PGMacDesign / PT-Crop-Manager

Crop Management application for use with the growstuff.org api

Overview

This repository is a fun side project that utilizes the Growstuff API

My main goal was to see how complete I could make this app + SDK with only 2 days of development time. While I will likely add more in the future, the development time for this is only scheduled from 2019-01-16 to 2019-01-17

The other useful part of this project is that I am essentially writing a Java / Android SDK for Growstuff, which to my knowledge does not exist.

Outline

Below is the current outline for what I would like to get done in the 2 day window I have alloted:

• Manifest

  • Manifest declated with permissions as well as broadcast receivers.
  • Will add File Providers if needed - Not needed
  • Broadcast receivers as well as check for Nougat or above to confirm Broadcast receiver registered properly

• Documentation

  • All docs should be in standard Javadoc format. (will be generated at the end of the 2 days)
  • All classes should have documentation above them.
  • Applicable methods and functions should also have documentation.
  • Make sure to use //region and //endregion tags for simpler code folding

• Data models

  • Mirror from website - Will need to make individual calls in order to manually view responses.
  • Add in ErrorModel and custom parsing.

• API Calls + Wrapper

  • For API calls class, Will likely utilize my own library's Retrofit Parser
  • Make wrapper class for static API calls so as to mimize code in Fragments and activities

• Connectivity Checks

  • Add in connectivity receiver to confirm internet availability before calls
  • Utilize a snackbar for no internet connection

• Architecture

  • App will follow standard app architecture logic and have an Activity with modular fragments
  • I'd like to use a navigation drawer if possible as they always look clean if done correctly
  • Standard MyApplication class as central singleton with initilized fields upon load.
  • Decided to scale things back a bit for simplicity. Will leave the API Interface as is and just ignore unused endpoints.

• Android Jetpack

  • I'd also like to make use of the new Android Jetpack modules, specifically the following:
    • Rooms
    • ViewModel
  • Implement Observers using ViewModel + Room combo on any visible Recyclerviews
  • Utilize View models to maintain state upon rotation

• Constants

  • Utilize integer tags in combination with my library's On Task Complete Listener to ping back responses for web calls
  • Maintain any other needed tags, flags, or booleans within the Constants for simple reference.

• Icons

  • Use custom icons for the app
  • Use various icons for the different nav bar icons to differentiate sections
  • Make sure icons mirror Android standards of:
    • xxxdpi
    • xxdpi
    • xdpi
    • hdpi
    • mdpi

• Res Dimens

  • If time permits, utilize dimens.xml to have screen-specific sizes to work with on UI element scaling

• UI Components

  • Make heavy use of Recyclerviews (look into making mutli-purpose adapter)

• Animations - Skipped

  • If time permits, add in animations to UI elements
  • Also add in loading view / progress bar with custom animation built into it

Closing and Lessons Learned

Development has stopped (as planned) after a little under 2 days of development. Some of the better accomplishments include:

• The project is stable and loads just fine. Crashes seem to be far and few between
• It will successfully load from the API and load images as well as crops
• Pagination was successfully implemented and should theoretically scroll until the web API runs out of items to return
• Jetpack --> Room --> DB entry was integrated and serves the purpose of providing access to the crops list when offline
• UI is clean and has a simple nav drawer, custom recyclerviews, custom dialogs, and ripple effects on clicks.
• Despite them being unused, created response body objects to mirror those listed on the Growstuff Github link.
• Utilized external dependencies via gradle as well as annotation processors and the schema output for the DB.
• Created a workable SDK that can be modularized into a single project if those at Growstuff would like it.
• Utilized abstract parent classes and subsequent inheritance for future-proofing more activities and fragments that may be added.

Next time I do this type of project I will probably research the API more prior as I had assumed that this API would return image URLs nested within the Crop object, but that does not seem to be the case in the current version; this nixxed any plans on having miniature circular images next to the text in the Recyclerviews.