konklone / congress-android

Congress for Android, an app for tracking Congress.

Congress for Android

This is the source code for the Eric Mill's Congress app for Android phones. (This app was previously funded and developed for years by the Sunlight Foundation.)

Find the most up-to-date version in the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightlabs.android.congress

We ship the app using the code found in this repository, with some miscellaneous unversioned API keys and build information placed in app/src/main/res/values/keys.xml.

We use Github Issues for issue tracking.

Setup

When setting this up:

• copy keys.xml.example to app/src/main/res/values/keys.xml and:
  • fill in propublica_api_key with your Pro Publica API key,
  • fill in propublica_api_endpoint with the base Pro Publica API endpoint you wish to use. By default, this is https://api.propublica.org/congress/v1/.
• copy tracker.xml.example to app/src/main/res/xml/tracker.xml

If you're using Google Analytics, fill in app/src/main/res/xml/tracker.xml's ga_trackingId field with your Google Analytics profile tracking ID. (Make sure you've set up a profile in Google Analytics first.)

If you're not using Google Analytics, then turn off analytics by setting app/src/main/res/values/keys.xml's debug_disable_analytics field to true.

License

We use a mixed GPLv3 and BSD license for our code in this repository. Generally speaking, the code specific to our Android app is GPLv3, and the code you could reuse in any Java or Android app is BSD.

The repository also contains some miscellaneous .jar files in /libs, who have separate individual licenses.

See LICENSE for complete details.

Release Checklist

Final dev check:

• Tested on enough emulators to feel confident?
• Leave any debug stuff commented out or in? (also avoid ever having to do this even temporarily)

Code changes:

• Bump the android:versionCode and android:versionName in AndroidManifest.xml
• Bump the android:app_version in strings.xml to match android:versionName
• Change the android:app_version_older in strings.xml to what's appropriate
• Update the changelog data in arrays.xml to what's appropriate
• Commit changes, add tag in git for version "vX.X.X" where X.X.X is the android:versionName
  • git tag -a -m "Tagging vX.X.X" vX.X.X
  • git push --tags

Then, release work:

• Check keys.xml:
  • is pro_publica_api_endpoint pointing to production?
  • are all debug flags set to false?
• Produce signed APK version
• Take any screenshots needed to replace outdated ones
  • Replace any new screenshots in _____ (GitHub?)
• Store APKs in GitHub
  • into releases/
  • create a Release associated with the tag

congress-android's Issues

Context menus

Main Menu:

• Preferences
• About

Profile and other tabbed activities:

• Call
• Visit Website

Show something if no news can be found about someone

When doing a news search, and there are no results, don't just show a blank screen.

Instead of hiding missing YouTube/Twitter tabs, show them with a message

So that people don't check out a legislator for whom we have nothing and conclude we only do news mentions.

Better profile layout for landscape mode

You can fit all the info in one screen if you have a different layout for landscape mode.

app crashes when loading Langevin's profile

Force close!

Fix "At Large" district layout

It's broken in portrait mode at least - check out Del. Norton.

Add Legislator as Contact option on menu

Menu option should read "Add To Contacts", and prepopulate a contact activity with the info we know about.

Long press menus

Long press menus on News, YouTube, and Twitter lists.

If there's only one search result, go right to the profile

For any type of search, don't show the user a list of one result.

Icons across the app

Including the app icon, phone/web icons for the profile, and tab icon headers.

Set window title to legislator name

Once you open a legislator's tab activity, set the window's title to their name.

Add Twitter Settings to menu on Twitter activity

The Twitter Settings should be accessible from the menu from the Twitter screen.

YouTube data collection

Use the Senate Hub and House Hub to increase our data stores on legislator YouTube accounts.

Store legislator info in savedInstanceState on LegislatorTabs

The scalars should be stored and reloaded from a Bundle, instead of hitting the network again. Applies to rotating the keyboard while in any tab on LegislatorTabs.

Better main menu screen

Something a little nicer, clearer, and with icons.

Activities with non-UI threads must pause/resume correctly

Flipping the keyboard on any of the screens which do network activity in an external thread and bring up dialogs, will bring up the dialog again and it will not end.

