMDK':
<uses-permission android:name="com.symbol.emdk.permission.EMDK"/>
Then you must enable the library:
<uses-library android:name="com.symbol.emdk"/>
When done, your manifest.xml should look like:
Adding Some Code
Now we will start to add some code.
First you must add references to the libraries:
import com.symbol.emdk.*; import com.symbol.emdk.EMDKManager.EMDKListener; import android.widget.Toast;
Then you must extend the activity to implement EMDKListener.
public class MainActivity extends Activity implements EMDKListener {
}.. .. .. .. .. .. ... @Override public void onClosed() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } @Override public void onOpened(EMDKManager emdkManager) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub }
We will now create some global variables to hold the profile name as well as instance objects of EMDKManager and ProfileManager with a status variable while applying the profile. Some of the variables are used to hold the name, type and description in case of any errors. These variables would be used throughout the code.
Note: Verify the Profile name in the code with the one created in the Profile Manager. They both should be identical.
// Assign the profile name used in EMDKConfig.xml private String profileName = "PowerKeyProfile"; // Declare a variable to store ProfileManager object private ProfileManager profileManager = null; // Declare a variable to store EMDKManager object private EMDKManager emdkManager = null; // Contains the parm-error name (sub-feature that has error) private String errorName = ""; // Contains the characteristic-error type (Root feature that has error) private String errorType = ""; // contains the error description for parm or characteristic error. private String errorDescription = ""; // contains status of the profile operation private String status = "";
In the onCreate method, we call getEMDKManager so that the EMDK can be initialized and checked to see if it is ready.
//The EMDKManager object will be created and returned in the callback. EMDKResults results = EMDKManager.getEMDKManager(getApplicationContext(), this); //Check the return status of getEMDKManager if (results.statusCode == EMDKResults.STATUS_CODE.SUCCESS) {
} else {// EMDKManager object creation success
}// EMDKManager object creation failed
So far your code should look like:
Now we need to use the
onOpened
method to get a reference to the EMDKManager. The EMDKListener interface will trigger this event when the EMDK is ready to be used. The EMDKListener interface must be implemented in order to get a reference to the EMDKManager APIs. This event will pass the EMDKManager instance and we assign it to the global variableemdkManager
that we created in the previous steps. We then use that instance object to get an instance of ProfileManager and assign it to the global variableprofileManager
. This is how we will interface with the APIs in the rest of the code:Note: Rename the argument of
onOpened
method fromarg0
toemdkManager
if required.// This callback will be issued when the EMDK is ready to use. this.emdkManager = emdkManager; // Get the ProfileManager object to process the profiles profileManager = (ProfileManager) emdkManager .getInstance(EMDKManager.FEATURE_TYPE.PROFILE);
Now that we have a reference to ProfleManager, we use it to install and activate the profile we built earlier using the
processProfile
method. We could have also performed this action at a different time, say when someone pressed a button, but we chose to do it as soon as the EMDK was ready:if (profileManager != null) { String[] modifyData = new String[1];
}// Call processPrfoile with profile name and SET flag to create the profile. The modifyData can be null. EMDKResults results = profileManager.processProfile(profileName, ProfileManager.PROFILE_FLAG.SET, modifyData); if (results.statusCode == EMDKResults.STATUS_CODE.CHECK_XML) { } else { // Show dialog of Failure AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this); builder.setTitle("Failure"); builder.setMessage("Failed to apply profile...") .setPositiveButton("OK", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick (DialogInterface dialog, int id) { } }); AlertDialog alert = builder.create(); alert.show(); }
This
processProfile
method returns the result of applying a particular profile that we set using EMDK Profile Wizard in EMDKResults reference. If the profile is successfully processed, it returns the status asCHECK_XML
and then we go on and parse the response to get further details whether the profile was applied successfully or not. Otherwise we display a Failure message in a dialog.Note: 1. There is a difference between processing a profile successfully and applying a profile successfully.
Note: 2. If the status is other than
CHECK_XML
, we are simply displaying a failure message. You can actually go ahead and check different types of status and display the appropriate message accordingly, which is not in the scope of this sample tutorial.In case of
CHECK_XML
status, We retrieve XML response string from the result usinggetStatusString
method.// Get XML response as a String String statusXMLResponse = results.getStatusString();
Further, we would parse this XML response string using XML Pull Parser in order to get the status and error parameters if any. XML Pull Parser is an interface that defines parsing functionality provided in XMLPULL V1 API (visit this website to learn more about API and its implementations). In the parsing we would be looking for specific status tags (Error Name, Error Type and Error Description) in case of any errors and if found, we would get those values in the respective global variables that we have declared in previous step.
