Sunday 29 December 2013

Andlytics - A Nice Substitute to the Google Play Developers Console

I wanted to talk about this app Andlytics that I have been using since a while now. Andlytics provides stats for your app listed on Play Store in a clean and concise manner. For me it trumps the Google Play Developers Console because of the following:


  • Its an App - Duh.. all said and done the experience of clicking a button and watching data load on a native app is superior to opening a web page on your mobile, zooming in and making sure you click the right link.
  • Features Ratings/Comments for the Day - This is probably the biggest plus for me. I get to see how many ratings/comments I have received on a particular day. This data is impossible to get on the Developer Console unless you manually make note of the ratings and comments everyday.
  • Features Percentages - Andlytics divides stats into majorly 4 parts, comments, downloads, revenue and ratings. All of these feature a percentage feature which is missing in the Google counterpart. Eg, I know what % of my total downloads are active installs and how this % is tracking on a daily basis. Or what % of my total comments are 5 starts, etc.
It also lets you integrate your Admob a/c, which I honestly I do not find very useful. I still prefer going to the Admob html page to view my revenue.

All in all this is a very useful app if you have your app listed on the Play Store. This app cannot replace the Developers Console, because you get a lot more analytics there, but for frequent checking of data on your mobile phone, this app definitely is the best I have found.

You can download Andlytics from the Play Store.

Friday 6 December 2013

Create a Circular Progress Bar in Android

For my current project, BreakFree, I needed a circular Progress bar, and not the spinning kind. A progress bar that behaves like the horizontal one, but is circular. 

A circular one would fit my layout a lot better. I did not find a straight answer on the internet  but I did manage to put one together, so I thought I'd write a TUT for it. In case anyone decides on creating such a Progress Bar.

This is what the final result should look like (Ignore the number in the center):




Lets start with the steps to recreate this view.

1) You will need to create a drawable which defines your progress bar. Here you will give it the shape of a ring. Adjust the inner radius and thickness of the ring as you wish. I have also added a gradient starting from red, moving to yellow and then ending in green. You can play around with these settings.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
<item android:id="@android:id/progress">
    <shape
             android:innerRadiusRatio="3"
             android:shape="ring"
             android:thicknessRatio="7.0"
             android:useLevel="true">
  <gradient
             android:startColor="#fb0000"
             android:endColor="#00FF00"
             android:centerColor="#fbf400"
             android:type="sweep" />   
</shape>
</item>
</layer-list>

2) In your layout xml, create a horizontal Progress bar. And set the progressDrawable to the drawable file created in step 1 (in my case I have named the file in step 1 circular_progress_bar.xml.

<ProgressBar
        android:id="@+id/progressBarToday"
        style="?android:attr/progressBarStyleHorizontal"
        android:layout_width="250dp"
        android:layout_height="273dp"
        android:layout_centerInParent="true"  
        android:indeterminate="false"
        android:max="48"
        android:progress="45"
        android:progressDrawable="@drawable/circular_progress_bar" />

3) Most of our job is done. Now the only problem is that since this is a horizontal progress bar, it is aligned horizontally and not vertically. So basically the start and finish is to the right of the circle and not at the bottom. To counter this I used RotationAnimation to rotate the Progress Bar by 90 degrees. This will rotate the progress bar and the start and finish will be at the bottom of the circle making it look realistic. Since I have not specified a duration the animation will happen as soon as the view is created.


ProgressBar pb = (ProgressBar) view.findViewById(R.id.progressBarToday);

Animation an = new RotateAnimation(0.0f, 90.0f, 250f, 273f);
an.setFillAfter(true);
pb.startAnimation(an);

I hope this helps.

Until next time.

EDIT: Lollipop onwards Android has changed the default value for useLevel from "true" to "false". Hence you now need to add android:useLevel="true" in the shape tag in the drawable.

Sunday 1 December 2013

November Income Report

Publishing my App Download and Income report for the month of November. 

Two updates launched for 'Fuel Buddy'. The major one being that the app now has in-app purchases implemented. I have added a pretty cool feature where the users can email their logs from within the app. And as with other features the email is fully customizable. I have added this an an in-app purchase. The initial sales were as expected. But then towards the end of the month the sales started to dry up. Not sure why.

In any case the numbers are much better than the October report. But still need to be better.

I have not been able to devote the time I would have liked to because I have been quite busy with the development of my third app. It should be launched in December. Will keep you guys posted.

My numbers are below:

November Download and Income report



Fuel Buddy



Downloads in November: 3359
Admob Revenue: $128.47
eCPM: $0.76
Requests:169,911
In-app: 16 Orders, $25






Pingy Pong



Downloads in November: 1247
Admob Revenue: $17.31
eCPM: $0.37
Requests: 48,083