Google Summer of Code

Adding Global Search and Extending Bookmark Views in Open Event Android

When we design an application it is essential that the design and feature set enables the user to find all relevant information she or he is looking for. In the first versions of the Open Event Android App it was difficult to find the Sessions and Speakers related to a certain Track. It was only possible to search for them individually. The user also could not view bookmarks on the Main Page but had to go to a separate tab to view them. These were some capabilities I wanted to add to the app.

In this post I will outline the concepts and advantages of a Global Search and a Home Screen in the app. I took inspiration from the Google I/O 2017 App  that had these features already. And, I am demonstrating how I added a Home Screen which also enabled users to view their bookmarks on the Home Screen itself.

Global Search v/s Local Search

Local Search
Global Search

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If we observe clearly in the above images we can see there exists a stark difference in the capabilities of each search.
See how in the Local Search we are just able to search within the Tracks section and not anything else.
This is fixed in the Global Search page which exists along with the new home screen.
As all the results that a user might need are obtained from a single search, it improves the overall user-experience of the app. Also a noticeable feature that was missing in the current iteration of the application was that a user had to go to a separate tab to view his/her bookmarks. It would be better for the app to have a home page detailing all the Event’s/Conference’s details as well as display user bookmarks on the homepage.

New Home

Home screen
Home screen with Bookmarks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home screen with Bookmarks               
Home screen Demo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above posted images/gifs indicate the functioning and the UI/UX of the new Homescreen within the app.
Currently I am working to further improve the way the Bookmarks are displayed.
The new home screen provides the user with the event details i.e FOSSASIA 2017 in this case. This would be different for each conference/event and the data is fetched from the open-event-orga server(the first part of the project) if it doesn’t already exist in the JSON files provided in the assets folder of the application. All the event information is being populated by the JSON files provided in the assets folder in the app directory structure.

  • config.json
  • sponsors.json
  • microlocations.json
  • event.json(this stores the information that we see on the home screen)
  • sessions.json
  • speakers.json
  • track.json

All the file names are descriptive enough to denote what do all of them store.I hope that I have put forward why the addition of a New Home with Bookmarks along with the Global Search feature was a neat addition to the app.

Link to PR for this feature : https://github.com/fossasia/open-event-android/pull/1565

Resources

 

 

Continue ReadingAdding Global Search and Extending Bookmark Views in Open Event Android

Using Ember.js Components in Open Event Frontend

Ember.js is a comprehensive JavaScript framework for building highly ambitious web applications. The basic tenet of Ember.js is convention over configuration which means that it understands that a large part of the code, as well as development process, is common to most of the web applications. Talking about the components which are nothing but the elements whose role remain same with same properties and functions within the entire project. Components allow developers to bundle up HTML elements and styles into reusable custom elements which can be called anywhere within the project.

In Ember, the components consist of two parts: some JavaScript code and an HTMLBars template. The JavaScript component file defines the behaviour and properties of the component. The behaviours of the component are typically defined using actions. The HTMLBars file defines the markup for the component’s UI. By default, the component will be rendered into a ‘div’ tag element, but a different element can be defined if required. A great thing about templates in Ember is that other components can be called inside of a component’s template. To call a component in an Ember app, we must use {{curly-brace-syntax}}. By design, components are completely isolated which means that they are not directly affected by any surrounding CSS or JavaScript.

Let’s demonstrate a basic Ember component in reference to Open Event Frontend Project for displaying the text as a popup. The component will render a simple text view which will display the entire text. The component is designed with the purpose that many times due to unavailability of space we’re unable to show the complete text so such cases the component will compare the available space with the space required by the whole text view to display the text. If in case the available space is not sufficient then the text will be ellipsized and on hovering the text a popup will appear where the complete text can be seen.

Generating the component

The component can be generated using the following command:

$ ember g component smart-overflow

Note: The components name needs to include a hyphen. This is an Ember convention, but it is an important one as it’ll ensure there are no naming collisions with future HTML elements.This will create the required .js and .hbs files needed to define the component, as well as an Ember integration test.

The Component Template

In the app/templates/components/smart-overflow.hbs file we can create some basic markup to display the text when the component is called. 

<span> {{yield}} </span>

The {{yield}} is handlebars expressions which will be helpful in rendering the data to display when the component is called.

The JavaScript Code

In the app/components/smart-overflow.js file, we will define the how the component will work when it is called.

import Ember from 'ember';

const { Component } = Ember;

export default Component.extend({
  classNames: ['smart-overflow'],
  didInsertElement() {
    this._super(...arguments);
    var $headerSpan = this.$('span');
    var $header = this.$();
    $header.attr('data-content', $headerSpan.text());
    $header.attr('data-variation', 'tiny');
    while ($headerSpan.outerHeight() > $header.height()) {
      $headerSpan.text((index, text) => {
        return text.replace(/\W*\s(\S)*$/, '...');
      });
      $header.popup({
        position: 'top center'
      });
      this.set('$header', $header);
    }
  },
  willDestroyElement() {
    this._super(...arguments);
    if (this.get('$header')) {
      this.get('$header').popup('destroy');
    }
  }
});

 

In the above piece of code, we have first taken the size of the available space in header variable and then taken the size of the content in header span variable. After that, we’re comparing both the sizes to check if the content is greater than the available space then we are ellipsizing the content and create a popup to display the complete text to produce good user experience.

