Fetch Data From A Website Using JSOUP in Android Application

How to fetch data from a website using JSOUP in Android Application :

Download the whole project!

JSOUP is a Java library for fetching the static html pages of a website. It has some limitations in the dynamic websites but it can fetch data from different websites quite easily and quickly than other tools.

You can fetch the whole page html content of any website through this library. Further information you can get from their site : JSOUP

I strongly recommend you to use this library for fetching the data from a website in your android application.

I will show you working example of JSOUP library in your android application :

In the above screenshot, I fetched the title of my blog and all the blog posts title which are present on the first page through the use of JSOUP library.

All you do is to right click on the site you want to fetch the data and go to view page source and than search for the content in the page source you want to use in your android application.

In my case it is the h1 tag for fetching the title of my blog and h3 tag for fetching the title of each post that’s all I wanted to show in an example like you saw above.

     

     

Try to use the tag you want to fetch in the selector statement of JSOUP which is very powerful or else try to start with its parent. In my application I can fetch the title of my blog directly with the h1 tag but for h3 tag I used its parent div tag for fetching.

Now lets start with the example. Create a new Project in Eclipse : File => New => Android Application Project and name it you want and give it a package as com.javalanguageprogramming.jsoupdemo.

Start your project by copying the JSOUP library file in your libs folder . The library file of JSOUP is here : JSOUP Library

Code of activity_main.xml is shown below :

 <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"  
   xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"  
   android:layout_width="match_parent"  
   android:layout_height="match_parent"  
   android:orientation="vertical"  
   >  
   
   <LinearLayout   
     android:layout_width="wrap_content"  
     android:layout_height="wrap_content"  
     android:orientation="horizontal"  
     >  
   <TextView  
     android:layout_width="wrap_content"  
     android:layout_height="wrap_content"  
     android:text="TITLE :"   
     android:textSize="20sp"  
     android:textStyle="bold"  
     android:layout_marginLeft="15px"  
     android:layout_marginTop="10px"  
       
     />  
   <TextView  
     android:id="@+id/titleText"  
     android:layout_width="wrap_content"  
     android:layout_height="wrap_content"  
     android:textSize="18sp"  
     android:layout_marginLeft="15px"  
     android:layout_marginTop="10px"  
     />  
   
   </LinearLayout>  
     
     
   <TextView  
     android:layout_width="wrap_content"  
     android:layout_height="wrap_content"  
     android:text="POSTS TITLE :"   
     android:textSize="20sp"  
     android:textStyle="bold"  
     android:layout_marginLeft="15px"  
     android:layout_marginTop="10px"  
       
     />  
   <TextView  
     android:id="@+id/postsText"  
     android:layout_width="wrap_content"  
     android:layout_height="wrap_content"  
     android:textSize="15sp"  
     android:layout_marginLeft="15px"  
     android:layout_marginTop="10px"  
     />   
 </LinearLayout>  
   

In this code we are making four text views two text views we directly used for headings and the other two are used when through the use of JSOUP we get the data from my blog. So, I gave them Id’s for binding with my MainActivity.java.

Code for MainActivity.java is shown below :

 package com.javalanguageprogramming.jsoupdemo;  
   
 import org.jsoup.Jsoup;  
 import org.jsoup.nodes.Document;  
 import org.jsoup.select.Elements;  
   
 import android.app.Activity;  
 import android.os.Bundle;  
 import android.widget.TextView;  
   
   
 public class MainActivity extends Activity {  
   
      TextView titleText, postText;  
      String title, posts = "";  
      @Override  
      protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {  
           super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);  
           setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);  
             
           //initialize variables  
           titleText = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.titleText);  
           postText = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.postsText);  
             
             
           //run on new thread because we cannot do network operation on main thread  
           new Thread(new Runnable() {  
                  
                @Override  
                public void run() {  
                     try{  
                            
                     //get the Document object from the site. Enter the link of site you want to fetch  
                     Document document = Jsoup.connect("http://javalanguageprogramming.blogspot.in/").get();  
                       
                     //Get the title of blog using title tag  
                     title = document.select("h1.title").text().toString();  
                     //set the title of text view  
                       
                       
                     //Get all the elements with h3 tag and has attribute a[href]  
                     Elements elements = document.select("div.post-outer").select("h3").select("a[href]");  
                     int length = elements.size();  
                       
                     for(int i=0; i<length; i++){  
                          //store each post heading in the string  
                          posts += elements.get(i).text() + "\n\n";  
                            
                     }  
                       
                     //Run this on ui thread because another thread cannot touch the views of main thread  
                     runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {  
                            
                          @Override  
                          public void run() {  
                                 
                               //set both the text views  
                               titleText.setText(title);  
                               postText.setText(posts);  
                          }  
                     });  
                       
                }catch(Exception e){  
                     e.printStackTrace();  
                }  
                }  
           }).start();  
             
             
 }  
 }  
   

I made comments where I fetched the data from the website in MainActivity.java. You can also refer to JSOUP site if you want to fetch other types of tags.

Do not forget to add uses-permission : Internet because this application must use internet for fetching data from websites.

The AndroidManifest file is shown below :

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  
 <manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"  
   package="com.javalanguageprogramming.jsoupdemo"  
   android:versionCode="1"  
   android:versionName="1.0" >  
   
   <uses-sdk  
     android:minSdkVersion="8"  
     android:targetSdkVersion="19" />  
   <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />  
   
   
   <application  
     android:allowBackup="true"  
     android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"  
     android:label="@string/app_name"  
     android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >  
     <activity  
       android:name="com.javalanguageprogramming.jsoupdemo.MainActivity"  
       android:label="@string/app_name" >  
       <intent-filter>  
         <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />  
   
         <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />  
       </intent-filter>  
     </activity>  
   </application>  
   
 </manifest>  
   

Note : It takes 3-4 sec to fetch and show the data to your application, at that time you can use progress dialog.