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MP5: Final Project

You’ve learned a lot this semester. Now it’s time to try out your newly-acquired super powers. MP5 is not about us giving you something to do—it’s about you accomplishing something you want to do using computer science.

MP5 is different than previous MPs. It is done in pairs with a partner from your lab section. And it’s due in your lab section during the last week of class: so during lab on Tuesday 12/10/2019.

We’re also giving you a chance to earn extra credit by doing a great project and participating in our fourth biannual Final Project Fair: Thursday 12/12/2019 afternoon throughout Siebel 1.

1. Learning Objectives

If the Machine Project had you execute a carefully-planned route from point A to point B, the Final Project takes you on a journey off the map. You’ll learn how to plan and execute a small Android project of your own design. You’ll also learn how to work with a partner. All the skills you learned in the MP checkpoints will continue to be useful.

In many ways, the Machine Project has been designed to prepare you for this moment. The Final Project brings everything together and starts you out on a career as an independent software developer—working on your own projects and learning things that interest you.

2. Rules

Our goal in MP5 is to give you as much flexibility as possible, so there are few rules about what you can and can’t do. But those that we do have are important:

You must do something new for MP5. Do not submit something from another class, or something you’ve done previously. You may want to work on something that you’ve started on previously, but given that you’ll be working with a partner that’s not fair to them. So you should pick something new to do for MP5. It doesn’t have to be a huge project—you only have a few weeks. But it should be original work.

Here are the rest of the rules:

You need to build an Android app.
You need to design a simple UI. We’ll provide help with that in lab.
You need to finish a UI mockup by the week before the final due date and show it in lab.
You need to use a new web API, software library, or Android feature.
You need to commit your work to version control—to either a public or private repository.
You need to work with someone in your lab section.
You cannot build a weather app or a calorie counter. We’ve seen too many of those recently.
Other than that, what to do is up to you.

Note that we did not say that your Android app has to be written in Java. The adventurous among you may want to try out Kotlin, which is now Google’s preferred language for Android development. And the even more adventurous among you may want to give cross-platform app development a try using a framework like React Native. The goal here is to learn something new, so these kinds of adventures are not discouraged. However, keep in mind that on a whole the course staff will be less helpful if you choose to use a language or framework they are less familiar with.

You turn in the Final Project by recording a YouTube presentation which will be shown in lab during the last week of class. You and your partner should plan that together. You do have to publish your work on GitHub (or GitLab, or something similar)—privately if you want. So you should set up your project using Git and be able to show that you have committed and pushed your code to GitHub as part of your turn-in presentation.

2.1. Partner Rules

The Final Project is done in groups of two 2. 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.

If you would like to work with someone from another lab section, you must both attend the lab together for the remaining three labs. This means that either one of you will receive participation credit for that lab, or you’ll need to attend two labs: one for each partner. Since our remaining labs are pretty much entirely set aside for Final Project work time, attending two labs isn’t the end of the world. But you will not receive credit for working in lab without your partner. If you want to work with someone from another lab, this is the tradeoff you will have to make. (Remember that you have three excused lab absences.)

You should find a partner by the end of the 11/19/2019 lab. There is a UI checkpoint in the lab after Thanksgiving, and you will start losing credit quickly if you don’t have a partner. Use the forum to find one if needed.

We expect you to work in pairs. Projects completed by larger groups without TA approval, or by individuals, will not be graded.

2.2. UI Checkpoint

The second-to-last lab, on Tuesday 12/3/2019, 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.

3. Help and Tips

While the Final Project is self-driven, please feel free to approach the course staff for help. Post on the forum, or come to office hours and discuss your project idea and implementation with the course staff.

3.1. Using Libraries

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:

implementation 'com.android.volley:volley:1.1.1'

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.

3.2. Making Web Requests

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 3. Android provides an introduction to using it.

All Volley requests are processed by a RequestQueue. You can make just one queue per activity 4 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 5. 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.

3.3. Publishing to GitHub

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.

4. Grading

Final Project grading is quite generous. We care that you tried something new, not that you succeeded fully your first time. It is worth 100 points total, broken down as follows:

20 points for building an original and working Android app
20 points for the first UI checkpoint, shown in lab on 12/3/2019
20 points for using a new web API, software library, or Android feature
10 points for ensuring that all team members have roles in the project
20 points for recording your YouTube video
10 points for properly publishing your work to a version control site like GitHub

Unlike the Machine Project, there is no autograding or online testing for the Final Project. Grades are entirely at the discretion of the course staff.

Also note that the Final Project cannot be dropped. It’s too important—this is your chance to do something cool, creative, and to show us everything you’ve learned this semester.

4.1. Final Project Fair and Extra Credit

MP5 also provides an opportunity to earn extra credit by participating in our CS 125 Final Project Fair. We are providing extra credit as follows:

1% increase in your final CS 125 grade for participating in the final project fair, Thursday 12/12/2019 in Siebel 6.
1% increase in your final CS 125 grade if your project is judged to be one of the most impressive. 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.
1% increase in your final CS 125 grade if one of the projects from your lab is judged to be most impressive.

The maximum extra credit is 2%: if you participate in the fair and either have one of the most impressive projects or are in a lab that has one. Put another way, if you have one of the most impressive projects you don’t get an extra 1% from the lab incentive. This extra credit is independent from any previous extra credit that you might have earned earlier this semester.

5. Submitting Your Work

You and your partner must prepare a presentation of at most 4 minutes for the last lab section during the final week of class. You will not give the presentation live during your lab section. Instead, you should prerecord your presentation and upload it to YouTube. The video will be shown in lab on 12/10/2019.

Your presentation should cover what you did, why you did it, who did what, and any other interesting details: interesting technical problems you encountered, how you collaborated, or ideas for future work. You should also confirm that this was an original project and that it was published under one or both of the project partners' accounts. We have very limited lab time, so do not feel pressured to use all four minutes. If you can demo your project and discuss it sufficiently in less time, that’s great!

We will post a form after break that you can use to submit details about your final project.

5.1. Academic Integrity

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.