bermani / SimpleTweet

Project 3 - SimpleTweet

SimpleTweet is an android app that allows a user to view their Twitter timeline and post a new tweet. The app utilizes Twitter REST API.

Time spent: 16 hours spent in total

User Stories

The following required functionality is completed:

• User can sign in to Twitter using OAuth login
• User can view tweets from their home timeline
• User is displayed the username, name, and body for each tweet
• User is displayed the relative timestamp for each tweet "8m", "7h"
• User can compose and post a new tweet
• User can click a “Compose” icon in the Action Bar on the top right
• User can then enter a new tweet and post this to Twitter
• User is taken back to home timeline with new tweet visible in timeline
• Newly created tweet should be manually inserted into the timeline and not rely on a full refresh
• User can see a counter with total number of characters left for tweet on compose tweet page
• User can pull down to refresh tweets timeline
• User can see embedded image media within a tweet on list or detail view.

The following stretch features are implemented:

• User is using "Twitter branded" colors and styles
• User sees an indeterminate progress indicator when any background or network task is happening
• User can select "reply" from home timeline to respond to a tweet
• User that wrote the original tweet is automatically "@" replied in compose
• User can tap a tweet to open a detailed tweet view
• User can take favorite (and unfavorite) or retweet actions on a tweet
• User can view more tweets as they scroll with infinite pagination
• Compose tweet functionality is built using modal overlay
• User can click a link within a tweet body on tweet details view. The click will launch the web browser with relevant page opened.
• Replace all icon drawables and other static image assets with vector drawables where appropriate.
• User can view following / followers list through any profile they view.
• Use the View Binding library to reduce view boilerplate.
• On the Twitter timeline, apply scrolling effects such as hiding/showing the toolbar by implementing CoordinatorLayout.
• User can open the twitter app offline and see last loaded tweets. Persisted in SQLite tweets are refreshed on every application launch. While "live data" is displayed when app can get it from Twitter API, it is also saved for use in offline mode.

The following additional features are implemented:

• User can see total followers and following on the details page
• User can click through followers of followers to find any user through the details page

Video Walkthrough

Here's a walkthrough of implemented user stories:

GIF created with Kap.

Notes

This app was a true test of the Android dev knowledge I've gained so far. I had to implement multiple RecyclerViews from scratch, create many different activities for different purposes, and properly link all the components together. It also required me to brush up on REST API concepts, gain familiarity with the Twitter API, and implement many routes. Integrating with the REST API was a challenge due to the fact that asychronous calls requires a different kind of thinking to properly perform app logic. Also, when test-running intermediate builds of the app, sometimes my code would run a REST request repeatedly, which would cause the Twitter API to rate limit my API key and force me to take a break from what I was working on. Another challenge was the difficulty in organizing and keeping track of many new files, activities, and classes.

Open-source libraries used

• Android Async HTTP - Simple asynchronous HTTP requests with JSON parsing
• Glide - Image loading and caching library for Android

License

Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.