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**PvtCupcakes** · 17th May 2011

So since I'm a lazy bastard about checking for sales on Steam I made an Android App to do it for me.

It's just something I whipped up in a couple of hours.

It currently force closes if you're not connected to the Internet because testing is for scrubs. But I'll fix that later.
I could eventually add crap like Weekend Deals and stuff. But it's a pain in the ass because I'm using screen scraping because Steam doesn't have an API at all.

QR Code:

Or just search for my username, jcnix, on the Market to find the app.
Everything is open source and available here:
https://github.com/jcnix/steamdeals

Have fun and stuff.

Armyis1337 · 17th May 2011

On behalf of the Android community, I thank you.

PS. Only 3 more months 'til I get my Android device! :woop:

FalcoLombardi · 17th May 2011

Too bad I don't have a phone

**ief014** · 17th May 2011

I usually find myself looking for sales on steam when I'm working... this could be useful. It has my download

**nicatronTg** · 17th May 2011

Seems like this should be a widget *hint*.

**PvtCupcakes** · 17th May 2011

nicatronTg posted:

Seems like this should be a widget *hint*.

That crossed my mind, but I don't know how to do that yet.
That's one of those things I'll have to learn.

**Pridit** · 17th May 2011

Does it give us a notification when a new sale starts?

**PvtCupcakes** · 18th May 2011

Just updated it to 1.0.1 tonight. It won't crash if there is no connection and it will show some text telling you to get connected to the Internet.

I'll add a Refresh button tomorrow because if you run the app without being connected you have to restart it to get the text to update.

**NPerez** · 18th May 2011

Made it into a widget
http://www.mediafire.com/?wv46542ffu4cfe1

But it needs a UI design. right now it's just text on the desktop & looks like crap

New to android development & I've never made a widget before, so don't be surprised if I screwed anything up.. working here, though

edit: By the way, pre-compiled version is in the bin folder (SteamDeals-debug.apk) & I'm not putting it on the market, but anyone else can do whatever they want with it (license permitting)

**PvtCupcakes** · 18th May 2011

NPerez posted:

Made it into a widget

Awesome!

edit: By the way, pre-compiled version is in the bin folder (SteamDeals-debug.apk) & I'm not putting it on the market, but anyone else can do whatever they want with it (license permitting)

The license I used was GPLv3, so anyone can do whatever they want as long as they provide the source including the changes they made.

I'll merge your changes into my app and add a simple GUI.
Thanks. :)

**Robber** · 18th May 2011

Are you going to make it show a notification whenever a new deal starts? It should be pretty easy using the AlarmManager class since every deal starts at the same time (I think).

**Djessey** · 19th May 2011

Someone make a GUI for it.

**jaybuz** · 19th May 2011

?

Edited:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/386727/Web-A...eal-Widget.psd

**florian** · 19th May 2011

jaybuz posted:

?

Edited:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/386727/Web-A...eal-Widget.psd

Use a larger Steam icon (64x64 maybe?) and use two lines of text.

**jaybuz** · 19th May 2011

florian posted:

Use a larger Steam icon (64x64 maybe?) and use two lines of text.

Wouldn't it be better just to marque the text.

**NPerez** · 19th May 2011

jaybuz posted:

Wouldn't it be better just to marque the text.

First of all, nice design. It's basically what I had in mind - professional looking Steam logo on a dark, rounded body.

As for the size, I think it could go bigger (mainly wider). It's going to use up a certain amount of desktop tiles anyway, and I'd imagine most people would give it the full width of their desktop (vertical space is more limited, but even one vertical tile still leaves room for a bigger logo, I think).

If Pvt wants to do the view coding, I'll leave it alone (I've got a lot of other projects that I'm behind on anyway), but I love where this is going

**PvtCupcakes** · 20th May 2011

I added NPerez's widget and just gave it a black background.

I also added a Refresh button to the main app, but I'm trying to add one to the widget as well but the Android API is retarded as fuck and I don't know how to hook up it's onClick().

The refresh button is important because you can't refresh the widget unless you remove it and re add it. I don't have 3g on my phone and I keep wifi-off most of the time, so having a widget that tells me I'm not connected to the internet with no option to refresh it is kind of useless to me.

Maybe I should screw around with the Update Interval and set it to like 5 minutes.

**NPerez** · 20th May 2011

PvtCupcakes posted:

I added NPerez's widget and just gave it a black background.