Passing data to the component

To allow the component to display the data properly, we need to pass it in.

In the app/templates/components/event-card.hbs file we can call the component as many times as desired and pass in relevant data for each attribute.

<div class="ui card {{unless isWide 'event fluid' 'thirteen wide computer ten wide tablet sixteen wide mobile column'}}">
    {{#unless isWide}}
      <a class="image" href="{{href-to 'public' event.identifier}}">
        {{widgets/safe-image src=(if event.large event.large event.placeholderUrl)}}
      </a>
    {{/unless}}
    <a class="main content" href="{{href-to 'public' event.identifier}}">
      {{#smart-overflow class='header'}}
        {{event.name}}
      {{/smart-overflow}}
      <div class="meta">
        <span class="date">
          {{moment-format event.startTime 'ddd, MMM DD HH:mm A'}}
        </span>
      </div>
      {{#smart-overflow class='description'}}
        {{event.shortLocationName}}
      {{/smart-overflow}}
    </a>
    <div class="extra content small text">
      <span class="right floated">
        <i role="button" class="share alternate link icon" {{action shareEvent event}}></i>
      </span>
      <span>
        {{#if hasBlock}}
          {{yield}}
        {{else}}
          {{#each tags as |tag|}}
            <a>{{tag}}</a>
          {{/each}}
        {{/if}}
      </span>
    </div>
  </div>

 

Now if you view the app in the browser at localhost:4200, you will see something like this.

Fig. 1

In the end, we can say that with the components, the code remains much clear and readable. It makes more sense to the developers who happen upon them. The best part about them is their reusability across the application making the development process faster and much more efficient.

Reference: The Complete source for the smart overflow can be found here.

Continue ReadingUsing Ember.js Components in Open Event Frontend
Read more about the article Forms and their validation using Semantic UI in Open Event Frontend

Forms and their validation using Semantic UI in Open Event Frontend

A web form acts as a communication bridge that allows a user to communicate with the organisation and vice versa. In the Open Event project, we need forms so users can contact the organisation, to register themselves, to log into the website, to order a ticket or to query for some information. Here are a few things which were kept in mind before we designed forms in the Open Event Frontend Project:

  • The forms were designed on the principle of keeping it simple which means that it should ask only for the relevant information which is required in actual.
  • They contained the relevant fields ordered in a logical way according to their importance.
  • They offered clear error messages instantly to give direct feedback and allow users to make instant corrections.
  • The clear examples were shown in the front of the field.
  • Proper spacing among the fields was maintained to display proper error messages to the respective form fields.
  • The mandatory fields are highlighted using ‘*’ to avoid confusion.
  • Proper colour combinations have been used to inform the user about the progress while filling the form. For eg. red for any ‘error or incomplete’ information while green signifies ‘correct’.
  • Saving the current data in case the user has to go back to make any corrections later.
  • Allowing to toggle through the form using the keyboard.

The above designing principles helped in avoiding the negative user experience while using the forms.

Let’s take a closer look at the form and the form validation in case of purchase a new ticket form on the Orders page in Open Event Front-end application.

Creating a form

Let’s start by writing some HTML for the form:

<form class="ui form" {{action 'submit' on='submit' }}>
  <div class="ui padded segment">
    <h4 class="ui horizontal divider header">
      <i class="ticket icon"></i>
      {{t 'Ticket Buyer'}}
    </h4>
    <div class="field">
      <label class="required" for="firstname">{{t 'First Name'}}</label>
      {{input type='text' name='first_name' value=buyer.firstName}}
    </div>
    <div class="field">
      <label class="required" for="lastname">{{t 'Last Name'}}</label>
      {{input type='text' name='last_name' value=buyer.lastName}}
    </div>
    <div class="field">
      <label class="required" for="email">{{t 'Email'}}</label>
      {{input type='text' name='email' value=buyer.email}}
    </div>
    <h4 class="ui horizontal divider header">
        <i class="ticket icon"></i>
        {{t 'Ticket Holder\'s Information'}}
    </h4>
    {{#each holders as |holder index|}}
      <div class="inline field">
        <i class="user icon"></i>
         <label>{{t 'Ticket Holder '}}{{inc index}}</label>
      </div>
      <div class="field">
        <label class="required" for="firstname">{{t 'First Name'}}</label>
        {{input type='text' name=(concat 'first_name_' index) value=holder.firstName}}
      </div>
      <div class="field">
        <label class="required" for="lastname">{{t 'Last Name'}}</label>
        {{input type='text' name=(concat 'last_name_' index) value=holder.lastName}}
      </div>
      <div class="field">
        <label class="required" for="email">{{t 'Email'}}</label>
        {{input type='text' name=(concat 'email_' index) value=holder.email}}
      </div>
      <div class="field">
        {{ui-checkbox label=(t 'Same as Ticket Buyer') checked=holder.sameAsBuyer onChange=(action 'fillHolderData' holder)}}
      </div>
    {{/each}}
    <p>
      {{t 'By clicking "Pay Now", I acknowledge that I have read and agree with the Open Event terms of services and privacy policy.'}}
    </p>
    <div class="center aligned">
      <button type="submit" class="ui teal submit button">{{t 'Pay Now'}}</button>
    </div>
  </div>
</form>

