ThisTimes is an android app that allows a user to search for articles on web using simple filters. The app utilizes New York Times Search API.
Time spent: 26 hours spent in total
The following required functionality is completed:
- User can search for news article by specifying a query and launching a search. Search displays a grid of image results from the New York Times Search API.
- User can click on "settings" which allows selection of advanced search options to filter results
- User can configure advanced search filters such as:
- Begin Date (using a date picker)
- News desk values (Arts, Fashion & Style, Sports)
- Sort order (oldest or newest)
- Subsequent searches have any filters applied to the search results
- User can tap on any article in results to view the contents in an embedded browser.
- User can scroll down to see more articles. The maximum number of articles is limited by the API search.
The following optional features are implemented:
- Implements robust error handling, check if internet is available, handle error cases, network failures
- Used the ActionBar SearchView or custom layout as the query box instead of an EditText
- User can share an article link to their friends or email it to themselves
- Replaced Filter Settings Activity with a lightweight modal overlay
The following bonus features are implemented:
- Use the RecyclerView with the
StaggeredGridLayoutManagerto display improve the grid of image results - For different news articles that only have text or only have images, use Heterogenous Layouts with RecyclerView
- Use Parcelable instead of Serializable using the popular Parceler library.
- Leverages the data binding support module to bind data into layout templates.
- Replace all icon drawables and other static image assets with vector drawables where appropriate.
- Replace Picasso with Glide for more efficient image rendering.
- Uses retrolambda expressions to cleanup event handling blocks.
- Leverages the popular GSON library to streamline the parsing of JSON data.
- Leverages the Retrofit networking library to access the New York Times API.
- Replace the embedded
WebViewwith Chrome Custom Tabs using a custom action button for sharing. (2 points)
The following additional features are implemented:
- List anything else that you can get done to improve the app functionality!
Here's a walkthrough of implemented user stories:
Video created with AZ Screen Recorder.
Describe any challenges encountered while building the app.
Implementing the Endless Scrolling feature was a challenge since there was many factors to keep track of. The correct search API parameters needed to be passed in, correct ordering when to update the RecyclerView's items, and handling the API rate limiting. A small error in any of those factors would cause the feature to not work as intended.
- Okhttp - An HTTP+HTTP/2 client for Android and Java applications.
- Glide - An image loading and caching library for Android focused on smooth scrolling.
- Gson - A Java serialization/deserialization library to convert Java Objects into JSON and back.
- Apache Commons Lang - Lang provides a host of helper utilities for the java.lang API.
- materialsearchview - Cute library to implement SearchView in a Material Design Approach.
- BottomDialog - An Android library that shows a customizable Material-based bottom sheet.
- Android-BetterPickers - Android library for better Picker DialogFragments.
- Date4J - Lightweight alternative to Java's built-in date-time classes.
- glide-transformations - An Android transformation library providing a variety of image transformations for Glide.
Copyright [2017] [Robert Lee]
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.
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limitations under the License.