try { // Create instance of XML Pull Parser to parse the response XmlPullParser parser = Xml.newPullParser(); // Provide the string response to the String Reader that reads // for the parser parser.setInput(new StringReader(statusXMLResponse)); // Call method to parse the response parseXML(parser); } catch (XmlPullParserException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
Note: Here we have called the method
parseXML
to parse XML response string. We will declare the method in the next step.Once the response is parsed, we would display the result of applying this profile in a dialog by calling
displayResults
method, which we would declare in coming steps.// Method call to display results in a dialog displayResults();
Your complete
onOpened
method should now look like:You will see few errors as we have not declared the respective methods to parse the response and display result. Lets do it one by one. In this step, we will create a method
parseXML
that uses XML Pull Parser to parse the XML string response and set the status and error parameters if any.In the reponse, we are supposed to capture
name
anddesc
forparm-error
tag,type
anddesc
forcharacteristic-error
tag in case of any errors.// Method to parse the XML response using XML Pull Parser public void parseXML(XmlPullParser myParser) { int event; try { event = myParser.getEventType(); while (event != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT) { String name = myParser.getName(); switch (event) { case XmlPullParser.START_TAG: // Get Status, error name and description in case of // parm-error if (name.equals("parm-error")) { status = "Failure"; errorName = myParser.getAttributeValue(null, "name"); errorDescription = myParser.getAttributeValue(null, "desc");
}// Get Status, error type and description in case of // parm-error } else if (name.equals("characteristic-error")) { status = "Failure"; errorType = myParser.getAttributeValue(null, "type"); errorDescription = myParser.getAttributeValue(null, "desc"); } break; case XmlPullParser.END_TAG: break; } event = myParser.next(); } } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
Your complete
parseXML
method should now look like:You will still see one error as we need to declare
displayResults
method to display the result of profile operation in a dialog. Before displaying the results, we should form the content of the result to be shown first, specifically in case of errors. This could be done by creatingbuildFailureMessage
method.In this method, the error message in case of error is formed using following way:
- Name and description of error if the response contains
parm-error
. - Type and description of error if the response contains
characteristic-error
. - Name, type and description of error if the response contains both
parm-error
andcharacteristic-error
.
The
buildFailureMessage
method would have following code to match the above mentioned criteria.// Method to build failure message that contains name, type and // description of respective error (parm, characteristic or both) public String buildFailureMessage() { String failureMessage = ""; if (!TextUtils.isEmpty(errorName) && !TextUtils.isEmpty(errorType)) failureMessage = errorName + " :" + "\n" + errorType + " :" + "\n" + errorDescription; else if (!TextUtils.isEmpty(errorName)) failureMessage = errorName + " :" + "\n" + errorDescription; else failureMessage = errorType + " :" + "\n" + errorDescription; return failureMessage; }
buildFailureMessage
method should look like:- Name and description of error if the response contains
In this step, we will add
displayResults
method to display the result of profile operation in a dialog. The dialog would display status asSuccess
orFailure
with corresponding message based on the response of profile operation.// Method to display results (Status, Error Name, Error Type, Error // Description) in a // dialog public void displayResults() { // Alert Dialog to display the status of the Profile creation // operation of MX features AlertDialog.Builder alertDialogBuilder = new AlertDialog.Builder( MainActivity.this); if (TextUtils.isEmpty(errorDescription)) { alertDialogBuilder.setTitle("Success"); alertDialogBuilder.setMessage("Profile Successfully Applied..."); } else { // set title alertDialogBuilder.setTitle(status); // call buildFailureMessage() method to set failure message in // dialog alertDialogBuilder.setMessage(buildFailureMessage()); } alertDialogBuilder.setCancelable(false).setPositiveButton("OK", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { } }); // create alert dialog AlertDialog alertDialog = alertDialogBuilder.create(); // show it alertDialog.show(); }
The method
displayResults
should look like:You can see that all the errors are gone.
Now let's override the "onDestroy" method so we can release the EMDKManager resources:
@Override protected void onDestroy() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub super.onDestroy(); //Clean up the objects created by EMDK manager emdkManager.release(); }
Your onDestroy method should now look like this:
That's it!!! We are done with all the coding and configuration part that will let us disable Airplane Mode Power Key Menu Option through Profile Manager Wizard using Power Key Manager feature of Mx.
Running the Application
Connect the device to a USB port (device must have USB debugging enabled).
Note:
Make sure the device is in USB debug.Before running the application, We will see the status of Airplane Mode Menu Option and make sure it is enabled.
Go to device's Settings -> More... and you can see that Airplane Mode Power Key Menu Option is enabled, which means user can edit it.
Run the application.
You can see an Alert Dialog with a success message.
Note: In case of any errors, you will see a Failure status with respective error message in that dialog.
We will now see the status of "Airplane Mode" in the settings. So go to device's Settings -> More... and you would see that "Airplane Mode" has been disabled by MX Admin through Profile Manager Wizard using Power Key Manager.
You can enable this option again through Profile Manager Wizard by applying respective settings.
This is how Power Key Manager lets us configure Airplane Mode Power Key Menu Option on Zebra devices using Profile Wizard.
Important Programming Tips
Perform the following changes in the application's
AndroidManifest.xml
file://Include the permission for EMDK: <uses-permission android:name="com.symbol.emdk.permission.EMDK"/> //Use the EMDK library: :::xml <uses-library android:name="com.symbol.emdk"/>
Use DataWedge v1.7.12 or higher version to test the
ProfileManager.processProfile()
method for DataWedge profiles.
What's Next
Now that you have learned how to disable Airplane Mode Power Key Option using Power Key Manager on your Zebra devices through applications, let us try to understand and implement some of the other new MX features introduced in EMDK for Android V 3.1. So in the next tutorial, we will concentrate on the "SD Card Manager" feature of MX and try to explore this feature by creating a tutorial.