 

The complete code for the form can be seen here.

In the above code, we have used Semantic UI elements like button, input, label, icon, header and modules like dropdown, checkbox to create the basic structure of the form.

The form is created using the Semantic markup. Along with semantic UI collection “form”, the segment element has been used to create the grouping of similar content like we have a timer and its related description that after 10 minutes the reservation will no longer be held are put together in a segment where they are arranged using semantic UI view “statistic”. Due to the vastness of semantic UI, all the styling has been done using it like fields inlining, button styling, segment background coloring etc.

The form is created using the Semantic markup. Along with semantic UI collection “form”, the segment element has been used to create the grouping of similar content like we have a timer and its related description that after 10 minutes the reservation will no longer be held are put together in a segment where they are arranged using semantic UI view “statistic”. Semantic UI elements like button, input, label, icon, header and modules like dropdown, checkbox have been used. Due to the vastness of semantic UI, all the styling has been done using it like fields inlining, button styling, segment background colouring etc.

The page for the above HTML code looks like this:

Image for the order form

Fig. 1: Order Form to purchase a ticket

The complete form can be seen on this link.

Adding form validations

We can also add validation in HTML format but writing the validation in JavaScript file is considered good practice.

Let’s see how we can add validation to fields in Javascript.

  getValidationRules() {
    let firstNameValidation = {
      rules: [
        {
          type   : 'empty',
          prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your first name')
        }
      ]
    };
    let lastNameValidation = {
      rules: [
        {
          type   : 'empty',
          prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your last name')
        }
      ]
    };
    let emailValidation = {
      rules: [
        {
          type   : 'empty',
          prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your email')
        }
      ]
    };
    let validationRules = {
      inline : true,
      delay  : false,
      on     : 'blur',
      fields : {
        firstName: {
          identifier : 'first_name',
          rules      : [
            {
              type   : 'empty',
              prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your first name')
            }
          ]
        },
        lastName: {
          identifier : 'last_name',
          rules      : [
            {
              type   : 'empty',
              prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your last name')
            }
          ]
        },
        email: {
          identifier : 'email',
          rules      : [
            {
              type   : 'email',
              prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter a valid email address')
            }
          ]
        },
        zipCode: {
          identifier : 'zip_code',
          rules   : [
            {
              type   : 'empty',
              prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your zip code')
            }
          ]
        } 
    };

Let’s break this up, first, we have an array of validation rules.

  zipCode: {
     identifier : 'zip_code',
        rules   : [
        {
          type   : 'empty',
          prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your zip code')
         }
      ]
   }

The first part zipcode is the identifier in Semantic.

The next bit of the identifier, this can match against either id, name or data-validate attributes on the element. We have here picked up the name which we’re using on our labels.

Next bit of the rules, which is an array of objects defining the type of validation, and the message to prompt the user with.

The second part is the settings:

inline : true,

delay : false,

on : 'blur',

This part says we want validation to occur on blur, delayed and to be inline. This gives us the following effect:

Fig. 2: Order Form after validation

To summarise the post, one can say we have seen here how the form to purchase the event ticket has been designed, coded and styled. The complete form can be seen on this link and the complete code can be seen here. The entire form has been designed in such a way to keep it simple, clear and trustworthy without losing the user interaction.

References:

Continue ReadingForms and their validation using Semantic UI in Open Event Frontend

How to make SUSI AI Line Bot

In order to integrate SUSI’s API with Line bot you will need to have a line account first so that you can follow below procedure. You can download app from here.

Pre-requisites:

  • Line app
  • Github
  • Heroku

    Steps:
    1. Install Node.js from the link below on your computer if you haven’t installed it already https://nodejs.org/en/.
    2. Create a folder with any name and open shell and change your current directory to the new folder you created.
    3. Type npm init in command line and enter details like name, version and entry point.
    4. Create a file with the same name that you wrote in entry point in above given step. i.e index.js and it should be in same folder you created.
    5. Type following commands in command line  npm install –save @line/bot-sdk. After bot-sdk is installed type npm install –save express after express is installed type npm install –save request when all the modules are installed check your package.json modules will be included within dependencies portion.

