Getting Android to talk to Apache on localhost

Question

My Android application talks to a php server. I have Apache/php running locally on WAMP Server. I am running Windows 7. If I go to localhost on Windows 7 the site shows but on the phone it will look for localhost on the current Android OS so no site shows.

I managed to get around this by opening my apache configuration to the internet and then using my external IP address, this is annoying because I am on a dynamic IP and sometimes don't have internet (+ not secure).

How do I make a http request from android access localhost (or another alias in the hosts file)?

Answer 1

Jon is correct that in the general case you cannot make the android device connect to a pc through the usb cable (a major difference from the android emulator where such connection is accomplished by an alias address). However, there are some things you can do:

• You can connect both the pc and the phone to a secured wifi router. It doesn't even need to have an upstream internet connection.

• Apparently, if you have froyo and the usb tethering option, turning this on will as a side effect establish networking over USB that allows the phone to contact the pc (just watch where you pc's internet traffic is going though)

• If you wanted something on the pc to open a connection to something listening on the phone, you could use an adb port forward. But it sounds like you want a client on the pc to contact a server on the phone, so that won't work.

Answer 2

In general, you can't.

What you can do, if the computer is on the same wireless network as the Android device, is connect to the computer's internal IP. For example, on a typical home wifi router, the router is at 192.168.1.1, and the devices connected to it are 192.168.1.x. So if your Windows 7 PC is at 192.168.1.5, you should be able to access this from your Android device just fine...