WeGroup--A Community Android App
- 1. An Implementation of A Community Android Application (Android App: WeGroup) Xuan Zhang Computer Science Department San Francisco State University
- 2. Agenda • Motivation • Requirement Analysis • System Architecture & Implementation • Testing • Conclusion & Future Works • Walkthrough & Demo
- 3. Motivation • Nowadays, there are varieties of community applications already, most of which are only focusing on a very narrow and specific domain. • However, a person may have a wide range of hobbies. • The purpose of this Culminating Experience is to develop an android application which enables people to build up their social network based on their various interests. • The users of this application could join as many groups as they want and send text messages and pictures to other users in each specific group.
- 4. Requirement Analysis • Three general categories of requirements: • Functional Specifications for Users • Functional Specifications for Admin • System Requirements
- 5. Functional Specifications for Users • Register and Login • Subscription • Unsubscription • Receive all messages in chatrooms • Post text messages in chatrooms • Post pictures in chatrooms • Search • Send new group requests to Admin • Sign Out • Reset Password
- 6. Functional Specifications for Admin • Approve new group requests • Block a certain user account • Block messages during a period
- 7. System Requirements • Encryption • Email Validation • Simple Credential Check • etc
- 8. Agenda • Motivation • Requirement Analysis • System Architecture & Implementation • Testing • Conclusion & Future Works • Walkthrough & Demo
- 10. Server • The server in the backend is using node.js stack. • Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript run- time environment for executing JavaScript code server- side. • In this app, I choose Express.js framework. • Express is a web application framework for Node.js, released as free and open-source software under the MIT License. It is designed for building applications and APIs.
- 11. Server • Framework: Express.js • Structure:
- 12. Datebase • In this application, a NoSQL database—MongoDB is selected as the database. • Data is stored as JSON and synchronized in realtime to every connected client. • We have 8 Collections in this application, each of which are key/value pairs collections.
- 13. Database Schema No Collection Name Key Name Meaning of the collection 1 users _id security_answer security_question email password name user account 2 subjects _id name General Categories, like traveling, musics, etc 3 topics _id topic subject all subcategories, like Traveling to China, Pop Music, etc 4 subscriptions _id topic userId record which user account subscripts which topic
- 14. Database Schema No Collection Name Key Name Meaning of the collection 5 topic requests _id subject topic record the new topic added by users requests 6 messages _id url type time message topicId senderId senderName a collection to store all messages belongs to different subcategories and send by different users, all messages are encrypted in the database. 7 blockers _id user_id subject store user accounts blocked by admin 8 block times _id from to store messages that are needed to be blocked during a period
- 15. Database (Admin) • From the database visualization tool (MongoDB Compass), we can easily check the schema of the 8 collections.
- 16. Database (Admin) • From the collection ‘messages’, we can find that all messages communicated among clients are all entrypted.
- 17. Android Libraries • Ion 2.+: An important Android library for asynchronous networking and image loading. • Gson: Gson is a Java library that can be used to convert Java Objects into their JSON representation. It can also be used to convert a JSON string to an equivalent Java object. • socket.io-client 1.0.0: IO client library for Java, which is simply ported from the JavaScript client. • contraint-layout 1.0.2: ConstraintLayout is available in an API library that’s compatible with Android 2.3 (API level 9) and higher. You can build a responsive UI using it. • junit 4.12: An Android library that allows you to do functional UI tests (Espresso and UI Automator).
- 18. Client Structure
- 19. Android Permissions • The app needs to have access to use device camera and storage, it needs to be given permission to camera and external storage. • in AndroidManifest.xml file: • <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" /> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" /> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" /> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECORD_AUDIO" />
- 20. Testing • Usability Testing • Functional Testing • Instrumentation Testing
- 21. Usability Testing Initial Design Final Design
- 22. Usability Testing Initial Design Final Design
- 23. Functional Testing • Register and Login • Subscribe to groups • Receive messages in a group • Post text messages and receive text messages simultaneously • Post pictures and receive them simultaneously (Two mobile devices) • Send a new group request • Approve a new group request (Admin) • Block users or messages effectively (Admin) • Reset Password • Search in the group chatroom • Search in the group list • Check encryption • …, etc
- 24. Instrumentation Testing onView(withId(R.id.my_view)) // withId(R.id.my_view) is a ViewMatcher .perform(click()) // click() is a ViewAction .check(matches(isDisplayed())); // matches(isDisplayed()) is a ViewAssertion • LoginActivity Instrumentation Test • RegisterActivity Instrumentation Test
- 25. Conclusion • The main focus of this mobile application is to enable people to join as many groups as possible so that they could communicate with others across a diverse field of hobbies while using one application. • It uses Android as its base client side, node.js as its backend technology and MongoDB as its database. • It is made up of various scopes.
- 26. Future Works • Advertisement Advertisement brings economic benefits to support the continuous development and maintenance of the app. • Scalability When more functions are implemented in the app and more users use the app, we have to scale up the system.
- 27. References 1. Java: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/java 2. Android Software Development Kit: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html 3. Android Training: http://developer.android.com/trainning/index.html 4. Node.js: https://node.js.org/en 5. MongoDB: https://www.mongodb.com
- 28. Walkthrough
- 29. Walkthrough • 1. Register and Login • 2. Subscribe categories • 3. Post messages in a subcategory • 4. Search • 5. Unsubscribe a subcategory • 6. Request for adding new subcategory • 7. Sign Out • 8. Password Recovery
- 32. Walkthrough—3. Post messages in a subcategory
- 33. Walkthrough—3. Post messages in a subcategory
- 36. Walkthrough—6. Request for adding new subcategory