      Your package.json file should look like this.

      {
"name": "SUSI-Bot",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "SUSI AI LINE bot",
"main": "index.js",
"dependencies": {
   "@line/bot-sdk": "^1.0.0",
   "express": "^4.15.2",
   "request": "^2.81.0"
},
"scripts": {
   "start": "node index.js"
 }
}
    6. Copy following code into file you created i.e index.js 
      'use strict';
const line = require('@line/bot-sdk');
const express = require('express');
var request = require("request");

// create LINE SDK config from env variables

const config = {
   channelAccessToken: process.env.CHANNEL_ACCESS_TOKEN,
   channelSecret: process.env.CHANNEL_SECRET,
};

// create LINE SDK client

const client = new line.Client(config);


// create Express app
// about Express: https://expressjs.com/

const app = express();

// register a webhook handler with middleware

app.post('/webhook', line.middleware(config), (req, res) => {
   Promise
       .all(req.body.events.map(handleEvent))
       .then((result) => res.json(result));
});

// event handler

function handleEvent(event) {
   if (event.type !== 'message' || event.message.type !== 'text') {
       // ignore non-text-message event
       return Promise.resolve(null);
   }

   var options1 = {
       method: 'GET',
       url: 'http://api.asksusi.com/susi/chat.json',
       qs: {
           timezoneOffset: '-330',
           q: event.message.text
       }
   };

   request(options, function(error, response, body) {
       if (error) throw new Error(error);
       // answer fetched from susi
       //console.log(body);
       var ans = (JSON.parse(body)).answers[0].actions[0].expression;
       // create a echoing text message
       const answer = {
           type: 'text',
           text: ans
       };

       // use reply API

       return client.replyMessage(event.replyToken, answer);
   })
}

// listen on port

const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
app.listen(port, () => {
   console.log(`listening on ${port}`);
});
    7. Now we have to get channel access token and channel secret to get that follow below steps.

    8. If you have Line account then move to next step else sign up for an account and make one.
    9. Create Line account on  Line Business Center with messaging API and follow these steps:
    10. In the Line Business Center, select Messaging API under the Service category at the top of the page.
    11. Select start using messaging API, enter required information and confirm it.
    12. Click LINE@ Manager option, In settings go to bot settings and Enable messaging API
    13. Now we have to configure settings. Allow messages using webhook and select allow for “Use Webhooks”.
    14. Go to Accounts option at top of page and open LINE Developers.
    15. To get Channel access token for accessing API, click ISSUE for the “Channel access token” item.
    16. Click EDIT and set a webhook URL for your Channel. To get webhook url deploy your bot to heroku and see below steps.
    17. Before deploying we have to make a github repository for chatbot to make github repository follow these steps:

      In command line change current directory to folder we created above and  write

      git init
git add .
git commit -m”initial”
git remote add origin <URL for remote repository> 
git remote -v
git push -u origin master

      You will get URL for remote repository by making repository on your github and copying this link of your repository.

    18. To deploy your bot to heroku you need an account on Heroku and after making an account make an app.
    19. Deploy app using github deployment method.


    20. Select Automatic deployment method.


    21. After making app copy this link and paste it in webhook url in Line channel console page from where we got channel access token.

                https://<your_heroku_app_name>.herokuapp.com/webhook
    22. Your SUSI AI Line bot is ready add this account as a friend and start chatting with SUSI.
      Here is the LINE API reference https://devdocs.line.me/en/
Continue ReadingHow to make SUSI AI Line Bot
Read more about the article Designing Control UI of PSLab Android using Moqups

Designing Control UI of PSLab Android using Moqups

Mockups are an essential part of app development cycle. With numerous mock-up tools available for android apps (both offline and online), choosing the right mock-up tool becomes quite essential. The developers need a tool that supports the latest features like drag & drop elements, support collaboration upto some extent and allow easy sharing of mockups. So, Moqups was chosen as the mockups tool for the PSLab Android team.

Like other mock-up tools available in the market, using moqups is quite simple and it’s neat & simple user interface makes the job easier. This blog discusses some of the important aspects that need to be taken care of while designing mockups.

A typical online mock-up tool would look like this having a palette to drag & drop UI elements like Buttons, Text boxes, Check boxes etc. Additionally a palette to modify the features of each element ( here on the right ) and other options at the top related to prototyping, previewing etc.

    • The foremost challenge while designing any mock-up is to keep the design neat and simple such that even a layman doesn’t face problems while using it. A simple UI is always appealing and the current trend of UIs is creating flat & crisp UIs.

