- This was inspired by my 2-year-old daughter's preoccupation with "monsters" of the cute type (think Monster's Inc)
- The main function of the app is to document sightings of monsters
- each monster has a name and optionally a description and an image url
- sightings are viewed/edited using embedded Google Maps
- The REST API I made with Google App Engine is used to store the data
- I used Retrofit to create the client code
- Users must choose a Google account on their device to authenticate with the back-end
- Authenticaticating the selected account to the back-end is done with oAuth
This was a final project for a Mobile/Cloud development class. I had already created the back-end, but I had less than 2 weeks to:
- Refresh my Java skills, which were a little rusty
- Learn the basics of Android development
- Learn how to use the Google Maps Android API
- Learn Retrofit
And the hardest part, which was getting oAuth to work. The oAuth API built-in to Google App Engine was intended to be used in the context of a webapp, where things like cookies and browser redirects would automatically work. Adapting this to Android meant (in a nutshell), the client has to behave like the browser would for part of the oAuth transaction.