Moreover, we shouldn't need to re-do any network activity when flipping, information should be saved and restored.

Flipping twice when Twitter Reply popup is open causes force close

When the reply button is open, flipping once is fine - flipping twice is a force close.

Show district and state on the list of search results

e.g.

MA-5
MA-Senior
MA-Junior

Shortcut choosing interface should be small, dialog, quicker

Make a quicker and smaller shortcut choosing process.

Test across small and large screen resolutions

This isn't urgent; big and small screens won't hit 'til the holidays.

Performance optimization sweep

Sweep the app's code looking for places to optimize performance. Bear this document in mind:

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/design/performance.html

"About" screen

An About screen, accessible via the context menu on the MainMenu activity, should have Sunlight Labs' logo, URL, link to the source, and whatever other attributions we want to make (Yahoo! News API, Sunlight Labs API, at the least).

Replace my twitter client with JTwitter

Simpler, more robust, don't have to maintain my own.

Add suffix to titled name

As displayed on the top of profiles, and on search results. e.g. "Jesse Jackson Jr."

Add "Feedback" menu option

This should open up the Gmail compose screen with the subject filled in, and the To address being an alias we create in-house to receive feedback.

location does not update

I used the location feature in DC and Eleanor Holmes Norton came up. Success! However, when I went home in MD and used the location feature, Eleanor repeatedly showed up instead of my members of Congress.

Copy tweet text to clipboard

As a long press menu item.

Tweet timestamp for more than a couple weeks ago should use mm/dd

The format of timestamps on old tweets should drop the "days ago" syntax.

Make custom BaseAdapters into custom ArrayAdapters

Simpler, more correct.

On LegislatorTabs, make the window title the name of the legislator

The little grey window title. Make it the name.

Rotating the screen while a dialog is active is not handled properly

The dialog will stay forever after rotating. No good.

Turning on GPS may make button disabled

Using the GPS, instead of just network activity, may disable the location button

Store legislator array during keyboard flip

Use the onRetainNonConfigurationInstance callbacks to store the array during a flip.

Tweet list becomes non-responsive

Charlie Rangel's tweet list becomes gradually unresponsive to clicking. This is extremely alarming.

Better image caching approach?

Try:
BitmapFactory.decodeStream(bis)

where bis is a BufferedInputStream over an InputStream from a URLConnection's getInputStream().

Make LegislatorTabs fail more gracefully with no network connection

Let's have it launch a separate activity entirely that is just a blank screen with some text and a refresh button that tries it again. Lame, but better than creating temporary tabs.

Website URL's not correct

On the legislator profile, we need a better regex or way of displaying URLs. Check out Barney Frank's profile for an example.

Enforced limit on tweet replies

Don't let the user post something greater than 140.

Copy YouTube URL to clipboard

As a long press menu item.

Make the search result list a dialog themed activity

Try it out, see how it looks.

Twitter data collection

Take the legislators for whom we have no twitter account, and get to Googling for them.

Make sure app works and has good layout in landscape mode

Test each screen in landscape mode.

Cache photos for only 1 month

The app right now will cache these missing photos and then never look for the replacements. However, there's no way for the phone to tell when it got a "No Photo" and when it got an actual photo.

To solve this, we'll expire our cache after a month. If photo's last modified time was more than a month ago, re-download it.

Shortcut icons are squashed

Unsquash them.

Desktop shortcuts need to open new task

...not bring existing activities to the front.

Check out these two flags, one of them is appropriate:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html#FLAG_ACTIVITY_MULTIPLE_TASK

Better location detection workflow

If the user has location detection entirely off, we don't want the button to just stay disabled without any idea of why. Provide a way for the user to request searching by location, and to take the user to the GPS settings screen if it's off.

"First time" toasts on News, YouTube, Twitter lists that let you know you can click on them

They should say something like "Click on an item to ...", and run only the first time a user visits each activity.

Copy news link URL to clipboard

As a long press menu item.

App must fail gracefully when offline

Right now it force closes on attempts to reach the network, if the user is offline. Not acceptable.

"First Time" screen

This screen should introduce users to the app and say what they can do with it.

Should mention the ability to create shortcuts, and to reply to tweets.