    • For example, the above mock-up design has numerous advantages for both a user and also as a programmer. There are seek bars as well as text boxes to input the values along with the feature of displaying the value that actually gets implemented and it’s much simpler to use. From the developer’s perspective, presence of seven identical views allows code reuse. A simple layout can be designed for one functionality and since all of them are identical, the layout can be reused in a Recyclerview.
    • The above design is a portion of the Control UI which displays the functionalities for  using PSLab as a function generator and as a voltage/current source.

    • The other section of the UI is of the Read portion. This has the functionalities to measure various parameters like voltage, resistance, capacitance, frequency and counting pulses. Here, drop-down boxes have been provided at places where channel selection is required. Since voltages are most commonly measured values in any experiment, voltages of all the channels have been displayed simultaneously.
    • Attempts should always be made to keep the smaller views as identical as possible since it becomes easier for the developer to implement it and also for the user to understand.

 

The Control UI has an Advanced Section which has features like Waveform Generators allows to generate sine/square waves of a given frequency & phase, Configuring Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)  and selecting the Digital output channel. Since, the use of such features are limited to higher level experiments, they have been separately placed in the Advanced section.

Even here drop-down boxes, text boxes & check boxes have been used to make UI look interactive.

The common dilemma faced while writing the XML file is regarding the view type to be chosen as Android provides a lot of them like LinearLayout, ConstraintLayout, ScrollView, RecyclerView, ListView etc. So, although there are several possible ways of designing a view. Certain things like using ListView or RecyclerView where there is repetition of elements is easier and when the elements are quite distinct from each other, it is better to stick to LinearLayout and ConstraintLayout.

Continue ReadingDesigning Control UI of PSLab Android using Moqups
Read more about the article Using ButterKnife in PSLab Android App

Using ButterKnife in PSLab Android App

ButterKnife is an Android Library which is used for View injection and binding. Unlike Dagger, ButterKnife is limited to views whereas Dagger has a much broader utility and can be used for injection of anything like views, fragments etc. Being limited to views makes it much more simpler to use compared to dagger.

The need for using ButterKnife in our project PSLab Android was felt due to the fact binding views would be much more simpler in case of layouts like that of Oscilloscope Menu which has multiple views in the form of Textboxes, Checkboxes, Seekbars, Popups etc. Also, ButterKnife makes it possible to access the views outside the file in which they were declared. In this blog, the use of ButterKnife is limited to activities and fragments.

ButterKnife can used anywhere we would have otherwise used findViewById(). It helps in preventing code repetition while instantiating views in the layout. The ButterKnife blog has neatly listed all the possible uses of the library.

The added advantage of using Butterknife are-

  • The hassle of using Boilerplate code is not needed and the code volume is reduced significantly in some cases.
  • Setting up ButterKnife is quite easy as all it takes is adding one dependency to your gradle file.
  • It also has other features like Resource Binding (i.e binding String, Color, Drawable etc.).
  • Other uses like simplification of code while using buttons. For example, there is no need of using findViewById and setOnClickListener, simple annotation of the button ID with @OnClick does the task.

Using butterknife was essential for PSLab Android since for the views shown below which has too many elements, writing boilerplate code can be a very tedious task.

Using ButterKnife in activities

The PSLab App defines several activities like MainActivity, SplashActivity, ControlActivity etc. each of which consists of views that can be injected with ButterKnife.

After setting up ButterKnife by adding dependencies in gradle files, import these modules in every activity.

import butterknife.BindView;
import butterknife.ButterKnife;

Traditionally, views in Android are defined as follows using the ID defined in a layout file. For this findViewById is used to retrieve the widgets.

private NavigationView navigationView;
private DrawerLayout drawer;
private Toolbar toolbar;

navigationView = (NavigationView) findViewById(org.fossasia.pslab.R.id.nav_view);
drawer = (DrawerLayout) findViewById(org.fossasia.pslab.R.id.drawer_layout);
toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(org.fossasia.pslab.R.id.toolbar);

However, with the use of Butterknife, fields are annotated with @BindView and a View ID for finding and casting the view automatically in the layout files.
After the annotation, finding and casting of views ButterKnife.bind(this) is called to bind the views in the corresponding activity.

@BindView(R.id.nav_view) NavigationView navigationView;
@BindView(R.id.drawer_layout) DrawerLayout drawer;
@BindView(R.id.toolbar) Toolbar toolbar;

setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
ButterKnife.bind(this);

Using ButterKnife in fragments

The PSLab Android App implements ApplicationFragment, DesignExperimentsFragment, HomeFragment etc., so ButterKnife for fragments is also used.

Using ButterKnife is fragments is slightly different from using it in activities as the binded views need to be destroyed on leaving the fragment as the fragments have different life cycle( Read about it here). For this an Unbinder needs to be defined to unbind the views before they are destroyed.

Quoting from the official documentation

When binding a fragment in OnCreateView, set the views to null in OnDestroyView. Butter Knife returns an Unbinder instance when you call bind to do this for you. Call its unbind method in the appropriate lifecycle callback.

