How to connect to a MySQL Database from an Android

Question

I would like to connect to a MySQL Database hosted on the same server with a Tomcat Server from my Android App without using PHP. Is there any way to do this? I found some solutions but all use PHP.

Can I connect directly or do I have to do it through a Web server?

Answer 1

You actually cannot do this with Android the main reason is performance it is really expensive to keep a remote connection alive than rather just call Web Services on demand, and it is more portable.

So i recommend you to play around with your favorite language creating services that access to your database and digest the output (XML or JSON) with android.

BTW i also think this have been asked Android MySQL Connectoin and here is a nice tuto about it (but with PHP) it should be fairly easy to do it in Java.

Answer 2

It should be common sense, that directly communicating with databases over the web is a "no go" security wise and with mobile devices a pain regarding the connectivity.

Setup a webservice with JSP or Grails (which I find comes with less workload) and deploy it to your tomcat server.

Hence the thought, you already have a Tomcat running, one assumes you have a java web app running. Try adding a webservice to that app or look in the documentation, if there already is one.

Answer 3

Because you're running on Tomcat I imagine the best way to access the database would be to write a webservice that handles the communication between the app and the server.

The webservice will be written in Java to run on TomCat using JSP.

I'm guessing you're trying to communicate directly with the MySQL database (i.e. run SQL commands on the database directly) but I don't think you can do this (although never tried or looked into it), I have always been under the impression that you need some code on the server to sit inbetween.