PfSense androidGUI app (a work in progress)
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Well my first suggestion is that there is no need to scrape the menus from the pfsense home page. If the app doesn't support packages or any additional pages it would be better to just provide the menu hard coded with only whatever pages you do support. Less chance of the code getting confused I would have thought.
As I said this is way outside my field of expertise so there's a very good chance I'm overlooking something. ::)Steve
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An app like this could be interested. I am thinking of the situation where you get a notification from pfsense by email and then you want to have a look on your machines if everything is working or something crashed. So I think more of a pfsense app which is for fast support and checking of pfsense functions.
So the diagnostic pages would be interesting and a possibility to restart some services.
For major configuration on pfsense I would probably never use my smartphone. But if some service crashed and I need to check some things I could think that a quick login on pfsense using the app would be helpfull.
I like the idea and I find it great that you spend time on something like that :)
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Well my first suggestion is that there is no need to scrape the menus from the pfsense home page.
My reasoning here is that some users only have two interfaces LAN OPT1 while other have many OPT2, OPT3 which results in extra pages. So if I support setting up an interface I have to handle all links
As I said this is way outside my field of expertise so there's a very good chance I'm overlooking something. ::)
Mine too
So the diagnostic pages would be interesting and a possibility to restart some services.
For major configuration on pfsense I would probably never use my smartphone. But if some service crashed and I need to check some things I could think that a quick login on pfsense using the app would be helpfull.
Currently working on Status > Interfaces page. Scraped it pretty easily :) Now just need to enable the connect button and thats another page done.
I agree this will NEVER be a replacement for the webGUI but as you said. If you need to do something quickly when away from a PC it should be great!
I like the idea and I find it great that you spend time on something like that :)
I like to have an android project on the go. Couldn't think of an app I wanted so thought why not make a start on pfSense and see what happens
90% completed the Aliases page today, luckily it was very similar to the wol page so that wasn't too bad either. I'm fast approaching the complex stuff. Then we'll see how feasible this app will be
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I am sure you would get help on your project if you could bring this on github so that everyone can easy submit any patches and so on.
I see this on another project like OCS Inventory-NG - they are on launchpad and this is very bad to submit some code. So just a suggestion how to spped up yur project and get some nice input from others :)
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Yes I will probably go with github. But not quite yet for the following reasons.
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I have to tidy up the code first
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I have limited experience with github (cloning other people branches and compiling). I have never used it for development - Therefore it will be a learning curve. I don't want it to slow me down right now. So will probably wait until I lose momentum
Plan to upload the app for testing tonight/next few days (it will still be very much in an alpha state).
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I would say you should focus on the future. The future would be a responsive GUI for Pfsense. If the GUI was responsive it would be cross browser compatible on all of today's known mobile devices. If you need some help getting things going on that front, I would be glad to give you a hand.
I also believe you would get far more interest on github for a new responsive GUI design for Pfsense than a android app as your setting up. Surely if interest took hold the developers of Pfsense I would think would put there 2 cents in to ensure at some point the two could merge.
As for development for android all that would be needed would be wolan …. after that the responsive GUI would take over. If you setup the app to access various services for example, every time Pfsense has a update there's a chance something will break. I don't know what the odds are, but it could turn out to be a major headache. The same can be said for a responsive GUI github project also but if its going in the right direction like I said the Pfsense developers should give the project a helping hand.
Hell, if you don't do the github for a responsive GUI I just might do it.
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I would say you should focus on the future. The future would be a responsive GUI for Pfsense. If the GUI was responsive it would be cross browser compatible on all of today's known mobile devices. If you need some help getting things going on that front, I would be glad to give you a hand.
Hell, if you don't do the github for a responsive GUI I just might do it.
I hear what your saying but I am not a web developer and wouldn't know where to begin. If you make a start on this I can try and help you out!
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I would like to see and Windows Phone version since I'm a windows guy. And you might as well make a Iphone version too. I would like to see you can do everything in the mobile version just as if I was on my laptop. I would even pay $5 if I knew that $2 was going to the Pfsense folks.
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Uploaded a test version of the app for people to have a play with.
Please read the first post of this thread for instructions on how to install & the download link
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Very good.
how i can donate ?. I use paypal. -
Loaded it on my Nexus 7. Seems to work fine.
It would be nice if the settings page showed the existing setting for each section without having to touch each one. More like the other android settings dialogues.Steve
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Uploaded the project to github: https://github.com/CharlieMarshall/pfSense-androidGUI
All contributions are welcome
Edit: Upgraded my test box to pfSense 2.0.3 last night and everything seems to have survived the upgrade.
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Ah, I should have mentioned my test box is 2.1. Worked fine. :)
Steve
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Anyone know who I need to speak to about using the pfSense logo within the app?
If I can't use it for copyright reasons does anyone fancy making something?
On another note progress is moving along nicely (well it feel like it is but looking at the list of commits there's not a huge amount of new features)
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Not had time to look at this project recently, been playing with the pfsense webconfiguration instead.
Anyway here is an updated apk > https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12367642/Pfsense.apk (you will have to uninstall the previous verion if you have it)
Changelog:
Added Arp page
Added Authentication page
Added Table page
Finished the Status > Interfaces page (untested)
Improved UI of the services page
Added validation to the wake on lan page