Building TimePiece

Building TimePiece
Arpit Mathur
http://twitter.com/arpit

What is TimePiece
World Time lookup without API calls
Visually interesting (fun with animation)
Open Source (under the MIT license)

Technical breakdown
Local SQLite database with City / Java TimeZone Id mappings
JODA DateTime library
Search
Custom List Renderers
The usual app stuff:
User Preferences
Menus
Intro screens
Context menus

Implementing ContentProviders with local SQLite databases

Steps
Add SQLite to your assets folder
Copy the database to your app’s data folder
Open the database (extend SQLiteOpenHelper)
Create a ContentProvider from this Database

Code:
DataBaseHelper
TimeZoneLookupService
CitySearchSuggestionProvider

Create a searchable config xml file
Create an Activity to handle the search
Add the Search config and activity to the activity that you want to trigger search on
Implementing Search

Search config (in res/xml)

Search Activity

Integrate with Main Activity

Mind the stacks!
Activity LaunchModesdeclared in Activity:
multiple
singleTop
singleTask
singleInstance

Replacing the Activity with Suggestions
res/searchable.xml
CitySearchSuggestionProvider

Return format

Building Custom Lists
Create a List View or a ListActivity
Create an Adapter for populating the List
Populate the List Adapter
Refresh the Adapter every 60 seconds

Code
MyLocationsActivity
MyLocationsDataAdapter

A little deeper into Animation

Loading Animation XMLs

Creating animation objects at runtime

Creating custom animations
Extend Animation
Override applyTransform

Remember:
Animations only effect the rendering buffers so objects don’t actually change in position itself
If you don’t set setFillAfter, the animated object will return to its location/transformation as before animation started
Leverage LayoutAnimations as well as regular animations

Releasing to the Market
Use Android Asset Studio to create your icons
Broken Market search: Joining words is probably a bad idea
When adding images to your app’s description, make sure the first one is most representative (for third party market indexers like Chomp)

Links
TimePiece:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.arpitonline.worldclock
Packing local SQLite databases:
http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/using-your-own-sqlite-database-in-android-applications/
Android Asset Studio:
http://android-ui-utils.googlecode.com/hg/asset-studio/dist/index.html

http://www.arpitonline.com	648
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	5
http://feeds.feedburner.com	4
http://demo.webengage.com	2
http://arpitonline.com	1

Building TimePiece

by Arpit Mathur on Aug 28, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

5 Embeds 660

Statistics

Building TimePiece — Presentation Transcript