How do I resolve a Bonjour domain name on Android?

Question

I need to get my app to play a video file located on my network. I know the url of the file is:

http://something.local/abc.mp4

Now, when I manually substitute "something.local" with its true ip address, the MediaPlayer has no problem playing it. Nonetheless, when I have the above address, the MediaPlayer errors out with error (1, -1007).

So I'm assuming this is because Android doesn't understand "something.local" as being correct.

My question is: How can I "translate" something.local into an ip myself, so that I can then pass it into MediaPlayer?

A small caveat: I believe that MediaPlayer does not work with IPv6 addresses, so please keep that in mind...

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Just a side note, in case it makes my situation clearer: When I run ping something.local -4 in the Windows command prompt, it returns:

Pinging something.local [192.168.1.126] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.126: bytes=32 time=145ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.126: bytes=32 time=112ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.126: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.126: bytes=32 time=169ms TTL=64

That translation where windows went from something.local -> 192.168.1.126 is what I want to do in my Android app.

Answer 1

Firstly, you need read document about Bonjour (iOS term) or Zero Config (Linux term).

To understand what's something.local:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/NetServices/Articles/about.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002458-SW1

For example, if a user types steve.local. into a Web browser, this tells the system to multicast the request for steve on the local network instead of sending it to the conventional DNS server. If a Bonjour-enabled computer named steve is on the local network, the user’s browser is sent the correct IP address for it. This allows users to access local hosts and services without a conventional DNS server.

For how to resolve it:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/NetServices/Articles/NetServicesArchitecture.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20001074-SW1

For java library, previous answers provided good enough example.

Answer 2

You should try this snippet with jmDNS library api.. may need some changes.

JmDNS jmdns =  JmDNS.create();

DNSEntry addressEntry = jmdns.getCache().getDNSEntry(name, DNSRecordType.TYPE_A, DNSRecordClass.CLASS_ANY);
 if (addressEntry instanceof DNSRecord) {
      ServiceInfo cachedAddressInfo = ((DNSRecord) addressEntry).getServiceInfo(true);
      if (cachedAddressInfo != null) {
      for (Inet4Address address : cachedAddressInfo.getInet4Addresses()) {
          //  use the `address`
      }
 }