AIR 3.5 Mobile project device ID

Question

I am wondering if someone knows the best method for storing data in a global DB against a mobile device (iOS and Android)?

I am building an app that writes/retrieves

Answer 1

There are three options as I see it:

1. User

You can create a typical username + password user scheme and use this to verify the user. A possible advantage of this method would be that the user can log in from any of their devices (for instance, under your method a user using the app from their iPhone and iPad would have two different views - which you may not want). Of course, this means forcing every user of the app to register within your system, which is not ideal.

2. App Install

You can uniquely identify an app install by having your app generate a UUID the first time that the app is run (you can use an AS3 helper library to generate the UUID). You can store this UUID locally and send it along with every request the app makes. The downside to this approach is that it doesn't uniquely identify the device - only a specific app install. For instance, if the user deletes the app and then reinstalls it at a later point, it will now count as a new unique device, even though the user is on the same device.

3. Device

AIR does not have a built-in way of reading device identifying info. However, you can retrieve device info through AIR Native Extensions, for example this one can get the MAC address and some other things. There are privacy concerns and other issues involved in reading and storing device info such as these, so you are probably best served trying to implement the OpenUDID project as an AIR Native Extension, since they have already dealt with all such issues. Unfortunately, I have never looked too far into developing ANE's so I am not sure how complicated or feasible it will be to turn OpenUDID into an ANE.

Summary: I would recommend the app install method due to the ease of implementation. If you really need the unique device and are worried about the multiple app installs case, you will have to work out how to use native extensions to get the info you need. If you decide that you would rather identify by user rather than device, use the user method.

Answer 2

As of now I don't think its possible to get the hardware devices guid using air mobile. However you do have a couple of options.

If the MAC address is good enough for you there is an ANE that will let you grab it on both iOS and Android.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/native-extensions-for-air/extensions/networkinfo.html

and an example of how to use it

http://cookbooks.adobe.com/post_Getting_NetworkInfo_from_both_Android_and_iOS-19473.html

You could also write your own ANE, it should be pretty simple to wrap both Android and iOS implementations.

Objective-c: [[UIDevice currentDevice] uniqueIdentifier]

Android: TelephonyManager.getDeviceId()

If your app requires any kind of user account or login the best option would be to store this setting in the remote db.