One of the most common things I love to use my phone for is sharing pictures of my pets with others. We have two cats and a dog: Shawmut, Christofur and Lucy. To be honest, I’m not much a cat person as I find that cats are almost all Richards, constantly causing and getting into trouble. I’m 100% a dog person.
But even though I have my own pets, I do love looking at pet pictures. It’s a simple pleasure, but there’s not much that I find more calming.
Years ago I made a Xojo app (CatsUp) that displayed random cat pictures and it was a lot of fun. And one thing that Xojo excels at is making it fun to create software! That’s what the Year of Code is all about, after all.
Speaking of that, here is the Year of Code topic for May: Mobile Apps.
You can already find CatsUp for iOS and Android included in the Xojo examples, but why stop at just cats? Being a dog guy, I want to see some dogs. All the dogs.
Since I’m not here to start a cats vs. dogs war, I thought, why not both? It turns out I’m not the only one that thinks this as there are actually public web services that serve up pictures of cats and dogs. Web services and mobile apps go together like peanuts butter and chocolate.
The web service for cats that I’ve previously used is called TheCatAPI and is available here: https://thecatapi.com
There is an equivalent dog one called, unsurprisingly, TheDogAPI: https://www.thedogapi.com
For my mobile app this month, I’ve created an all-new app that can show pictures of cats, dogs or both! I call it Pawz.
Actually, it’s two apps since I made versions for iOS and Android. Here’s a look:
Although they are separate projects, both use basically the same code. In fact there is only about 50 lines of code in each project! The UI itself is just a big ImageViewer that is used to show the picture and several toolbar buttons.
There are three buttons to request a cat picture, dog picture or a surprise picture that could be either. There is also an extra button that lets you share the picture, if you really like it.
You can find the source for the iOS and Android versions of Pawz on GitHub here:
https://github.com/paullefebvre/pawz
Year of Code is all about having some fun making an app. As you can see with Pawz, it doesn’t have to be anything extravagant. Even fun apps can be made quickly with very little code!
I can’t wait to see what great mobile apps you all create this month. Share your creations in the Forum topic.
One More Thing
Although phones and tablets are what we usually think of when talking about Mobile Apps, you know what else is rather mobile? A vehicle! And it just so happens that many vehicle manufacturers, such as Cadillac, Chevy, Ford, Honda, Polestar, Renault and Volvo are now using Android to run their infotainment systems. Technically it’s Android Automotive OS (AAOS), but it is very similar to regular Android.
Because Xojo builds standard Android Runtime (ART) apps, Xojo Android apps also work on Android Automotive OS as a “parked app”. You can test with this by using Android Studio to install an Android Automotive VM for the Emulator. Once you’ve added that you can run your Xojo Android projects on it just like any other device. Pawz works fine in an AAOS Emulator.
Why do I bring this up? No reason, although I believe Xojo 2025 Release 2 pre-release testing might be starting soon…
Paul learned to program in BASIC at age 13 and has programmed in more languages than he remembers, with Xojo being an obvious favorite. When not working on Xojo, you can find him talking about retrocomputing at Goto 10 and on Mastodon @lefebvre@hachyderm.io.
Year of Code Project
- Year of Code: Kickoff
- January Project: Desktop Apps | Forum Discussion
- February Project: Database Apps | Forum Discussion
- March Project: Web Apps | Forum Discussion
- April Project: User Interface | Forum Discussion
- May Project: Mobile Apps | Forum Discussion
How to Play:
Each month we’ll announce a new theme and share an example project of our own. Share your projects to the Xojo Forum thread for that month via GitHub (all the links you need are posted above ↑ ). Learn how to use Xojo and GitHub.
The Prizes:
Monthly winners get $100 at the Xojo store. Every project submitted is another chance to win the grand prize. The grand prize is $250 cash plus a Xojo Pro license and a year of GraffitiSuite and will be announce in December. Learn more about the prizes.