Week 6 Accomplishments

      For this week, my goals were to continue working on the database and keep developing the app. I think I did okay with my goals this week and I actually had a little bit of time to keep learning more Swift, so overall I think the week went better than any of the other weeks.

      In class the other day, I got my database set up in MySQL Workbench and started inserting some test data into it. I am not quite done with that, but overall everything seems to be going well. I will finish putting in some data by next week and hopefully be able to start testing with it soon.

       I have still been developing my apps, though I still do not have any progress to show with my Apple app. For the Android app, I made the registration page and have it linked to the navigation bar and the home page like it needs to be. I also have a button on the home page and an item on the navigation bar that links to the UNK alumni page, and that page opens in a separate browser when the user clicks on the item or button. I still need to develop the generic tradition detail page and the log in page, but I think those might be the only two difficult pages I still need to make. I will also have a Contact Us page and a popup with some information to help the user, but I don't think those will be too difficult.

       As I just mentioned, I still do not have anything to show for the Apple app, and it is starting to worry me. One of the other students in our class directed me towards some video tutorials for developing with Swift and XCode, and although I understand more about certain parts of development, actually making the app still seems beyond what I can do. I want to spend quite a bit of time tomorrow in the lab working on it, so we'll see how that goes. I just have not been a big fan of XCode, which is what you create the app in, so I think that is also making it difficult to work on the app.

       For next week, I am going to set up the connection to the database for the Android app, since it will at least be developed enough that I can do that. And if I happen to get enough done on the Apple one, then I will do that with it also. Then I will just keep testing and developing the apps and see how far I can get.

Week 5 Accomplishments

      For this week, my goals were to test the features that I had been adding to the app and try to fix any problems I was having. I also started doing some research into how I am going to connect the app to the database I am going to use. I did okay with doing the research part, but I did not get as much done with the apps as I wanted to because I had a lot of other homework to do over fall break.

       With the Android app, it still looks pretty much the same as it did in my last blog post. The only thing I have been able to accomplish is allowing the user to access the pages from the home screen buttons and not just from the navigation side bar. The only problem with this is I have not figured out how to set the title of the page when just clicking the buttons on the home page, but that is a small problem that I will deal with later. I do not have all of the pages created yet, but I hope to keep working on that and get those pages set up within the next couple of weeks.

       The Apple app is not going nearly as well though. I have not had enough time to devote to learning Swift and all I have been doing is going over a tutorial and trying to change some things so it fits what I need. I am not feeling overly optimistic right now about finishing the Apple app by the end of the semester, but we'll see how it goes. I hope to have more time to spend on it once this month is over because it has been a crazy month of tests and papers and projects and presentations.

       For this next week, I am going to keep working on learning about developing the apps and what I can do to make them better. I really do hope that I will have more time to go into Otto Olsen and work on the Apple app, but we'll just see how the week goes.

Week 4 Accomplishments

      For most of this week, my goals were to start developing the app, and for the most part, I stuck to that. I feel like I made significant progress with the Android app, though I still have a few things to work out, but I did not really have a lot of time to spend on learning more Swift. I tried going into the lab one night, but nothing was really clicking for me so I just decided I would try again later. I feel fairly confident that I will be able to complete the Android app by the end of the semester, but the Swift app is still in question as far as if it will get finished.

       With the Android app, I continued to work on setting up a navigation tab and making sure that the pages could be accessed through the navigation drawer at all times. I also learned how to create the elements on the page through programming rather than just creating the elements in the layout. I want to eventually have a JSON call to the database to return the list of traditions with thumbnails for them, so I figured out this week how to generate the table rows and put the images and text boxes into the table rows if those items already exist in Android Studio. It is not quite what I will need to do, but it is a good start I think.

       One thing I am still trying to figure out is how I am going to create the pages from the buttons on the home screen. Right now, the buttons are just for show, but I want to eventually be able to go from the home screen to some of the pages through those buttons. But I will probably have to change the set up of my program first because of how I have the classes laid out currently.

       I am going to continue working on testing this weekend and hopefully have a chance to try some more Swift, but it is fall break and I have quite a few other things to do as well, so we'll see. But until next week, here are some images of what I have so far for the app. I currently have the app in a dark theme, but I am planning on changing it eventually to a light theme because I think that will look better.

The initial screen

The initial screen with the
navigation bar

The tradition list screen in
the middle of the list to show
that it is scrollable

 

Week 3 Accomplishments

      This week, the main thing I worked on was trying to relearn how to create an app for an Android device and trying to learn how to create an app for an Apple device. For the Android app, things have been going pretty well with trying to remember how everything needs to be set up in the app in order for it to run, and I have been satisfied with my progress overall, even though I know I still have a lot to learn. The only thing that has been tricky with it is that I am using a different IDE than when I first learned how to create an Android app, and I think I thought I would remember it better than I actually do.

      The app for the Apple device is a different story all together though. I have never built anything for an Apple device, and I have barely had any experience using a Mac. So what I have been doing for most of this week is going into Otto Olsen a spending a few hours going over app building tutorials from the Apple developer sites so I can get a good understanding of what I am doing. I know I still have a lot to learn, but a few things are starting to click for me, so I am just hoping that even if it takes a while to get things figured out, it will eventually be smooth sailing.

      The last thing I have been doing is finishing up an initial final draft for my database. I have had people look at my database and give me suggestions, so I then updated it with those suggestions and I hope that it will work.

      Next week, I am going to insert in some test information into my database to see run some SQL statements to test a few things out. I also plan one trying to learn a little more about connecting an app to the database, but I am only going to spend a little while doing that because I have time set aside later for working on that part of the project. I am going to start building the official app hopefully, but we'll see how well that actually goes. But I hope to get at least a couple of the pages for the app created by the time the week is over.