Goal

My intent with this project was to develop my Android programming skills while builidng an app that I think we are all familiar with and use regularly. This kind of app also involves learning a number of useful paradigms in Android programming, such as

• On-device database usage - for storing saved locations
• API querying - Converting location names into Lat, Lon and getting forecast data
• Device permissions - Using approximate device location to localize the default forecast will require checking and requesting permission to get this information from the device.

Implementation

I decided to use the classic Views based architecture to keep the new topics to a minimum. I store location records in a local SQLite DB and query National Weather Service APIs to fetch forecast data. I use Google's locations API to translate a place name into a place with lattitude and longitude.

There are still plenty of enhancements I could see making as well as some styling bugs I would like to fix but I'm trying to practice setting realistic goals and, once I reach them, taking some time to evaluate what I want to work on next. This helps me avoid going down coding rabbit holes with no deliverable result. I'm currently taking a pause on this application to work on other things, like this website.

Known bugs

• Not all the contents of the daily forecast list view are displayed when scrolling - GH Issue
  • I think this is because of a conflict between fragment layout resources and the activity layout
  • Despite setting every layout_height to wrap_content on every layout file, I'm still seeing scrolling inside the child fragment.
  • I would much rather have the entire app scroll down but enabling that is proving frustrating

Potential Enhancements

• Cache the last location selected by the user and display that location upon re-opening the application
• Use device locatin and create a "Current Location" Location record
  • This would involve implementing perission requesting and permission checking - good practice
• Implement caching of forecast results
  • This could improve responsiveness of the app (e.g. load cached forecast while performing the request for new data)
• Move location selection widget to app bar
  • This would free up space inside the app for more content