The main aim of FOSSASIA Open Event Android App is to give an event organiser the ability to generate the app through a single click by providing the necessary json and binary files. The app was tested on the Mozilla All Hands 2017 event which is an annual conference held for Mozilla employees to showcase their experience and also interact with each other. The sample files for the event can be found here. (https://github.com/fossasia/open-event/tree/master/sample/MozillaAllHands17). The data for the event was taken from here. (https://sanfranciscoallhandsjune2017.sched.com/).
What was required for building the sample for Mozilla All Hands 2017 event?
- images folder containing the necessary images of speaker having support for local images too, the logo of the event, the background image of the event.
- event json file which has all the event specific information like the name of the event, the schedule of the event, the description of the event etc.
- forms json file having session and speaker form data.
- meta json file having the root url of the event.
- microlocations json file having all the locations where the sessions are going to happen.
- session_types json file consisting data of all the type of session which will occur in the event (the length of session, the name of type and the id).
- sessions json file consisting session specific data like the title of the session, start time and end time of session, which track that session belongs to etc.
- speakers json file consisting of speaker specific data like the name of the speaker, image of the speaker, social links of the speaker etc.
- sponsors json file consisting list of all sponsors of the event.
- tracks json file consisting of tracks specific data.
- config.json file which consists of the api url, app name.
After generating the required zip containing the above json files, the zip is uploaded to this site (http://droidgen.eventyay.com/) and we get an apk after filling the required information. This means all the event organiser is able to generate the sample app by providing the necessary information about the event.
The sample can be found here:
Folder Link: https://github.com/fossasia/open-event/tree/master/sample/MozillaAllHands17
Zip Link: https://github.com/fossasia/open-event/tree/master/sample/MozillaAllHands17.zip
How did the Mozilla All Hands 2017 sample app look like?
The screenshots of the sample apk can be seen below:
What were the issues found in the sample app?
As compared to the previous sample apk like Google IO Open Event Android App some issues like support for local speaker images, background issue of the logo were solved. However there were certain issues which we observed on testing the app with the Mozilla All Hands 2017 event:
- The theme of the app remains the same no matter which event it is. It is important to give the event organiser the ability to customise the theme of the app.
- Certain information in the app like the event information is hard-coded and needs to be taken from the assets folder instead of strings.xml.
Related Links
- This tool makes work a lot easier by generating JSON files for us. (http://www.json-generator.com/)
- This link provides a brief introduction on JSON.(https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_json_intro.asp)