biswajeet-23/news_planet

A Native Android News app that displays top articles from various news sources using NewsApi and based on MVVM architecture.

News Planet

News Planet connects to the News API to retrieve Breaking News Feed based on the particular endpoint used and then displays them as a list.

App Compatibility

Android device running with Android OS 6.0 (API Level 23) or above. Designed for Phones and NOT for Tablets.

Getting Started

• Register for the Developer API Key from the News API Platform. Registration is free of cost.
• Create a new package named myApplication.utils in the Project's root folder.
• Define a property named API_KEY and assign it the value of the API Key obtained from the Registration process.
• If the above API Key is not defined, then the App will use the default "test" API Key which is heavily rate-limited. Whenever the rate-limit is hit, the app may crash or not display proper results.
• The Developer API Key is also rate-limited, but not as limited as the default "test" API Key.

Rubric followed for the Project

• App queries the newsapi.org API to fetch news stories and properly parses the JSON Response.
• Each List item displayed by the App for the News stories should contain relevant text and information about the story. This includes -
  • Title of the article.
  • Source name of the article if present.
  • Published date and time of the article if present.
• Default text field remains empty when any of the above parsed information is not available.
• Networking operations are handled by Retrofit library.
• Clicking on a story, redirects and opens the story in user's browser.
• On device rotation
  • The layout remains scrollable.
  • The app saves state and restores the list back to the previously scrolled position.
  • The UI properly adjusts so that all contents of each list item is still visible and not truncated/overlapped.
• When new News data is fetched, the main screen properly updates the new data.
• Check whether connected to internet or not. Also, validate for any occurrence of bad server response or lack of response.

Things explored/developed in addition to the above defined Rubric

• Used RecyclerView in place of ListView (to display the News stories) for its advantages in performance and easy placeholders for custom item decoration.
• CardView for displaying the News stories content for each News List items.
• List of libraries used:
  • Retrofit : For handling HTTP request and responses.
  • Glide : Image Loader library.
  • Room : For more robust database access.
  • Navigation Component : Navigating between destinations.
• Custom Fonts for TextViews using Google Fonts.
• Explored CoordinatorLayout.
• Used RecyclerView in a SwipeRefreshLayout to use the integrated Progress/Refresh indicator.
• Vector graphics editing was done using Figma.

Design

Day Mode

Breaking News Page	Search News Page	Bookmarks Page

Night Mode

Breaking News Page	Search News Page	Bookmarks Page

Install

• Download the app
• Make sure to turn on the Data network before using the app.