Adding a Countdown to Orders Page in Open Event Frontend

This blog post will illustrate how you can add a countdown to orders page which on finishing expires the ticket in Open Event. In Open Event we allow some predefined time for users to fill in their details and once the time expires order gets expired and tickets get released. Users can order the tickets again if they want.

We start by adding a createdAt field to orders model so that we can keep track of remaining time. To calculate the time when the order should expire we add predefined time in which user should fill their details to createdAt time. In this way, we get the time when the order will expire.

So now to calculate the remaining time we just subtract the expiring time from current time. And then we render this data into the template. We define getRemainingTime property in our template and fetch the data for that property with help of javascript.

To see the template code visit this link.

The challenge here is to update the time remaining after every second. For this, we take the help of ember runloop. The run.later() function of ember runloop helps us to calculate the property after every second and set it. Code for setting the remaining time with the help of javascript is given below.

// app/components/forms/orders/order-form.js

getRemainingTime: computed('data', function() {
    let willExpireAt = this.get('data.createdAt').add(10, 'minutes');
    this.timer(willExpireAt, this.get('data.identifier'));
  }),

  timer(willExpireAt, orderIdentifier) {
    run.later(() => {
      let currentTime = moment();
      let diff = moment.duration(willExpireAt.diff(currentTime));
      this.set('getRemainingTime', moment.utc(diff.asMilliseconds()).format('mm:ss'));
      if (diff > 0) {
        this.timer(willExpireAt, orderIdentifier);
      } else {
        this.get('data').reload();
        this.get('router').transitionTo('orders.expired', orderIdentifier);
      }
    }, 1000);
  }

 

As given in the code. We pass expiring time and order’s model instance to the timer function. Timer function calculates the remaining time and sets it to getRemainingTime property of template. Timer function runs after every second with the help of run.later() function of ember runloop. To format the remaining time into MM:SS we take help of moment.js library and format the data accordingly.

Once the remaining time is less than zero (time expires) we reload the model and transition current route to expired route. We do not have to set order status as expired inside the FE. Server sets the order as expired after the predefined time. So we just reload the model from the server and we get the updated status of the order.

Resources:
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Timer Option in Phimpme Android’s Camera

The Phimpme Android application comes in with all the options like clicking a picture, editing them and sharing it with the world using many many connected social media accounts. Not only this, it features a fully functional camera with lots of different functionality which a user wants in their day to day life. One such feature is the Timer option in Phimpme. In Phimpme, the user can go to the camera settings to enable or disable the Timer options and click their photos after setting the timer for a particular duration. After setting the timer and pressing the capture photo button, it also displays a ticker at the UI of the camera to notify the user the amount of time after which the photo will be clicked.

In this tutorial, I will be explaining how we have achieved this feature in the Phimpme application.

Step 1

The first thing we need to do is to display the options to the user in camera settings to enable/disable the timer and to select the specific amount of time for the delay in the capture. To do this we have made use of the pop-up view in which we have programmatically added all the timer values to be displayed to the user using the code snippet below:

final String[] timer_values = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.preference_timer_values);
  String[] timer_entries = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.preference_timer_entries);
String timer_value = sharedPreferences.getString(PreferenceKeys.getTimerPreferenceKey(), "0");
addArrayOptionsToPopup(Arrays.asList(timer_entries), getResources().getString(R.string.preference_timer), true, timer_index, false)

What the function addArrayOptionsToPopup does is that it adds the following arrays to the linear layout of the pop-up view programmatically.

Step 2

After displaying the timer values to the user, we need to think about the functionality of the camera if the timer is enabled. When the user presses the click picture button we check the condition whether the timer is enabled or not. If it is enabled, we make the application to wait for a specific amount of time before clicking the photo. This can be done using the CountDownTimer class which is provided by Android.

new CountDownTimer(timerDelay, 1000) {
   public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
          //Called after each second
       }
       public void onFinish() {
         //Called after timer delay
       }
   }.start();

What the above piece of code does is to wait for the specific amount of time as specified by the timer delay. Suppose the user selects the option to wait for 5 seconds then we set the timerDelay to be 5000, then the above code calls the onTick method after each second where we update the user that how much time is remaining and on the onFinish method we call the takePicture method to capture the image using the following line of code below.

mCamera.takePicture(null, null, mPicture);

This is how we have implemented the option of Timer in the Phimpme Android application. To get the full source code of the Camera, please check out the Phimpme Android GitHub repository listed in the resources section below.