So, an additional module of ButterKnife is imported

import butterknife.BindView;
import butterknife.ButterKnife;
import butterknife.Unbinder;

Similar as that of activities, the code below can be replaced by the corresponding ButterKnife code.

TextView tvDeviceStatus = (TextView)view.findViewById(org.fossasia.pslab.R.id.tv_device_status);
TextView tvVersion = (TextView)view.findViewById(org.fossasia.pslab.R.id.tv_device_version);
ImageView imgViewDeviceStatus = (ImageView)view.findViewById(org.fossasia.pslab.R.id.img_device_status);

@BindView(R.id.tv_device_status) TextView tvDeviceStatus;
@BindView(R.id.tv_device_version) TextView tvVersion;
@BindView(R.id.img_device_status) ImageView imgViewDeviceStatus;
private Unbinder unbinder;

Additionally, the unbinder object is used to store the returned Unbinder instance when ButterKnife.bind is called for Fragments.

unbinder = ButterKnife.bind(this,view);

Finally, the unbind method of unbinder is called while view is destroyed.

@Override public void onDestroyView() {
super.onDestroyView();
unbinder.unbind();
}
Continue ReadingUsing ButterKnife in PSLab Android App
Read more about the article Prototyping PSLab Android App using Invision

Prototyping PSLab Android App using Invision

Often, while designing apps, we need planning and proper designing before actually building the apps. This is where mock-up tools and prototyping is useful. While designing user interfaces, the first step is usually creating mockups. Mockups give quite a good idea about the appearance of various layouts of the app. However, mockups are just still images and they don’t give a clue about the user experience of the app. This is where prototyping tools are useful. Prototyping helps to get an idea about the user experience without actually building the app.

Invision is an online prototyping service which was used for initial testing of the PSLab Android app. Some of pictures below are the screenshots of our prototype taken in Invision. Since, it supports collaboration among developers, it proves to be a very useful tool. 

  • Using Invision is quite simple. Visit the Invision website and sign up for an account.Before using invision for prototyping, the mockups of the UI layouts must be ready since Invision is simply meant for prototyping and not creating mockups. There are a lot of mock-up tools available online which are quite easy to use.
  • Create a new project on Invision. Select the project type – Prototype in this case followed by selecting the platform of the project i.e. Android, iOS etc.
  • Collaborators can be added to a project for working together.
    • After project creation and adding collaborators is done with, the mock-up screens can be uploaded to the project directory
    • Select any mock-up screen, the window below appears, there are a few modes available in the bottom navbar – Preview mode, Build mode, Comment mode, Inspect Mode and History Mode.
        • Preview Mode – View your screen and test the particular screen prototype.
        • Build Mode – Assign functionality to buttons, navbars, seek bars, check boxes etc. and other features like transitions.
        • Comment Mode – Leave comments/suggestions regarding performance/improvement for other collaborators to read.
        • Inspect mode – Check for any unforeseen errors while building.
        • History Mode – Check the history of changes on the screen.
  • Switch to the build mode, it would now prompt to click & drag to create boxes around buttons, check boxes, seek bars etc,(shown above). Once a box ( called as “hotspot” in Invision ), a dialog box pops up asking to assign functionalities.
  • The hotspot/box which was selected must link to another menu/layout or result in some action like app closing. This functionality is provided by the “Link To:” option.
  • Then the desired gesture for activating the hotspot is selected which can be tap for buttons & check boxes, slide for navbars & seek bars etc from the “Gesture:” option.
  • Lastly, the transition resulting due to moving from the hotspot to the assigned window in “Link To:” is selected from the “Transition:” menu.

This process can be repeated for all the screens in the project. Finally for testing and previewing the final build, the screen which appears when the app starts is selected and further navigation, gestures etc. are tested there. So, building prototypes is quite an interesting and easy task.

Additional Resources

Continue ReadingPrototyping PSLab Android App using Invision
Read more about the article Adding Send Button in SUSI.AI webchat

Adding Send Button in SUSI.AI webchat

Our SUSI.AI web chat app is improving day by day. One such day it looked like this: 

It replies to your query and have all the basic functionality, but something was missing. When viewed in mobile, we realised that this should have a send button.

Send buttons actually make chat apps look cool and give them their complete look.

Now a method was defined in MessageCompose Component of React App, which took the target value of  textarea and pass it as props.

Method:

_onClickButton(){
     let text = this.state.text.trim();
     if (text) {
       Actions.createMessage(text, this.props.threadID);
     }
     this.setState({text: ''});
   }

Now this method was to be called in onClick Action of our send Button, which was included in our div rendered by MessageComposer Component.

This method will also be called on tap on ENTER key on keyboard. Implementation of this method has also been done, this can be seen here.

Why wrap textarea and button in a div and not render as two independent items ?

Well in react you can only render single components, so wrapping them in a div is our only option.

Now since we had our functionality running, It was time for styling.

