fosdem-companion-android
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cbeyls
Be able to see the new tracks added after database update
Hi Christophe !
With the approach of the event, I started to look at which would be the tracks this year. I bookmarked a few ones and some days later when I returned on the app and updated the database, I had no idea which tracks were news or where there were. So it would be nice if some sort of special list was in place allowing us to see the added tracks (compared to the database state after last update).
For now, I have to return in every section of every day to check if I'm not missing something ... I think this can be improved, no ? It is something that can be easily develop ?
Thank you in advance, we I'll see at FOSDEM. ;)
Hello Simon,
It's not easy to do since there is no timestamp in the events data. So, to be able to do this the app would need to store all the ids of the current talks in a separate table, then during the update perform a lookup for each talk to determine if it's a new one (and this would not detect reschedules or other changes). Then if you hit the update button again by mistake, you would loose everything since nothing would be new.
That's why the best way to do this would be to have some kind of "last updated date" info in the schedule data itself but it's not available right now.
Yesterday it was 550 events now it is 551. Having to go through all categories to find the new one will take some time...
Otherwise awesome app.
I added a feature that allows the app to check for actual changes on the server. Thanks to this I could add a feature that shows newly added talks since the last actual server update. However deleted talks, reschedules and other changes would not be available. I'm still not quite sure how to present the UI, maybe a simple list with all the added talks in a separate section?
Cool ! I think the possibility to show newly added talks is sufficient enough to stop any sense of frustration when the database updates. ^^
A simple list (maybe define simple ?) in a new section seems enough, imo. Maybe some "new" badges on the main talks section indicates which category contains newly tracks would be nice too, I guess but this does not seem essential to me. ;)
Or menu items in the main menu called 'New' and 'Updated'. Both would offer a list of what is new and updated since the last update. This would save many users a lot of time figuring out what has changed and prevent certain changes going unnoticed.
For the implementation, a tablet with IDs and timestamp of when event was added and timestamp when event was last changed could solve this. In the menu, 'new' and 'changed' could list the last 32 items, reverse sorted on the timestamp.
I'm currently rewriting the database layer of the app during my spare time and will definitely implement this when I'm done. Since the 2019 schedule is already complete, you can expect to use this feature next year.