Mobile Application Development is easy! Really?

We are all using Mobile Apps we download  from Google Play - and use them every day. 

 

But -do we ever think about the developers?

 

I do - especially since I developed a Mobile App on my own 🙂

What did I build?

I love my little document management system "DocBox" (read more here: DocBox) - that I wrote some time ago in RubyOnRails and that is running on a Raspberry Pi (BigPi – a Raspberry Pi 4 with SSD as HomeServer).

The Mobile-App is used to take pictures from documents that I want to keep or archive, especially  when I am away and I don't have access to my scanner. Back at home, I upload these documents directly to my DocBox. So my Mobile App does:

1. Scan (take a photo) and edit the picture
2. Store Picture on the phone until back at home
3. Back at home - upload all saved pictures to the DocBox server
4. Only upload data to DocBox, when we are in a verified Wi-Fi network and when a DocBox server is available.
5. Allow maintenance of a list of allowed Wi-Fi network and DocBox server via setting
6. Do *not* upload anything to Google, Facebook and do *not* store my data anywhere else!!!
   

Doesn't sound to complicated...maybe a rainy Sunday?

How did I do it?

Its best to start by using the IDE/ tool-chain called "Android Studio",  that can be downloaded here.

Android Studio is provided by Google and is developed by JetBrains. Its an Integrated Development Environment and handles everything (Coding, Code-Completion, Refactoring, Debugging, Testing, Resource Management).  Once you installed it, you can start with an empty template app or example app.

To try the mobile app you just have developed, you can use a simulator that's running on your PC (you can even select the model of phone you want to simulate) or you connect a normal mobile phone  with USB-Debugging enabled. Voila....

You can choose between 2 different programming languages, JAVA or Kotlin. Kotlin is a "new programming language" developed by JetBrains. Its object oriented, cross-plattform and statically typed. Personally I think that programs written in Kotlin are much better readable. At the end the Kotlin program is also compiled to run in to a JVM, not much of a difference to Java. So I learned Kotlin.

To give you some impression, I picked one simple activity - see below some Kotlin code (its for Android 10)  - it does a lot:

1. It creates the setting screen for the servers IP address in the "onCreate" activity
2. It gets all the ID of the graphical elements, so you can access them from the program
3. It opens a preference key-value database to store the IP address permanently on the phone (only accessible from the app)
4. It set's up a listener, that is waiting for a button, when this button is clicked it:
5. It calls the DocBox server and checks if it is available
6. Finally it update the correct IP address in the database and returns to the main menue

I think, the APIs provided by Google, together with the Kotlin language do a great job to allow clear and structured coding:

class SettingsSetServer : AppCompatActivity() {
    internal val context: Context = this

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_settings_set_server)

        setSupportActionBar(toolbar)
        supportActionBar?.setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true)

        val ipAddress = findViewById(R.id.ip_address)
        val serverStatus = findViewById(R.id.server_status)
        serverStatus.text=""

        // Read current IP address from Preferences and update on GUI
        val sharedPref = getSharedPreferences("com.db.mobile.pref", Context.MODE_PRIVATE)
        val oldIpAddress = sharedPref.getString("docboxserver","")

        ipAddress.setText(oldIpAddress)

        // **************************************************************************
        // Update IP address if changed with new IP address

        ipAddress.setOnClickListener {

            val newIpAddress =ipAddress.text
            var error=false

            runBlocking {
                try {
                    Fuel.get("http://$newIpAddress:$DOCBOX_PORT/cd_server_status_for_mobile").awaitStringResponse()
                } catch (exception: Exception) {
                    serverStatus.text="No connection to Server"
                    error=true
                }
            }

            // if no error, update new IP address in preferences
            if (!error) {
                with (sharedPref.edit()) {
                    putString("docboxserver", newIpAddress.toString())
                    commit()
                }
                finish()
            }
        }
    }
}

How did it go?

Lets start with the good news:

1. Kotlin was new to me, so I had to get used to the specialities of this language - but its very consistent - good exercise.
2. I have used other IDEs from JetBrains, so I knew the concept and had a quick start
3. To get the first app running takes only some minutes
4. Google is your friend, 90% of all questions have been already solved!

Here comes the bad:

1. You need to decide for which Android version the app should run, each version Google comes up with new features  - but also depreciates old ones. Its a nightmare to find out -what you need to do. Upgrading and keep an app recent for sure is HARD WORK.
2. Android is separating programming logic and views and resources very strict. Its using Activities to control different screens. Each Activity has a live-cycle. Its core to understand this underlying principles. That takes time.
3. Many configuration files (manifest.xml, gradle) can be adjusted, and everything can be configured. It just should be correct.
4. All is multi-threading, threads communicate and impact each other - can be quite confusing at the beginning - for me that was the biggest challenger!
5. The 10% of the questions, that are not solved via Google-Search - are really a problem. You can get really, really stuck!
6. .....

Conclusion

In total it took me much longer then expected, I got into one problem where was no solution in the Internet - and that took time to solve. Also at the end the solution was so easy, just one line of code 🙁

I have my full respect for people writing apps for free, putting them in the play-store and keep them even up-to-date. THANK YOU!!!

 

But on the other hand - mobile app development is not a miracle - if someone starts charging you 100k€ for an app like mine - start thinking.

 

By the way, my DocBox-Mobile is not in GooglePlay - but you find it on GitHub:

https://github.com/happychriss/DocumentBox-Mobile

If you want to see it all, check out the full project: DocBox