Assignment 6: A Simple Ushahidi Android App
This assignment is currently in draft form.
Due: 10:30 p.m., Tuesday, 8 October 2013
Summary:
In this assignment, you will build an Android Application that presents
data from an Ushaidi server. (You will also do a simple exercise in
writing loop invariants.)
Purposes:
To give you more experience using the Ushahidi API. To give you more
experience building Android Apps. To allow you to play a bit.
(To give you some more experience with loop invariants.)
Collaboration: I encourage you to work in groups
of size two or four. You may discuss this assignment with anyone,
provided you credit such discussions when you submit the assignment.
Wrapper (Prologue): Individually read through
this assignment and make sure that you understand what is required.
Then use the form available at http://bit.ly/207hw6pro
to indicate (a) how long you think this assignment will take and (b)
what you think will be the most challenging aspect of this assignment.
Wrapper (Epilogue): When you are done
with the assignment, fill out the form available at http://bit.ly/207hw6epi to indicate (a) how long the
assignment took, (b) what the most challenging part of the assignment
was, and (c) something important you learned from doing the assignment.
If you find that the assignment took much less or much more time than
you expected, also include (d) a note as to what might have led to
that difference.
Submitting:
Please put all of your work in a GitHub repository named
csc207-hw6. Email me the address of that repository.
Please title your email “CSC207 2013F Assignment 6
(Your Names)”.
Warning:
So that this assignment is a learning experience for everyone, we may
spend class time publicly critiquing your work.
Write an Android app that allows the user to see information
about the incidents on an Ushahidi installation. (You do not
need to graph them; your goal is simply to present the data
about the incidents.)
To start, make your app read in the URL of an Ushahidi installation
(or let the user select from a few options) and print out, say, the
first five incidents.
Then add features. You might, for example,
-
Provide some basic statistics about the installation (e.g., total number
of incidents, incidents within the past week, average number of
incidents per week (perhaps as a bar chart)).
-
Allow the user to search for all incidents meeting some criterion,
such as text that appears with the description or title.
-
Provide a multi-level display of the information, such as a
short list of the incident numbers and titles with the option to
click on an incident to get the more detailed information.
-
Make a “word cloud” for the terms that appear in the
definitions.
Do not feel constrained by this list. You can do anything that you
think would be useful for someone interested in quickly scanning
Ushahidi data.
Do not feel you have to go overboard with features. This assignment
is primarily a chance for you to play with Android and to think about
features that might be useful to someone using Android. If all you
want to do is show five incidents, that's fine and will certainly
earn you a check (provided your code is reasonable).
The Simple Ushahidi API was originally written by Daniel Torres.
The overall design of the current API is due to Samuel A. Rebelsky,
but much of the underlying code draws upon Mr. Torres' work.
Anything I know about Android I learned from Lea.
