NYTimesSearch is an android app that allows a user to search for articles on web using simple filters. The app utilizes New York Times Search API.
Submitted by: Zekun Wang
The following required functionality is completed:
- User can search for news article by specifying a query and launching a search. Search displays a grid of image results from the New York Times Search API.
- User can click on "settings" which allows selection of advanced search options to filter results
- User can configure advanced search filters such as:
- Begin Date (using a date picker)
- News desk values (Arts, Fashion & Style, Sports)
- Sort order (oldest or newest)
- Subsequent searches have any filters applied to the search results
- User can tap on any image in results to see the full text of article full-screen
- User can scroll down to see more articles. The maximum number of articles is limited by the API search.
The following optional features are implemented:
- Implements robust error handling, check if internet is available, handle error cases, network failures
- Used the ActionBar SearchView or custom layout as the query box instead of an EditText
- User can share an article link to their friends or email it to themselves
- Replaced Filter Settings Activity with a lightweight modal overlay
- Improved the user interface and experiment with image assets and/or styling and coloring
The following bonus features are implemented:
- Use the RecyclerView with the
StaggeredGridLayoutManagerto display improve the grid of image results - For different news articles that only have text or only have images, use Heterogenous Layouts with RecyclerView
- Apply the popular Butterknife annotation library to reduce view boilerplate.
- Use Parcelable instead of Serializable using the popular Parceler library.
- Leverages the data binding support module to bind data into layout templates.
- Replace all icon drawables and other static image assets with vector drawables where appropriate.
- Replace Picasso with Glide for more efficient image rendering.
-
Leverage the popular GSON library to streamline the parsing of JSON data. -
Leverages the Retrofit networking library to access the New York Times API.
The following additional features are implemented:
- Implement the ability to adjust layouts dynamically according to the device
- Improved styling of dialog fragment, actionbar and notification bar
- Implement uniform color pattern for the app
- Implement RecyclerView click effect
- Implement Toolbar to hide/show when scrolling
- Set RecyclerView back to top of list when double-tap on the Toolbar
- Implement floating action button to hide/show when scrolling
- Enable tap to view article in/out full screen on floating action button
Here's a walkthrough of implemented user stories:
GIF created with LiceCap.
Challenges encountered while building the app:
- Customize ListView adapter and design ListView item view.
- Fix layout problem from using different devices.
- Implement "infinite" scroll down
- Implement dynamic adjustment of GridView
- Modify styling of notification bar, action bar and dialog
- Set up RecyclerView adapter
- Set up StaggeredGridLayout
- Implement scrolling effect on Toolbar
- Implement Glide
- Implement GSON parsing
- Implement Retrofit
- Android Async HTTP - Simple asynchronous HTTP requests with JSON parsing
Picasso - Image loading and caching library for Android- Glide - Image loading and caching library for Android
Retrofit - Simple asynchronous HTTP requests with GSON parsing
Copyright [2016] [Zekun Wang]
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
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distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
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