Our team choose to use http://www.material-ui.com/ and it’s components for styling.

We chose to have FloatingActionButton as send button.

Now to use components of material ui in our component, several importing was to be done. But to enable these feature we needed to change our render to DOM to :-

import MuiThemeProvider from 'material-ui/styles/MuiThemeProvider';
 
 const App = () => (
   <MuiThemeProvider>
     <ChatApp />
   </MuiThemeProvider>
 );
 
 ReactDOM.render(
   <App /> ,
   document.getElementById('root')
 );

Imports in our MessageComposer looked like this :-

import Send from 'material-ui/svg-icons/content/send';
import FloatingActionButton from 'material-ui/FloatingActionButton';
import injectTapEventPlugin from 'react-tap-event-plugin';
 injectTapEventPlugin();

The injectTapEventPlugin is very important method, in order to have event handler’s in our send button, we need to call this method and method which handles onClick event  is know as onTouchTap.

The JSX code which was to be rendered looked like this:

<div className="message-composer">
         <textarea
           name="message"
           value={this.state.text}
           onChange={this._onChange.bind(this)}
           onKeyDown={this._onKeyDown.bind(this)}
           ref={(textarea)=> { this.nameInput = textarea; }}
           placeholder="Type a message..."
         />
         <FloatingActionButton
           backgroundColor=' #607D8B'
           onTouchTap={this._onClickButton.bind(this)}
           style={style}>
           <Send />
         </FloatingActionButton>
       </div>

Styling for button was done separately and it looked like:

const style = {
     mini: true,
     top: '1px',
     right: '5px',
     position: 'absolute',
 };

Ultimately after successfully implementing all of this our SUSI.AI web chat had a good looking FloatingAction send Button.

This can be tested here.

Continue ReadingAdding Send Button in SUSI.AI webchat

Integrating an Image Editing Page in Phimpme Android

The main aim of the Phimpme is to develop image editing and sharing application as an alternative to proprietary solutions like Instagram. Any user can choose a photo from the gallery or click a picture from the camera and upload it on the various social media platform including Drupal and wordpress. As most of the image editor applications in the app store currently my team and I discussed and listed down the basic functionality of the Image editing activity. We have listed down the following features for image Editing activity:

  • Filters.
  • Stickers
  • Image tuning

Choosing the Image Editing Application

There are number of existing Open Source projects that we went through to check how they could be integrated into Phimpme. We looked into those projects which are licensed under the  MIT Licence. As per the MIT Licence the user has the liberty to modify the use the code, modify it, merge, publish it without any restrictions. Image-Editor Android is one such application which has MIT Licence. The Image-Editor Android has extensive features for manipulating and enhancing the image. The features are as follows:

  • Edit Image by drawing on it.
  • Applying stickers on the image.
  • Applying filters.
  • Crop.
  • Rotating the image.
  • Text on the image.

It is an ideal application to be implemented in our project.

The basic flow of the application

First, getting the image either by gallery or camera. The team has implemented leafPic and openCamera. Second, redirecting the image from the leafPic gallery to the Image editing activity by choosing edit option from the popup menu.

Populating the Menu in the popup menu in XML:

<menu> tag is the root node, which contains ites in the popup menu. The following code is used to populate the menu:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:id="@+id/action_edit"
          android:icon="@drawable/ic_edit"
          android:title="@string/Edit"
          android:showAsAction="ifRoom"/>
    <item android:id="@+id/action_use_as"
          android:icon="@drawable/ic_use_as"
          android:title="@string/useAs" />
</menu>

Setting up the Image Editing Activity

Image-Editor Android application contains two main sections.

  • MainActivity (To get the image).
  • imageeditlibrary(To edit the image)

We need to import imageeditlibrary module. Android studios gives easy method to import a module from any other project using GUI. This can be done as follows: File->new->import module then choosing the module from the desired application.

Things to remember after importing any module from any other project:

  • Making sure that the minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion in the gradle of the imported module and the current working project is same. In Phimpme the minSdkVersion is 16 and tagetSdkVersion is 25, which is used as standard SDK version.
  • Importing all the classes in the used in the imageeditlibrary module before using them in the leadPic gallery.

Sending Image to Image Editing Activity

This includes three tasks:

  • Handling onclick listeners.
  • Sending the image from the leafPic Activity
  • Receiving the the image in EditImageActivity.

