Android export browser history as JSON

Question

I wrote a simple android app to export the browsers history as JSON, but I do not know if the resulting JSON is a format that the user will easily be able to parse and use.

Is there any way that i could improve the resulting format? Will it be easy for the user to use?

I have the title of the page first, should I have the URL first instead?

The URL contains escape characters, but this does not work in all browsers, For example Chrome can reformat the url but Safari can't. Is there a way to fix this so the URL will work in all browsers?

Here is the code for the app.

public class MainActivity extends Activity {
 /** Called when the activity is first created. */
 @Override
 public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
 super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
 setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
 getBrowserHist();
 }
 public void getBrowserHist() {
 try {
 JSONObject parent = new JSONObject();
 String[] proj = new String[] { Browser.BookmarkColumns.TITLE,
 Browser.BookmarkColumns.URL, Browser.BookmarkColumns.DATE,
 Browser.BookmarkColumns.VISITS };
 String sel = Browser.BookmarkColumns.BOOKMARK + " = 0";
 Cursor mCur = getContentResolver().query(Browser.BOOKMARKS_URI,
 proj, sel, null, null);
 mCur.moveToFirst();
 if (mCur.moveToFirst() && mCur.getCount() > 0) {
 boolean cont = true;
 while (mCur.isAfterLast() == false && cont) {
 JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject();
 String title = mCur.getString(mCur
 .getColumnIndex(Browser.BookmarkColumns.TITLE));
 String url = mCur.getString(mCur
 .getColumnIndex(Browser.BookmarkColumns.URL));
 String date = mCur.getString(mCur
 .getColumnIndex(Browser.BookmarkColumns.DATE));
 String visits = mCur.getString(mCur
 .getColumnIndex(Browser.BookmarkColumns.VISITS));
 jsonObject.put("TITLE", title);
 jsonObject.put("URL", url);
 jsonObject.put("DATE", date);
 jsonObject.put("VISITS", visits);
 parent.put(title, jsonObject);
 mCur.moveToNext();
 }
 EditText output = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.outputArea);
 output.setText(parent.toString(4));
 }
 } catch (JSONException e) {
 e.printStackTrace();
 }
 Button copy = (Button) findViewById(R.id.copy);
 copy.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
 @TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB)
 @Override
 public void onClick(View v) {
 EditText output = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.outputArea);
 String data = output.getText().toString();
 ClipboardManager clipboard = (ClipboardManager) getSystemService(CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
 ClipData clip = ClipData.newPlainText("label", data);
 clipboard.setPrimaryClip(clip);
 }
 });
 Button share = (Button) findViewById(R.id.share);
 share.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
 @Override
 public void onClick(View v) {
 EditText output = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.outputArea);
 String data = output.getText().toString();
 Intent sendIntent = new Intent();
 sendIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
 sendIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, data);
 sendIntent.setType("text/plain");
 startActivity(sendIntent);
 }
 });
 }
}

Here is a sample of the resulting JSON.

{
 "Academia Stack Exchange": {
 "DATE": "1388375986375",
 "URL": "http:\/\/academia.stackexchange.com\/",
 "VISITS": "1",
 "TITLE": "Academia Stack Exchange"
 },
 "ProgrammableWeb: Subscribe": {
 "DATE": "1388307236378",
 "URL": "http:\/\/www.programmableweb.com\/pwtsubscribe",
 "VISITS": "1",
 "TITLE": "ProgrammableWeb: Subscribe"
 },
 "Bitcoin Block Explorer - Blockchain.info": {
 "DATE": "1388306500160",
 "URL": "http:\/\/blockchain.info\/",
 "VISITS": "1",
 "TITLE": "Bitcoin Block Explorer - Blockchain.info"
 },
 "All Sites - Stack Exchange": {
 "DATE": "1388375962623",
 "URL": "http:\/\/stackexchange.com\/sites",
 "VISITS": "1",
 "TITLE": "All Sites - Stack Exchange"
 },
 "Block Explorer API - blockchain.info": {
 "DATE": "1388306537030",
 "URL": "http:\/\/blockchain.info\/api\/blockchain_api",
 "VISITS": "3",
 "TITLE": "Block Explorer API - blockchain.info"
 },
 "ProgrammableWeb: Subscribe Success": {
 "DATE": "1388307257562",
 "URL": "http:\/\/www.programmableweb.com\/pwtsubscribesuccess",
 "VISITS": "2",
 "TITLE": "ProgrammableWeb: Subscribe Success"
 },
 "http:\/\/blockchain.info\/rawaddr\/1CuJxwjqf8z2uy3EHh2Kge12tcR5eNiB4t": {
 "DATE": "1388306616394",
 "URL": "http:\/\/blockchain.info\/rawaddr\/1CuJxwjqf8z2uy3EHh2Kge12tcR5eNiB4t",
 "VISITS": "1",
 "TITLE": "http:\/\/blockchain.info\/rawaddr\/1CuJxwjqf8z2uy3EHh2Kge12tcR5eNiB4t"
 },
 "Code Review Stack Exchange": {
 "DATE": "1388376002575",
 "URL": "http:\/\/codereview.stackexchange.com\/",
 "VISITS": "1",
 "TITLE": "Code Review Stack Exchange"
 },
 "Stack Overflow": {
 "DATE": "1388375977992",
 "URL": "http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/?as=1",
 "VISITS": "1",
 "TITLE": "Stack Overflow"
 }
}

Here is the repository for the app.

• Bobby: I'm not sure this question is in-topic. We do code reviews, not suggestions on how to make an output format better.

Answer 1

If you want to use the JSON to be easily parsed, I would suggest using a JSONArray so your output is ordered the way it is in the browsers history (unlike the JSONObject, which are key/value pairs not in order). If you use JSONArray you should save the title inside the objects of course.

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If you want to have it human readable, how about exporting it as .pdf or .html file with clickable links.

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If you want to do some more work, you could use the jsondata, export it as your own data-format, and build an Activity for reading and displaying this data to make it human readable.

You could easily un-escape the URLs, then they should work in every browser.

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Small code correction: your variable cont in line 37 should be obsolete.