Project 2 - Grid Image Search

Grid Image Search is an android app that allows a user to search for images on web using simple filters. The app utilizes Google Image Search API. Please note that API has been officially deprecated as of May 26, 2011.

Time spent: 14 hours spent in total

User Stories

The following required functionality is completed:

• [x] User can search for images by specifying a query and launching a search. Search displays a grid of image results from the Google Image 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] Size (small, medium, large, extra-large)
  • [x] Color filter (black, blue, brown, gray, green, etc...)
  • [x] Type (faces, photo, clip art, line art)
  • [x] Site (espn.com)
• [x] Subsequent searches have any filters applied to the search results
• [x] User can tap on any image in results to see the image full-screen
• [x] User can scroll down to see more images. The maximum number of images is 64 (limited by API).

The following optional features are implemented:

• [ ] 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
• [ ] User can share an image to their friends or email it to themselves
• [ ] Replaced Filter Settings Activity with a lightweight modal overlay
• [ ] Improved the user interface and experiment with image assets and/or styling and coloring

The following bonus features are implemented:

• [ ] Used the StaggeredGridView to display improve the grid of image results
• [ ] User can zoom or pan images displayed in full-screen detail view

Video Walkthrough

Here's a walkthrough of implemented user stories:

GIF created with LiceCap.

Notes

Describe any challenges encountered while building the app.

There were a lot of challenges with this application. This app combined all of my knowledge from every single lab and homework I've been working on. Understanding how everything would mesh together was daunting and it took awhile for me to figure out the flow.

Once I had a diagram of how every element would interact, the development became a lot easier and from there it was a lot of fine tuning to make sure that all of the required stories were finished.

Open-source libraries used

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

License

Copyright 2015 Calvin Liang

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.