Resources

  1. Android Developer Guide : CountDown Timer – https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/CountDownTimer.html
  2. StackOverflow – Implementing Timer in Camera – https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35355320/camera-application-timer-implementaion-issue
  3. GitHub – Phimpme Android Repository – https://github.com/fossasia/phimpme-android/
  4. GitHub – Open Camera Source Code – https://github.com/almalence/OpenCamera

 

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Adding Transition Effect Using RxJS And CSS In Voice Search UI Of Susper

 

Susper has been given a voice search feature through which it provides a user with a better experience of search. We introduced to enhance the speech-recognition user interface by adding transition effects. The transition effect was required to display appropriate messages according to voice being detected or not. The following messages were:

  • When a user should start a voice search, it should display ‘Speak Now’ message for 1-2 seconds and then show up with message ‘Listening…’ to acknowledge user that now it is ready to recognize the voice which will be spoken.
  • If a user should do not speak anything, it should display ‘Please check audio levels or your microphone working’ message in 3-4 seconds and should exit the voice search interface.

The idea of speech UI was taken from the market leader and it was implemented in a similar way. On the homepage, it looks like this:

On the results page, it looks like this:

For creating transitions like, ‘Listening…’ and ‘Please check audio levels and microphone’ messages, we used CSS, RxJS Observables and timer() function.

Let’s start with RxJS Observables and timer() function.

RxJS Observables and timer()

timer() is used to emit numbers in sequence in every specified duration or after a given duration. It acts as an observable. For example:

let countdown = Observable.timer(2000);
The above code will emit value of countdown in 2000 milliseconds. Similarly, let’s see another example:
let countdown = Observable.timer(2000, 6000);
The above code will emit value of countdown in 2000 milliseconds and subsequent values in every 6000 milliseconds.
export class SpeechToTextComponent implements OnInit {
  message: any = ‘Speak Now’;
  timer: any;
  subscription: any;
  ticks: any;
  miccolor: any = #f44;
}
ngOnInit() {
  this.timer = Observable.timer(1500, 2000);
  this.subscription = this.timer.subscribe(t => {
  this.ticks = t;// it will throw listening message after 1.5   sec
  if (t === 1) {
    this.message = Listening;
  }// subsequent events will be performed in 2 secs interval
  // as it has been defined in timer()
  if (t === 4) {
    this.message = Please check your microphone audio levels.;
    this.miccolor = #C2C2C2;
}// if no voice is given, it will throw audio level message
// and unsubscribe to the event to exit back on homepage
  if (t === 6) {
    this.subscription.unsubscribe();
    this.store.dispatch(new speechactions.SearchAction(false));
  }
 });
}
The above code will throw following messages at a particular time. For creating the text-animation effect, most developers go for plain javascript. The text-animation effects can also be achieved by using pure CSS.

Text animation using CSS

@webkitkeyframes typing {from {width:0;}}
.spch {
  fontweight: normal;
  lineheight: 1.2;
  pointerevents: none;
  position: none;
  textalign: left;
  –webkitfontsmoothing: antialiased;
  transition: opacity .1s easein, marginleft .5s easein,                  top  0s linear 0.218s;
  –webkitanimation: typing 2s steps(21,end), blinkcaret .5s                       stepend infinite alternate;
  whitespace: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  animationdelay: 3.5s;
}
@keyframes specifies animation code. Here width: 0; tells that animation begins from 0% width and ends to 100% width of the message. Also, animation-delay: 3.5s has been adjusted w.r.t timer to display messages with animation at the same time.
This is how it works now:

The source code for the implementation can be found in this pull request: https://github.com/fossasia/susper.com/pull/663

Resources:

 

 

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