codeamt / popmovies

A networked Android app with offline mode for storing popular movies to SQL database

#GrowWithGoogle Android Development Project:
PopMovies App

For the second (and third) project of the Grow With Google Developer Scholarship Program (and conjointly Udacity’s Android Development Nanodegree program), students were asked to build and design a movie discovery app (written in Java) from scratch. This app makes use of TheMovieDB API and the YouTube Player API for Android.

The project was completed in two stages:

• (1) fleshing out the UX and
• (2) polishing the UI.

User Story Map

Learning Objectives

Thinking about UX

This project hones in on several useful skills – implementing custom adapters (and fragment classes), configuring child menus, and launching intents to build out a User Experience that meets a host of needs for the end user’s session.

Implementing the persistent search functionality was a great learning experience, as it led to more insight about the logistics of filtering a RecyclerView from within an adapter.

Network Services and Optimizing for Offline Mode

• I opted in for extending this project’s Content Provider to persist favorite movie data to the app's database and making these titles available offline. I also experimented with the Volley http library in order to speed up network requests.

Design and Responsive UI

• Instead of making a landscape layout for this app, I implemented a helper function that takes into account device orientation and expands/contracts the number of grid columns accordingly.
• I also wanted to extend the user session time, and subsequently used the YouTube Player API to stream a trailer from within the app, itself, rather than launching an intent to the external YouTube service. To make the details page cleaner, I used a pager and tabs to segment general info, the primary movie trailer and RecyclerView list of reviews. I designed collapsible card views for reviews that exceeded 5 lines.

Using Logger

This project illuminated just how invaluable logging your code can be. Much like console.log in JavaScript, using the logger for this project helped with debugging code at various points.

Versioning and Dependencies

Target SDK Version: 27

Dependencies:

• com.android.support:appcompat-v7:27.1.1
• com.android.support:recyclerview-v7:27.1.1
• com.android.support:design:27.1.1
• com.android.support:cardview-v7:27.1.1
• com.squareup.picasso:picasso:2.5.2
• com.uncopt:android.justified:1.0
• com.android.volley:volley:1.1.0
• com.android.support.constraint:constraint-layout:1.1.0
• com.android.support:support-v4:27.1.1
• libs/YouTubeAndroidPlayerApi.jar

App Repositories:

• MavenCentral

Android Studio Version: 3.1.2 (Stable Release)

Gradle Build Tools Version: 3.1.2

Note: To run this project on your local machine, you will have to add you your own MovieDB and YouTube Player API keys to a KeyStore.java file.

References

Several tutorials inspired this project:

• https://codeburst.io/android-swipe-menu-with-recyclerview-8f28a235ff28
• https://guides.codepath.com/android/fragment-navigation-drawer
• https://panavtec.me/retain-restore-recycler-view-scroll-position
• https://gist.github.com/takeshiyako2/e776bbaf2966c6501c4f
• https://android.jlelse.eu/font-awesome-a-better-way-to-display-symbols-and-icons-in-android-d694e5ee621f
• http://saulmm.github.io/mastering-coordinator
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43937210/searchview-after-rotation-button-goes-to-the-3-dots