First Android App – Part 8

Although today was a hot day here in Los Angeles, I had a pretty productive day with this little android application I am building.  I was able to implement what will most likely be the last major feature before releasing the application which is the ability for users to ‘flag’ certain questions.  When I was studying for my citizenship test, I knew the majority of the questions already but there were a few that were giving me problems so I set them aside to make sure I focused on them.  Well this is what users are now able to do in the application.  While navigating thru the questions, users will be able to ‘flag’ a question (this is currently only available in the Flash Card mode).  Once a question is flagged, the user can continue with their studies and when needed, they can view the flagged questions in both flash cards or in the quick browse mode.

The data in the database already had some relationships that allowed me to create some basic and some not so basic queries (thank goodness for sub-queries in sqlite) to insert and get the flagged questions.  There are some missing features still (such as the ability to clear out flagged questions once a user is pretty confident that he/she truly knows and understands the question).  Removing flagged questions is something I’ll have to implement next for both the flash card mode and quick browse mode.  I see no major obstacles in implementing this as all I need is a few lines of code on the Database Helper object to accomplish these requirements.

After fully implementing the ‘flag question’ feature I’ll focus on cleaning up the interface and make sure all is good there.  Then I’ll refactor some of my current code base to make it easier to fix bugs and add new features in future versions of the application.  My original goal of publishing this application early next month is on track.  Having this looming deadline has actually been a welcome thing as it has helped me to prioritize what needs to be done (and actually taking care of these requirements).

Note: no screenshots were included in this post today as I just wanted to come in here and write down some of the things I’ve done today.  There was not that much done of great consequence to the UI but when I do make major changes, I’ll include the screenshot of the changes on my entries here.