Project 2 - NYTimes

NYTimes is an android app that allows a user to search for articles on web using simple filters. The app utilizes New York Times Search API.

Time spent: 25+ hours spent in total

User Stories

The following required functionality is completed:

• User can enter a search query that will display a grid of news articles using the thumbnail and headline from the New York Times Search API. (3 points)
• User can click on "filter" icon which allows selection of advanced search options to filter articles. (3 points)
  • An example of a query with filters (begin_date, sort, and news_desk) applied can be found here. Full details of the API can be found on this article search README.
• User can configure advanced search filters such as: (points included above)
  • Begin Date (using a date picker)
  • Sort order (oldest or newest) using a spinner dropdown
  • News desk values (Arts, Fashion & Style, Sports) using checkboxes
• Subsequent searches will have any filters applied to the search results. (1 point)
• User can tap on any article in results to view the contents in an embedded browser. (2 points)
• User can scroll down "infinitely" to continue loading more news articles. The maximum number of articles is limited by the API search. (1 point)

The following optional features are implemented:

• Implements robust error handling, check if internet is available, handle error cases, network failures
• Used the ActionBar SearchView or custom layout as the query box instead of an EditText
• User can share an article link 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:

• Use the RecyclerView with the StaggeredGridLayoutManager to display improve the grid of image results
• For different news articles that only have text or only have images, use Heterogenous Layouts with RecyclerView
• Use Parcelable instead of Serializable using the popular Parceler library.
• Leverages the data binding support module to bind data into layout templates.
• Replace all icon drawables and other static image assets with vector drawables where appropriate.
• Replace Picasso with Glide for more efficient image rendering.
• Uses retrolambda expressions to cleanup event handling blocks.
• Leverages the popular GSON library to streamline the parsing of JSON data.
• Leverages the Retrofit networking library to access the New York Times API.
• Replace the embedded WebView with Chrome Custom Tabs using a custom action button for sharing. (2 points)

The following additional features are implemented:

• On re-selection of filters in the same session, transferring the user's previous filter selection from the articles search screen to the filter screen so that user does not have do it all over again!
• Some basic readily available animation (referred to the links from the custom tabs guide) on the custom tabs.

Video Walkthrough

Here's a walkthrough of implemented user stories:

GIF created with LiceCap.

Notes

Describe any challenges encountered while building the app.

Open-source libraries used

• Android Async HTTP - Simple asynchronous HTTP requests with JSON parsing
• Picasso - Image loading and caching library for Android
• Glide - Image loading library
• Retrofit - Http Client
• Gson - Java serialization/deserialization library
• Parceler - Android Parcelable code generator

License

Copyright [yyyy] [Amit Goenka]

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.