Update Envived Register / Sign-up process

[irinagrigorescu]

The task is to build the register interface for the Envived Android client. The existing version is just for show :-). The focus should be on a clean way to add several user-defined types of interest profiles: a research interest profile, an exhibition profile, a leisure interest profile. The user has the possibility to mark a subset of these interest-profiles as active, meaning that their data will be used when computing matches with other profiles or interest-zone tags. When viewing a profile a custom layout should be used for each one. The fields required for each profile definition are subject to brainstorming outcomes :-)

Afterwards, attention can be given to:

• sign-up / sign-in using facebook
• connecting with facebook / twitter / google+ accounts

[irinagrigorescu]

• Fill in preferences to create profile when registering.
• Depending on the type of conference, the possibility to watch and edit its profile.
• Research Sub-profile for conferences and exhibitions (fill-in at check-in).
• Provide client flow and data needed from server.

[asorici]

Steps to build a profile:

• maintain current UserProfileData class; append an "email" member to it; delete subProfileMap
• UserSubProfile is an abstract class common to all SubProfile types:
  • it holds the type of the subprofile
  • it contains from/to server-side parsing/serialization stubs
  • it contains from/to client-side shared preferences deserialization/serialization of a sub-profile stubs
  • when saving a sub-profile to shared preferences it is associated with a user URI for which that sub-profile has been created
• each SubProfile gets its own package under com.envived.android.api.user. In each package there will be:
  • the class that extends the UserSubProfile abstract class and declares the fields required by that sub-profile
  • the Fragment used to view / edit the sub-profile information
  • contains the input fields
  • contains a UI element that forces a save of the current sub-profile information for the specific sub-profile type. The save happens both server-side and client-side (see info above)
• an Activity defined in the com.envived.android.ap.user package to view/edit per-environment user profiles. This activity will:
  • allow the user access to a profile settings view (see below)
  • allow the user to add a sub-profile type from the list of saved ones or to create a new one
  • allow the user to select interests from the general profile to be used in the matching process (besides the ones included in the sub-profiles).
  • allow the user to mark the defined profile as active: this entails a message to the server to declare the active profile interests and profile settings
• an Activity (Android PreferenceActivity) in the com.envived.android.api.user package to view/edit the Profile Settings. The activity contains:
  • an "availability" field with three options: available, busy, invisible
  • the "display email" flag: whether or not to display the email in the profile view activity above
  • + whatever other fields we may want to include later on

[asorici]

Client - Server flow for profile creation and similarity computations

The registration:

• the registration activity allows the user to do what is usually done during registration (specify first name, last
  name, email, password fields etc)
• apart from that the user can navigate to the activity that allows him to define his BASE PROFILE. The base profile is also split into the categories we identified so far (research, exhibition, leisure). The user can fill in
  interests for every type if he so chooses.
• the BASE PROFILE is stored locally in the device's SharedPreferences
• upon submitting the registration the server will receive the registration fields and the filled in base profile and will store those in the corresponding DB models. Apart from that it will start the computation of the EXTENDED LONG TERM INTERESTS. This follows the ESA + Spreading Activation method implemented as part of the bachelor thesis.

The Per-Environment profile definition:

• when a user checks in at a location he is able to start a sub-profile editing Activity. Upon checkin he will have received an environment-specific list of keywords that can be used for the subprofile auto-suggest functionality. In the sub-profile edit activity the user can again opt to fill in a specific type of sub-profile, which this time will be bound to the environment in which the user is checked in. The edit activity allows the user to either use his ' base profile to fill in the required fields or define a new one.
• once edited, the environment specific sub-profile stored in the device SharedPreferences (as a map from environment URI to sub-profile serialization) It is also submitted to the server where it is stored in the corresponding DB models.

The similarity computation:

• every time a user submits an environment specific sub-profile, an asynchronous task of computing the interest vector using our version of ESA is started. The results of this computation will be stored in DB models corresponding to the environment-specific sub-profile for which the calculation is performed.
• every time a user checks-in at a location the following actions will be taken:
  • verify if there exist similarity values computed for each interest area. If not, start the similarity computation process. If yes, but interest vector was out of date, start the similarity computation process. Otherwise, we're ok.
  • list the people currently checked in at the current location and determine the ones for which no similarity value exists. If the interest vector was out of date, recompute for all checked in users.
• similarity values for both interest areas and users expire after SIMILARITY_EXPIRATION_THRESHOLD seconds.

Client similarity value access:

• when a user accesses the Browse Interest Areas or the Browse People activity, he will receive similarity values that have already been computed. Those for which computation is not finalized will display a N.A. value. The user can either REFRESH individual items, or the whole list to retrieve additional similarity values.

[irinagrigorescu]

Observations: There is no means of starting the UserProfileActivity. I have hard-coded startActivity(new Intent(this, UserProfileActivity.class)); in EnvivedAppActivity when the user presses the login button in order to test its functionality (this is not present in the pushed code). You will have to add a button where you see fit that projects the user to the UserProfileActivity.