Monday 4 July 2011

First month report in GSoC

Well, it's been a full month (and a little more), since I started working on coolest grant I know: GSoC. So it's time to make a properly report about project status, mainly to keep up to date with developments in the Sakai developer community.

I can only begin by thanking the work done by my mentor, Carl Hall, who patiently read my long post and still more patiently answer all my questions. Thanks Carl :)

I wish more things were finished at the end of this first month. But as recently I completed an important milestone, so I can be positive reviewing reached objectives above remaining objectives. Moreover, it's normal in the first stage takes a little bit longer development because I had to learn the technologies we work on the project (Objective-C, I'm looking at you, weirdo language), refresh the knowledge stored in layers of dust in my head (I'm sorry I left just Android), inquire about Sakai OAE (beautiful breath of fresh air I am sure will revitalize Sakai) and finish my exams (the GSoC starts early for European students).

But no excuses, let's focus on the things that if I achieved which really matters.

Sakai OAE: thanks to jar file that Carl gives me, put into operation a local version of Sakai has been trivial. So I could concentrate on reading the documentation and play a lot with Sakai trying to understand the basic operation of the application. The existing documentation is not extensive, but is compensated by the high availability which the project developers have to answer questions. If you have any problems, I would recommend that you to pass through the irc channel #sakai, there are always good people willing to help, or the mailing list sakai-dev,although the specificity for Sakai OAE is sakai -ui-dev. I have also found very useful documentation on quality tests because I have allowed to understand the user's work flow in Sakai.

Mock up: in the presentation of the project I've already showed some mock ups of the application and during this time we have been working,Kasun Kakpriya and I, trying our two mobile applications were most similar, so the user experience will be as similar as possible between the two mobile versions of Sakai CLE and Sakai OAE. We agreed in the work flow of the application, so that the two applications would have the same work flow and differ in some of the screens. This gives us flexibility to offer the best mobile version of each of the versions of Sakai and maintain the user experience. Moreover, regarding the decision that what mock up I will implement , I am still awaiting a answer from the design team Sakai OAE, but I preferred to continue developing the inner part of the application and wait a little bit longer to UI team could answer me. So, if you are part of the design team, would be really nice to get some feedback (thanks!).

Skeleton application for Android : it is ready the skeleton of the Sakai application on Android. It is a tiny skeleton for now. It has basically the view with the log in and a second view where he arrived after identifying the user. Created packages are also organized by the java classes as well as the internationalization files.

Skeleton application for iOS: idem in IOS. Although , as I said in the introduction: window management in IOS is very strange. Maybe it's because I already have experience in Android and it takes me more work to switch, or because management is really weird (I'd bet on the latter ;) ).

Authenticate users in Android: this is the milestone I have achieved. Users can now authenticate themselves sending its credentials. _Carl Hall and I, studied the possibility to authenticate users using the OAuth protocol, even it is a standard that is spreading rapidly, the implementation of this protocol is beyond the aim of GSoC. Also Nakamura's team is working on this. Nevertheless, the application is ready to change an authentication method for another one, so after the change will be not complicated.

I had this post ready for two weeks, so sorry for the delay. As you will understand the application development has advanced. If you will like to follow the development daily I will suggest to follow the repository: https://bitbucket.org/mrs.hopper/nellodeeoae

I hope you are interested about the project, I would like to hear some feedback. And if you have anything to ask or suggest me, plese do not hesitate.

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