Handling onClick Listener:

public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        switch (item.getItemId()) {
case R.id.action_edit:
// setOnclick listener here.
  }
}

Sending Image to EditImageActivity:

First we need to get the path of the image to be send. For this we need FileUtils class to handle the source address of the image. In FileUtils we use the function getEditFile().

public static File genEditFile(){
        return FileUtils.getEmptyFile("croppedImage"
                + System.currentTimeMillis() + ".png");
    }

Which calls the function getEmptyFile(String name):

public static File getEmptyFile(String name) {
        File folder = FileUtils.createFolders();
        if (folder != null) {
            if (folder.exists()) {
                File file = new File(folder, name);
                return file;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

After getting the path of the file we need to send the path of the file to the EditImageActivity:

Uri uri = Uri.fromFile(new File(getAlbum().getCurrentMedia().getPath()));
                File outputFile = FileUtils.genEditFile();
                EditImageActivity.start(this,String.valueOf(uri),outputFile.getAbsolutePath(),ACTION_REQUEST_EDITIMAGE);

Receiving the image in EdtiImageActivity:

This is done by calling getdata() function in onCreate function.

private void getData() {
        filePath = getIntent().getStringExtra(FILE_PATH);
        saveFilePath = getIntent().getStringExtra(EXTRA_OUTPUT);
        loadImage(filePath);
    }

EditImageActivity Layout:

Conclusion

When integrating files from another activity we have to keep the API version of both the projects same. The best way to send an image to another activity is to save the image internally and then call the image path from the other activity.

Continue ReadingIntegrating an Image Editing Page in Phimpme Android
Read more about the article Map Support for SUSI Webchat

Map Support for SUSI Webchat

SUSI chat client supports map tiles now for queries related to location. SUSI responds with an interactive internal map tile with the location pointed by a marker. It also provides you with a link to open street maps where you can get the whole view of the location using the zooming options provided and also gives the population count for that location.

Lets visit SUSI WebChat and try it out.

Query : Where is london
Response :

Implementation:

How do we know that a map tile is to be rendered?
The actions in the API response tell the client what to render. The client loops through the actions array and renders the response for each action accordingly.

"actions": [
  {
    "type": "answer",
    "expression": "City of London is a place with a population of 7556900.             Here is a map: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/51.51279067225417/-0.09184009399817228"
  },
  {
    "type": "anchor",
    "link":    "https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/51.51279067225417/-0.09184009399817228",
    "text": "Link to Openstreetmap: City of London"
  },
  {
    "type": "map",
    "latitude": "51.51279067225417",
    "longitude": "-0.09184009399817228",
    "zoom": "13"
  }
]

Note: The API response has been trimmed to show only the relevant content.

The first action element is of type answer so the client renders the text response, ‘City of London is a place with a population of 7556900. Here is a map: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/51.51279067225417/-0.09184009399817228’

The second action element is of type anchor with the text to display and the link to hyperlink specified by the text and link attributes, so the client renders the text `Link to Openstreetmap: City of London`, hyperlinked to “https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/51.51279067225417/-0.09184009399817228”.

Finally, the third action element is of type map. Latitude, Longitude and zoom level information are also  specified using latitude, longitude and zoom attributes. The client renders a map using these attributes.

I used ‘react-leaflet’ module to render the interactive map tiles.

To integrate it into our project and set the required style for the map tiles, we need to load Leaflet’s CSS style sheet and we also need to include height and width for the map component. 

<link rel="stylesheet"  href="http://cdn.leafletjs.com/leaflet/v0.7.7/leaflet.css" />

.leaflet-container {
  height: 150px;
  width: 80%;
  margin: 0 auto;
}

case 'map': {

  let lat = parseFloat(data.answers[0].actions[index].latitude);
  let lng = parseFloat(data.answers[0].actions[index].longitude);
  let zoom = parseFloat(data.answers[0].actions[index].zoom);
  let mymap = drawMap(lat,lng,zoom);

  listItems.push(
    <li className='message-list-item' key={action+index}>
      <section className={messageContainerClasses}>
        {mymap}
        <p className='message-time'>
          {message.date.toLocaleTimeString()}
        </p>;
      </section>
    </li>
  );

  break;
}

import { divIcon } from 'leaflet';
import { Map, Marker, Popup, TileLayer } from 'react-leaflet';


// Draw a Map

function drawMap(lat,lng,zoom){

  let position = [lat, lng];

  const icon = divIcon({
    className: 'map-marker-icon',
    iconSize: [35, 35]
    });

  const map = (
    <Map center={position} zoom={zoom}>
      <TileLayer
      attribution=''
      url='http://{s}.tile.osm.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png'
      />
      <ExtendedMarker position={position} icon={icon}>
        <Popup>
          <span><strong>Hello!</strong> <br/> I am here.</span>
        </Popup>
      </ExtendedMarker>
    </Map>
  );

return map;

}

Here, I used a custom marker icon because the default icon provided by leaflet had an issue and was not being rendered. I used divIcon from leaflet to create a custom map marker icon.

When the map tile is rendered, we see a Popup message at the marker. The extended marker class is used to keep the Popup open initially.

class ExtendedMarker extends Marker {
  componentDidMount() {
    super.componentDidMount();
    this.leafletElement.openPopup();
  }
}


The function drawMap returns a Map tile component which is rendered and we have our interactive map!

Resources
Continue ReadingMap Support for SUSI Webchat