Tek Syndicate android app

Level1Techs INBOX.deb
1

Hi, I wondering if it would be ok develop a Tek Syndicate android app to link to the website. I think it would be a cool project that the community would like..

I am currently employed as an Android Developer here in Ireland and I am looking for a new personal project to work on in my free time. The app would styled to match the websites general style. For the start it would be more or less a simple feed reader but over time it could support the forum, logins and posting.

Anyway I mocked up a layout in Android Studio on my nexus 5 if you want to have a look. (It is missing some fonts)

Let me know what you think of the idea.

TNljMdU.jpg1080x1920 209 KB

 

2

3

I'd def. use it.

4

As long as its open, why not? 

5

Yes please. Honestly a forum app in itself would work for me.

6

This would be absolutely awesome if it could give you like RSS notifications with new videos posted or posts made by users you "follow" 

7

It looks great! I say go for it.

8

I have been wanting this since I came here.

9

YES FINALLY!!!

10

Please

11

Holy fack...  Irish guys thinking alike!

I literally prototyped an Android app for Tek Syndicate 2 days ago.  It looks quite similar, although I'm liking your layout more.

At the moment it populates the video list from the YouTube API, and will eventually support downloading the videos for offline use (But that requires some server-side stuff).  But Notifications, Comments & Form Viewing should all be pretty easy to implement.

Great minds think alike, eh :P

12

Only problem is that there is no data feeds for comments and such. Only some basic RSS  feeds for articles.

13

I know nothing about this kind of thing but would the recent comments column be helpful to getting that data feed of comments?

In the main page source it appears under the block:

 

<section id="block-views-comments-recent-block" class="block block-views">



14

I would try to avoid parsing html completely because if the site changes then the app breaks. I hope that the guys would make some JSON/XML data available or something in the future. It would require a bit of work on their end to make this app a reality. 

15

I would diffidently use the app if there was one.... that would be great! I hope they let you make it! 

16

It shouldn't be too big an issue - the feeds are quite basic, a simple REST API for the feeds should only take a small amount of time to create. Really it's only articles & comments linked to articles.

I've been back and forth with Wendell a couple of times, and he says it's possible they'll set one up.

17

terrible idea.

18

You are thinking future prove. An App is almost standard these days. I hope Logan and co. will agree. + It would be great if you could write and answer  in the Feed and Forum section, because that's where the Tek lives.

 

19

the app

Okay. So, here's some stuff:

 

FIRST: We have setup github for "the app" -- the legal folks tell us that for various reasons the only officially sanctioned app must come from us blah blah blah. We'll probably give the app away to teksupport members and maybe do an ad-supported app that's free. We've setup a public github repo, and there are many volunteers that have all-of-a-sudden written in to let us know they'd like to do something to help out the community. AWESOME! 

So, here's how we see it breaking down:

V1: This is an app that's a front end for the site. It can just display info. If you want to log in and comment, it'll take you to the site to do that. However, it lays the foundation to allow us to build an app that you could actually log into the site with. The login functions we're not super comfortable letting folks do from within the app (sorry bozos! we still love you!) just yet. That'll be a V2 thing.

So with V1, what could you do? Keep an eye on threads, videos, etc. No problem.

To that end, to hopefully make things easier, we've setup some json feeds that have already been shared with our app developers:

https://teksyndicate.com/json/v1/tag/(whatever) 

e.g. https://teksyndicate.com/json/v1/tag/inbox or https://teksyndicate.com/json/v1/tag/the-tek  (any tags will work, but those two are probably the ones you want to make buttons for in the app). In that Json object, there is a 'topic key' -- you'll see that throughout these feeds. 

https://teksyndicate.com//json/v1/forum-topic-comments/(topic key)  

e.g. https://teksyndicate.com/json/v1/forum-topic-comments/174157 for the comments on the recent post from dealzon fyi. 

https://teksyndicate.com/json/v1/forum-topics

Feed of active forum topics; has a pager: https://teksyndicate.com/json/v1/forum-topics?page=1 for the second page (the other link is the 0th page, page 2 is the 1st page, etc)  . This page also takes an optional argument: https://teksyndicate.com/json/v1/forum-topics/general-discussion

User Info:

https://teksyndicate.com/json/v1/user-info/1

where 1 is the uid you see in other feeds. It just has their name and avatar URL.

 

Comments for a specific topic (that # is the topic key)

https://teksyndicate.com/json/v1/forum-topic-comments/174160

 

Github url: https://github.com/wendelltron/tekapp

 

Okay.

 

What now bitches? :)

 

 

 

 

20

"What now bitches? :)"

I'm dead, Wendell. Lmao.