I also added a Refresh button to the main app, but I'm trying to add one to the widget as well but the Android API is retarded as fuck and I don't know how to hook up it's onClick().

The refresh button is important because you can't refresh the widget unless you remove it and re add it. I don't have 3g on my phone and I keep wifi-off most of the time, so having a widget that tells me I'm not connected to the internet with no option to refresh it is kind of useless to me.

Maybe I should screw around with the Update Interval and set it to like 5 minutes.

I'm not 100% certain on this, but I believe I read that a widget update will wake the phone from sleep mode.. if this is the case, then a 5-minute update interval would be a disastrous battery-killer, so I would not recommend it. I'll see if I can find out how to refresh the widget. I know the API is much more limited with widgets, so it's probably a bit tricky.

**Catdaemon** · 20th May 2011

NPerez posted:

I'm not 100% certain on this, but I believe I read that a widget update will wake the phone from sleep mode.. if this is the case, then a 5-minute update interval would be a disastrous battery-killer, so I would not recommend it. I'll see if I can find out how to refresh the widget. I know the API is much more limited with widgets, so it's probably a bit tricky.

I don't think widgets can update while the phone is asleep. Or at least none of the ones I use do. 5 minutes is ridiculous though, try 6-12 hours.

**NPerez** · 20th May 2011

Catdaemon posted:

I don't think widgets can update while the phone is asleep. Or at least none of the ones I use do. 5 minutes is ridiculous though, try 6-12 hours.

I've never experienced my phone waking up to perform a widget update either, but this is from the AppWidget docs:

Note: If the device is asleep when it is time for an update (as defined by updatePeriodMillis), then the device will wake up in order to perform the update. If you don't update more than once per hour, this probably won't cause significant problems for the battery life. If, however, you need to update more frequently and/or you do not need to update while the device is asleep, then you can instead perform updates based on an alarm that will not wake the device. To do so, set an alarm with an Intent that your AppWidgetProvider receives, using the AlarmManager. Set the alarm type to either ELAPSED_REALTIME or RTC, which will only deliver the alarm when the device is awake. Then set updatePeriodMillis to zero ("0").

My guess is that most widget developers just don't use updatePeriodMillis - it seems to be a poor choice in most cases compared to the flexibility of alarms

**jaybuz** · 20th May 2011

Like this?

Edited:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/386727/Web-A...l-WidgetV2.psd

**NPerez** · 20th May 2011

I think that looks awesome.

I found this today: http://developer.android.com/guide/p...et_design.html

It's incredibly useful for both designers & UI coders, and will give you a better idea of how much space you have to work with (but I think the current size is good).

Work is crazy right now, but if nobody else has implemented a UI by the time I have some free time, I'll give it a shot

**jaybuz** · 20th May 2011

Would it have to take up this much space though?

**NPerez** · 20th May 2011

jaybuz posted:

Would it have to take up this much space though?

Yes. It's tile-based, so that amount of space at minimum would be reserved for it (at least vertically. horizontally, it can go as low as 1 tile. 1x1 is about the size of a shortcut icon) .. there's nothing wrong with making the actual visible layout smaller, though

**jaybuz** · 20th May 2011

I adjusted the size a bit to make it fit with the widget BG images.

Looks pretty good now.

**ShaRose** · 21st May 2011

At least about the update time: If he's parsing the page, it includes the time the next game will be out.

Edited:

Just look for this.

Code:

InitDailyDealTimer( $('dailydeal_timer'), 1305997380 );

**jaybuz** · 21st May 2011

Wouldn't it always be at the same time anyway. So just do [timeOfDay] + 1 day.

And if he's not using it, he should use the news rss feed and then just search for Daily Deal.

http://store.steampowered.com/feeds/news.xml

**ShaRose** · 21st May 2011

jaybuz posted:

Wouldn't it always be at the same time anyway. So just do [timeOfDay] + 1 day.

And if he's not using it, he should use the news rss feed and then just search for Daily Deal.

http://store.steampowered.com/feeds/news.xml

No, it's the time the deal ends. Ever notice how over the daily deal on the steam website it shows a countdown?

**PvtCupcakes** · 21st May 2011

ShaRose posted:

No, it's the time the deal ends. Ever notice how over the daily deal on the steam website it shows a countdown?

Its still always at the same time everyday. It's 10:00 am Pacific (or GMT-7). I could do the calculation in GMT time so I wouldn't have to do timezones and crap.