Project 3 - TwitterClient

TwitterClinet is an android app that allows a user to view his Twitter timeline and post a new tweet. The app utilizes Twitter REST API.

Time spent: 40 hours spent in total

User Stories

The following required functionality is completed:

• [x] User can sign in to Twitter using OAuth login
• [x] User can view tweets from their home timeline
  • [x] User is displayed the username, name, and body for each tweet
  • [x] User is displayed the relative timestamp for each tweet "8m", "7h"
  • [x] User can view more tweets as they scroll with infinite pagination. Number of tweets is unlimited. However there are Twitter Api Rate Limits in place.
• [x] User can compose and post a new tweet
  • [x] User can click a “Compose” icon in the Action Bar on the top right
  • [x] User can then enter a new tweet and post this to twitter
  • [x] User is taken back to home timeline with new tweet visible in timeline

The following optional features are implemented:

• [x] User can see a counter with total number of characters left for tweet on compose tweet page
• [x] User can click a link within a tweet body on tweet details view. The click will launch the web browser with relevant page opened.
• [x] User can pull down to refresh tweets timeline
• [x] User can open the twitter app offline and see last loaded tweets. Persisted in SQLite tweets are refreshed on every application launch. While "live data" is displayed when app can get it from Twitter API, it is also saved for use in offline mode.
• [x] User can tap a tweet to open a detailed tweet view
• [x] User can select "reply" from detail view to respond to a tweet
• [x] Improve the user interface and theme the app to feel "twitter branded"

The following bonus features are implemented:

• [x] User can see embedded image media within the tweet detail view
• [ ] Compose tweet functionality is build using modal overlay

The following additional features are implemented:

• [x] Use of ViewHolder pattern and Parcelable to improve app performance
• [x] Organizing the code through packages and externalizing all string resources into strings.xml
• [x] Robust error handling, check if internet is available, handle error cases, network failures. Show Toast messages in case of mentioned error cases.
• [x] User can select "retweet" from detail and Timeline view to retweet a tweet which would result in retweet icon color to turn grey to green and retweet count to increment in both details page and timeline page for that tweet.
• [x] User can undo retweet" from detail and Timeline view to unretweet a tweet which would result in retweet icon color to turn green to grey and retweet count to decrement in both details page and timeline page for that tweet.
• [x] User can select "favorite" from detail and timeline view to favorite a tweet which would result in favorite icon color to turn grey to yellow and favorites count to increment in both details page and timeline page for that tweet.
• [x] User can select "unfavorite" from detail and timeline view to unfavorite a tweet which would result in favorite icon color to turn yellow to grey and favorites count to decrement in both details page and timeline page for that tweet.
• [x] User can see retweet count and favorites count for each tweet on timeline and detail page.
• [x] User can see an indicator text to distinguish if the tweet is a retweet or a reply for each tweet on timeline.
• [x] User can reply from timeline page and the new reply is shown immediately without a page refresh.

Video Walkthrough

Here's a walkthrough of implemented user stories:

GIF created with LiceCap.

Notes

• Regarding compose a new tweet: When a tweet is composed, it is shown in timeline immediately without full page refresh.
• Regarding favorite/unfavorite/retweet: Retweet and favorites counts, green/grey retweet icons, yellow/grey favorite icons are updated for the original tweet once the action is done without full page refresh.
• Regarding reply, once replied to a tweet, new tweet(reply tweet) will be added at the top of the timeline page without full page refresh.

Open-source libraries used

• [RestClient Template] Creating an Android OAuth REST Client https://github.com/codepath/android-rest-client-template
• Android Async HTTP - Simple asynchronous HTTP requests with JSON parsing
• Picasso - Image loading and caching library for Android

License

Copyright 2015 Srivats Jayaram

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.