Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

Networking Basics

You are going to have one class handle the networking in PhotoGallery. Create a new Java class. Since you will be connecting to Flickr, name this class FlickrFetchr.

FlickrFetchr will start off small with only two methods: getUrlBytes(String) and getUrl(String). The getUrlBytes(String) method fetches raw data from a URL and returns it as an array of bytes. The getUrl(String) method converts the result from getUrlBytes(String) to a String.

In FlickrFetchr.java, add implementations for getUrlBytes(String) and getUrl(String) (Listing 26.3).

Listing 26.3  Basic networking code (FlickrFetchr.java)

package com.bignerdranch.android.photogallery;

...

public class FlickrFetchr {
    byte[] getUrlBytes(String urlSpec) throws IOException ...