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.