MP5: Final Project

The Final Project is done in groups of two. Obviously you want to find someone to work with that you enjoy working with and think that you can do an awesome project with—since we will be giving extra credit for some of the best projects. You will also want to make sure that at least one of you has a laptop that can smoothly run Android Studio and the emulator, or an Android phone for demoing your new application. This semester you’ll also need to consider finding a partner that you can regularly meet with remotely, meaning that they are in a similar time zone or at least there is enough overlap so that you can communicate when needed.

You should start looking for a partner today (4/14/2020) and select one over the next few days. Feel free to reach out to friends, or use the forum to find a partner. There is a UI checkpoint two weeks from now, so you will start losing credit quickly if you don’t have a partner.

The second-to-last lab, on Tuesday 4/28/2020, will be dedicated to you showing your TA the progress you’ve made so far. By then, you should have at least a mockup of your app’s user interface.

The app’s functionality doesn’t need to work yet, but you should have set up much of the UI in your layout resource(s). Pressing buttons should trigger something, even if that’s just writing to the Logcat to show that you’ve attached handler stubs that will be implemented later.

This means that your app must have an interface that the user can interact with. Apps that only run in the background or exit immediately do not qualify.

To use features and classes provided by a software library, you need to add it to your project. Many Java libraries are published to repositories that Gradle—the most common Android build system—can access. You can have Gradle install a library into your project by adding the library’s dependency coordinate to the dependencies section of your Gradle buildscript, the build.gradle file inside the app folder of your project. The library’s web page will probably include the line you can add to your buildscript. It will usually look something like this:

The implementation directive means that the library is used by your app, as opposed to used only by tests or only needed at compile time. The string inside the quotes is the dependency coordinate. Here, com.android.volley is the group, volley is the artifact, and 1.1.1 is the version. Gradle accepts multiple ways of identifying a dependency, so you might see other formats too.

Some libraries' web sites might also provide instructions for downloading the library code and manually adding it as a module to your project. This is usually not what you want. If possible, find a dependency coordinate and install the library using Gradle.

(If the library isn’t published in a way that allows you to import it using Gradle, then we might advise you to steer clear anyway. This is a sign of an old or poorly-maintained library.)

To learn how to use a specific library, refer to its documentation or search the Internet for examples. While the course staff are happy to help you look for resources, they have not used every possible library.

If you are using a web API for your app, you will need some way to make web requests. While there are several HTTP libraries for Android, we recommend the Volley library. It is very similar to the WebApi component we provided with the Machine Project 2. Android provides an introduction to using it.

All Volley requests are processed by a RequestQueue. You can make just one queue per activity 3 and use it for multiple requests. To make a request, first instantiate a request object like a StringRequest. The request object specifies the HTTP method, URL, response handler, error handler, and possibly POST data depending on the request class. Start the request by passing it to a queue’s add method. Some time in the future, your response or error handler will be called.

StringRequests give you raw string responses, but many web APIs return JSON. You can use Gson's JsonParser to turn the string into a Gson object 4. You could alternatively use Volley’s JsonObjectRequest or JsonArrayRequest to have the text parsed for you, albeit into a different kind of Java object than you used for the Machine Project.

Android Studio can help you put your project on GitHub. The VCS | Import into Version Control | Share Project on GitHub menu command will start a process to create a GitHub repository and upload the contents of your project.

To give your partner write access to the repository, add them as a collaborator by opening the repository on the GitHub web site, going to the Settings tab, selecting the Collaborators section, and adding them. Your partner can clone the repository onto their computer, make changes, and push just like you can. You will want to pull (VCS | Git | Pull) before starting a work session so that you can get any changes made by your partner.

MP5 also provides an opportunity to earn extra credit by creating a very impressive final project. We will provide a form allowing staff to vote on which projects they found the most impressive. Each lab staff member will vote on all the projects from their lab. The top rated projects across the entire class will receive a 1% increase in your final CS 125 grade.

Note that we will take into account your level of ability when you started CS 125 when determining how impressive your project is. So this is open to students of all ability levels. This extra credit is also independent from any previous extra credit that you might have earned earlier this semester.

Any attempt to turn in non-original work will be treated as an academic integrity violation. Having someone else do your project for you or copying an existing codebase are forbidden.

However, in the real world it is very common to get some help with projects from other people or online sources. You are free to show some code from your final project on the public forum or copy-paste snippets of code from programming web sites. If you use substantial snippets from outside sources, it can be good practice to include the URL in a comment above the code that you borrowed. This serves both to acknowledge the source and to remind you where it came from in case you or your partner is trying to debug or understand it. If in doubt, ask the course staff.