Project 2 - New York Times Article Search
New York Times Article Search 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.
Time spent: *24** hours spent in total
User Stories
The following required functionality is completed:
- [x] 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.
- [x] User can click on "settings" which allows selection of advanced search options to filter results
- [x] User can configure advanced search filters such as:
- [x] Begin Date (using a date picker)
- [x] News desk values (Arts, Fashion & Style, Sports)
- [x] Sort order (oldest or newest)
- [x] Subsequent searches have any filters applied to the search results
- [x] User can tap on any image in results to see the full text of article full-screen (can change it in Settings section)
- [x] 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:
- [x] Implements robust error handling, check if internet is available, handle error cases, network failures
- [x] Used the ActionBar SearchView or custom layout as the query box instead of an EditText
- [x] User can share an article link to their friends or email it to themselves
- [x] Replaced Filter Settings Activity with a lightweight modal overlay
- [x] Improved the user interface and experiment with image assets and/or styling and coloring
The following bonus features are implemented:
- [x] Use the RecyclerView with the
StaggeredGridLayoutManager
to display improve the grid of image results
- [x] For different news articles that only have text or only have images, use Heterogenous Layouts with RecyclerView
- [x] Apply the popular Butterknife annotation library to reduce view boilerplate.
- [x] Use Parcelable instead of Serializable using the popular Parceler library.
- [x] Replace all icon drawables and other static image assets with vector drawables where appropriate.
- [x] Replace Picasso with Glide for more efficient image rendering.
- [x] Leverages the popular GSON library to streamline the parsing of JSON data.
- [x] Leverages the Retrofit networking library to access the New York Times API.
The following additional features are implemented:
- [x] Filter by end date and all news desk values
- [x] Custom GSON deserializer for some objects
- [x] Save filter criteria in SharedPreferences
- [x] Hide toolbar on scroll
- [x] Allow to change the way filter is displayed (activity or dialog)
- [x] Allow to change the way article detail is displayed (activity with toolbar or full screen)
Video Walkthrough
Here's a walkthrough of implemented user stories:
GIF created with LiceCap.
Notes
Describe any challenges encountered while building the app.
Open-source libraries used
- Android Async HTTP - Simple asynchronous HTTP requests with JSON parsing
- Picasso - Image loading and caching library for Android
- Glide - An image loading and caching library for Android focused on smooth scrolling
- Butterknife - Bind Android views and callbacks to fields and methods
- Icepick - Android Instance State made easy
- GSON - A Java serialization/deserialization library that can convert Java Objects into JSON and back
- Parceler - Android Parcelables made easy through code generation
- RecyclerView Animators - An Android Animation library which easily add itemanimator to RecyclerView items
- Retrofit - A type-safe HTTP client for Android and Java
License
Copyright 2016 Andrés Llerena
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.