DEVELOPING CUSTOM APPS USING DYNAMIC XML PARSING

Journal for Research | Volume 02 | Issue 03 | May 2016 ISSN: 2395-7549

Developing Custom Apps using Dynamic XML Parsing Mebin George Department of Computer Science & Engineering Amal Jyothi College of Engineering Institute Kottayam, Kerala

Nijo Cyriac Department of Computer Science & Engineering Amal Jyothi College of Engineering Institute Kottayam, Kerala

Ruben John Department of Computer Science & Engineering Amal Jyothi College of Engineering Institute Kottayam, Kerala

Sohesh TS Department of Computer Science & Engineering Amal Jyothi College of Engineering Institute Kottayam, Kerala

Prof. Jerin Thomas Department of Computer Science & Engineering Amal Jyothi College of Engineering Institute Kottayam, Kerala

Abstract Every single day thousands of android devices are activated, the success of android owes to its simplicity and usability. This system aims at helping users with minimum or no programming background to build their own simple android application, which will in turn reduce the cost and makes the application friendlier. The principle behind the proposed system is simplicity and user friendliness for minimalistic applications. Development of mobile applications brings new challenges in possibilities for their adjustment to actual context of a user and a device. Our long-term goal is to design and implement a mobile client which can dynamically adapt to the surrounding conditions and requirements of the user.

Keywords: Android, XML, Custom Apps, Client, Creator, Template, Layout, Parsing _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ I.

INTRODUCTION

Mobile phones have brought about a wave of revolution in the recent years. The main phones that have sprung up in the market are the Android devices. These devices are nowadays becoming popular among the people mainly due to their user friendliness and cost. The devices provide performance which is in par with the various smart phones that are made by large companies. Also the fact that being open source also provides a wide range of opportunities to the developers to come forward and develop new applications to make the life of people easy. Many new games and applications that are both entertainment and useful have sprung up in the online app stores. These applications however are made by developers who know how to code. The normal people do not have this privilege. This project brings forwards a system which will help ordinary people to develop interactive and dynamic mobile applications.

The ordinary people may have an idea to create an application for (say) their blog. Since blogs are all created free of cost, they would only be creating a mobile application if they were familiar in Android programming. This is not the case now. So, they should either give it to some other developer to design and implement their app or be content with just the website version. This system helps the user overcome this problem with by making their application from a list of templates. The user can select the details needed to create the application II. PROPOSED SYSTEM There are two types of applications that will be used in this system viz. the creator app and the client app. The creator app is used by the user who wants to create the application for his website. He can setup the layout of his application from the list of all the templates present. He sets up all the required fields and tabs that are needed for the design of his application. He then submits the details to the server. The server stores an XML file of the details and information that the creator app had made. Whenever the client app is run, the store displays the list of all the custom apps that were uploaded to the server. The user can download the apps to their own app. This initiates an XML parsing operation at the server side. The values stored before will be given to the XML parser which will substitute the default values in the template with those present on the server. This will generate the application which the creator app had made. This app will now be locally stored on the user’s mobile phone. A user can download any number of apps from the store onto their local storage device. The simplicity for the development is an attractive feature for the common people. By choosing some information one can create an app. The apps are developed in an environment where templates for many different designs are stored and are used as per the requirements of the user. This means that apps with many a variety of requirements can be developed within a small time period.

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Developing Custom Apps using Dynamic XML Parsing (J4R/ Volume 02 / Issue 03 / 009)

Fig. 2.1: Creator App

Creator Application: The creator application has a wide variety of features. This application makes all the changes to the created application. The components maybe added or deleted according to the discretion of the user. The creator app can be used to manage the various users for editing purposes. It also can change the layout of the application and the tabs. There is an inbox option wherein all the messages and queries received from the client app will be stored which can be accessed and replies given back. The creator app also can support new layouts and templates which will be updated in their dashboard as and when new features will be launched.

The architecture of the customer application is shown in Figure 2.1. This app collects details of the app to be created, the name, title, colour schemes to be used and the images if any to be uploaded to any specified tabs.

Fig. 2.2: Client App

Client Application: The client application is the one that is downloaded to the user’s local storage. The client application has the option of searching the applications that are stored on the server and to switch between various apps. It has various tabs. The newsfeed tab contains all the latest posts and updates that are made by the creator every day. The about tab show the information about the company that created the app. The contact us tab has the options of sending a query or giving a call. If a query is sent, then the message is sent to the inbox of the creator app. The call button can be used to get a personal interaction with the creator about his feed. The architecture for client app is shown in Figure 2.2. The client application created will be a light weight program which does not take much memory. All the different client apps downloaded will be accessible from a single app and only the data retrieved from XML in server will be dynamically loaded into the default fields.

III. FUTURE WORK The present system only has a single kind of template. More templates must be designed which can be modified according to the need of the user. There will be a user palette which can hold various values for the designs. The user will be able to select from the varieties of templates and designs give to him. He also will have a designer board where he can drag and drop the various component elements and design the template according to his discretion. This new template that he created will be sent to the server and create an entry. The developer can then select if the design is good and release it to the general public as their new design template other that the presets already existing.

IV. CONCLUSION The main challenge in the development of the proposed system is to emulate the behavior of multiple apps within a single application. The solution to the said problem is to develop basic framework of the apps and the contents will have to be

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Developing Custom Apps using Dynamic XML Parsing (J4R/ Volume 02 / Issue 03 / 009)

downloaded from the server. The problem that we are trying to solve is the difficulty to make android apps typically to generate and android app of significant use and reliability a large team of skilled developers must work for some time. This way the customers can satisfy their own small requirements on their own like making an app for blog or a simple internet radio app and so on. The scope of our work is vast since every small organization will need an app for more publicity and social reach. The simplicity for the development is an attractive feature for the common people.

REFERENCES [1] [2] [3]

Pavel Kriz, Filip Maly, “Provisioning of Application Modules to Android Devices�.

Kriz, P., Maly, F. , Slaby, A.: Mobile oriented software architecture M client M client server. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology Interfaces, Croatia, pp. 109-114. ISBN: 978-1-61284-897-6. (2011) Krejcar, O., Brida, P., Kotsopoulos, S. Miscellaneous service delivery to modern mobile devices. Journal of Computer Networks and Communications, 2013, art. no. 302502. ISSN: 20907141. (2013)

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