Flixster

Flisxster shows the latest movies currently playing in theaters. The app utilizes the Movie Database API to display images and basic information about these movies to the user.

Time spent: 12 hours spent in total

User Stories

The following required functionality is completed:

  • User can scroll through current movies from the Movie Database API

The following optional features are implemented:

  • For each movie displayed, user can see the following details:
    • Title, Poster Image, Overview (Portrait mode)
    • Title, Backdrop Image, Overview (Landscape mode)
  • Layout is optimized with the ViewHolder pattern.
  • Display a nice default placeholder graphic for each image during loading.
  • Allow user to view details of the movie including ratings and popularity within a separate activity or dialog fragment.
  • Improved the user interface by experimenting with styling and coloring.
  • Apply rounded corners for the poster or background images using Picasso transformations
  • Apply the popular Butterknife annotation library to reduce boilerplate code.
  • Allow video trailers to be played in full-screen using the YouTubePlayerView from the details screen.

The following additional features are implemented:

  • Button on Details Screen to return to main page

Video Walkthrough

Here's a walkthrough of implemented user stories: Video Walkthrough

GIF created with LiceCap.

Notes

I was unable to using the Rating Bar on my Details Page and attempting to figure this problem out used much of my time. The Rating Bar would never show the numStars (5) nor fill in the hard-coded amount of stars when being tested. I also could not figure out how to set the width of the poster itself to fill out the entire width it was allotted. I used the same xml for landscape and portrait view which limited the space that the backdrop picture could have in landscape.

Open-source libraries used

  • Android Async HTTP - Simple asynchronous HTTP requests with JSON parsing
  • Picasso - Image loading and caching library for Android

License

Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]

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

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.