How to do a Google Image Search in an android app

Question

I'm developing an Android app that will do a Google Image Search and return the images to the user in a list. I've looked around on StackOverflow and have run into some problems. First off, I'm a total newbie programmer with only 4 months' worth of programming experience, so I appreciate you guys being patient with me.

I looked through Google Image Search API and I know it's being depreciated and will get shut down someday. Because of this, I don't want to use it. After extensive research on the topic, I don't want to use Bing or another image search service, and I don't want to do a "reverse image search. I just want to use a simple image search via string. I've used this app (https://github.com/tonytamsf/Android-Image-Search) to look at the code, but in all honesty, it's just not helping and it's confusing me more on how to exactly search for an image on Google. Plus, the app won't compile in Eclipse :(

I've also looked around at Google Developer APIs, and I'm not sure if I need to turn on an API key for myself? Still, a bit confused about that. I thought I needed to do a custom search engine, but just by looking at that, I don't think it's exactly what I'm looking for.

Can anyone point me to some resources for this? I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

Answer 1

Just a heads up, but what you're asking is pretty challenging and it sounds like you're just getting started. Here's what I can suggest though:

To get that demo code working in eclipse, I had to right-click the project, click properties, click Android, then check the box for the version of android installed. (I had android 19 installed, and the code was expecting 16, so it was giving up. Tell it to use what you have, which probably is 19). This worked for me after using the git plugin in eclipse to import the project. If you are importing a different way, you may have different issues. * Using git and importing the project is a good skill to have, so if that's unfamiliar territory, take the time to look at that.

Ok, that's the end of what I am sure of. The rest is an educated guess, but I'm sure others can correct me.

Next, if tinkering with that project isn't enough, getting real google image search working will take several skills, especially since the old API is gone. In total you'll need to know:

• Java
• Android programming
• google cloud services
• google custom search API
• REST
• some other libraries to glue the custom search to your app

It's a big chunk there. Currently, it seems the only way to use google's image search is to run a google app engine (you basically set up an online account for google to run a server for you. It does computation and sends messages back and forth for you. You only get a little bit for free each day and then if you want more you have to pay. This is one-way Google earns money. It's not something they let you run on your own computer anymore.). Then you make your android app talk to that server using your new login ID, and the server will take the search term and send back the answers to your android app.

You can get the app engine running and use it in chrome without dealing with android to save yourself time, then add the android part later in the future. Good luck!