CMPS 121 Mobile Applications Spring 2017

Time and location: TuTh 8-9:35, Earth & Marine B206
Instructor: Luca de Alfaro
- Email: luca@ucsc.edu.
Office hours: Tuesdays, 1-2, Engineering 2, Rm 339A

TAs:
- Review Session: J Baskin Engineering 152, Wednesdays 5:20-6:55pm
- MSI Sections: Will be announced.
Discussion group: Piazza. Please use Piazza for all general class questions, reserving email for personal communications.

Announcements

If you need a permission code, please request one using this form (you need to be logged in via your @ucsc.edu account to access the forms).
You will need an Android device running Android 4.0.0 or later for this class.
You will need a laptop capable of running the Android Studio and Apache Cordova development code (see below for details). Laptops with at least 8 GB RAM are recommended. Financial help might be available (warning: the help might be in the form of a loan).

What's new in 2017

Every year, I change how I teach my classes. This is what is new for this year:

The class will cover:
- Apache Cordova (30%, new for this year)
- Server backend development (10%)
- Android development (40%)
Projects are optional, and in fact, by instructor permission.
There will be a paper-and-pencil final exam for those who don't do the project.
In addition to regular homework assignments, I plan to give frequent small quizzes on notions learned in the same or recent week.

Grading

There are two tracks:

Project Track. In the project track, the homework assignments count 50%, and the project counts 50%. Students will present their project during one of two 3-hour time slots I will reserve during finals week.
Homework track. In the homework track, the homework counts for 85%, and the final exam counts for 15% (percentages subject to tweaking).

Final Exam

The final exam will be a pencil and paper exam. You may be asked to answer in English to questions, write small portions of code, write pseudocode to indicate how to perform some tasks, look at code and answer questions about it, and similar. Here is the list of topics for the final exam.

Projects

In order to do a project, students need to submit a project proposal; we expect to be able to accommodate about 30-35 projects.

Project Proposals

Please submit project proposals using this form.

Project proposals will be due around week 3 of the class (the precise deadline will be announced on Piazza).
Can include server-based portion.
Must be substantially original.

Project Requirements

1-4 members.
Projects can be done in either Android (using Android Java), or in Apache Cordova.

Turning in the project

You need to do these things to turn in the project:

Complete the project peer evaluation
- Turn in the project using this CrowdGrader assignment (you don't need to grade projects).

Homework Assignments

Homework 1, due Wednesday April 12, 11:00pm
Homework 2, due Thursday April 27, 11:00pm
Homework 3, due Friday April 28, 11:00pm
Homework 4, due Monday May 8, 11:00pm
Homework 5, due Tuesday May 16, 11:00pm
Homework 6, due Tuesday June 6, 11:00pm
Homework 7, due Tuesday June 6, 11:00pm

Homework upload and grading instructions

Homework procedures

Lectures

Lecture 1: introduction to class
Lecture 2: Building a cooking timer. Activities, and structure of an application.
Lecture 3: Activity lifecycle, intents, and sharing information.
Lecture 4: On projects. The location service.
Lecture 5: Building a cloud backend.
Lecture 6: More on cloud backend, and Android to cloud communication.
Lecture 7: ListView.
Lecture 8: WebView.
Lecture 9: Introduction to Cordova
Lecture 10: Javascript and our first Cordova app.
Lecture 11: On hw5, and start of AJAX calls from Cordova.
Lecture 12: Example of payment site with Stripe
Lecture 13: Tictactoe, a multi-player game
Lecture 14: Tictactoe, completion
Lecture 15: Using Cordova plugins
Lecture 16: Views and animation
Lecture 17: A fix for tictactoe, and more on views and animations
Lecture 18: Services

Class Information

Android device

You will need an Android device for this class. A cellular plan is not required: a wifi-only device is perfect. A device running Android 4+ is recommended. In general, you will be much happier with a device that runs a clean Google build, such as this. These devices in general have more predictable behavior, more extensive logging and diagnostic messages, and more support. Nevertheless, most Android devices work. The problem is that some devices have quirks, due to how Android has been built for them: some phones have limited diagnostic logging, others have peculiar threading limits, and so on and so forth.

Development software

We will develop using:

You need to have a laptop or PC where you can install Android Studio.

Course Resources

These resources will be updated during the class.

Android Developers Dev Guide.
Android Studio.
Apache Cordova.
Developer Resources, including tutorials and sample code.

Syllabus

The class consists in a hands-on introduction to Android application development. Topics include:

Introduction to the class, and to creating mobile applications.
Apache Cordova: your app as a single-page web page.
Javascript.
Vue.js
How to organize a single-page app.
Building a server API.
Basic structure of Android applications.
Applications and activities.
Activities life-cycle and threads of control.
User interface elements: views, layouts, buttons, widgets.

Preferences, saving state.
- Webviews.
- Sharing state across activities.
- Using the internet, and background asynchronous processing.
File access.
Communication with cloud servers. User authentication, login, data communication.
- Services and working in the background.
- Sensors.
- Building simple animations.