📌 Android Configuration Manager (ACM) – Deprecated but Legendary! 🚀

⚠️ This project is deprecated and no longer actively maintained. However, if you're nostalgic for the days of Android development with simplified configuration management, this README will help you understand how it worked back when it was relevant! 👴📱

🤔 What is ACM?

The Android Configuration Manager (ACM) was a lightweight library designed to simplify app configuration storage in Android. Instead of dealing with complex SQLite, Shared Preferences, or file-based persistence, ACM allowed developers to store configuration settings as Java objects – a sort of Light Object Mapping (LOM) for Android. ✨

🎯 Key Features

• ✅ Android Backup Support – Integrated with Shared Preferences 🔄
• ✅ Saves Time – Reduces boilerplate for persisting objects ⏳
• ✅ Future-Proof – Fault-tolerant handling of unexpected changes 🛠️
• ✅ Uses Objects – No more error-prone key-value pairs! 🏷️
• ✅ Polymorphism-Friendly – Works with parent-child config structures 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

🚀 Quick Start

// Define your configuration class
MyConfig config = new MyConfig();
config.setId("MyConfig");
config.setMyBoolean(true);

// Grab Android SharedPreferences
SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = 
    PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(getApplicationContext());
ConfigManager configManager = new ConfigManager(sharedPreferences);

// Setup a deserializer
SharedPrefenceConfigDeserialiser deserialiser =
    new SharedPrefenceConfigDeserialiser(sharedPreferences, config);
configManager.add(new DefaultConfigDeserializerStrategy(deserialiser));

// Save and retrieve the config
configManager.saveConfig(config);
MyConfig persistedConfig = (MyConfig) configManager.getConfig("MyConfig");

// Print stored value
System.out.println(persistedConfig.getMyBoolean());

🏗️ ACM Components

• ConfigManager – The main entry point for saving/loading configs 🔄
• ConfigListActivity – Manages a list of config objects 📋
• GenericPreferenceActivity – Handles single config objects ⚙️
• PreferenceLauncherActivity – Launches config activities 🚀

🎬 Example: NZBAir Integration

ACM was widely used in apps like NZBAir, where:

• 📌 Preference Launcher provided an entry point to different configuration types.
• 📌 Preference List Activity managed multiple provider configurations.
• 📌 Config Activity generated UI forms for configuration objects automatically.

🛠️ TODO (When ACM Was Active)

• 🔹 Decouple SharedPreferences from ACM (support for SQL/file storage) 🗄️
• 🔹 Improve test coverage for Android 🚀
• 🔹 Use Annotations for defining config types 🎯
• 🔹 Optimize configuration loading 📈
• 🔹 Build a full example project 🏗️

🛑 Limitations

• ⚠️ Only supports primitives (no complex object graphs!)
• ⚠️ Type erasure increases boilerplate code 😖

📦 Prerequisites (Back in the Day)

• ActionBarSherlock (for Honeycomb & ICS support) 📜

📂 Where's the Code?

Find the source code here: GitHub Repository 🏗️

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🎉 ACM was a game-changer for Android development back in the day. If you're here for nostalgia, thanks for stopping by! 🚀😎