Challenge – Xojo Programming Blog https://blog.xojo.com Blog about the Xojo programming language and IDE Mon, 23 Mar 2020 18:19:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 #JustCode Challenge Week 7 – Pitch Tracker https://blog.xojo.com/2018/08/03/justcode-challenge-week-7-pitch-tracker/ Fri, 03 Aug 2018 10:00:44 +0000 https://blog.xojo.com/?p=4790 As many know, I’m a big baseball fan. I was recently at Sea Dogs game (our local AA minor league team) and was sitting behind home plate alongside many scouts who were carefully watching the pitchers. I noticed several were tracking pitch counts using an app on a tablet or laptop. I thought that would make for an interesting app to make in Xojo, so this week I’ve made an iOS app (I’m on an iOS roll it seems) to track the location of pitches, similar to what I observed the scouts using.

The app shows a grid of the strike zone and you tap where the pitch was. You can use the buttons on the bottom to mark the pitch as a ball, strike or in play changing its color. Click the Reset button to clear the pitches for the next batter.

Download the project or check it out on GitLab.

Enhancement idea:

  • Enter player names
  • Save the pitch count data to a text file

Add your project to the week 7 forum conversation.

Download and check out earlier projects:

]]> #JustCode Challenge Week 6 – Bubble Popper https://blog.xojo.com/2018/07/27/justcode-challenge-week-6-bubble-popper/ Fri, 27 Jul 2018 10:00:59 +0000 https://blog.xojo.com/?p=4568 For this week’s app, I created a simple iOS app where you tap on “bubbles” to pop them. This was actually suggested to me by Dana Brown some time ago as something that would make a great diversion for her son. I have found it helpful with some of my younger nieces and nephews.

This iOS app demonstrates the use of a Canvas and the detection of taps. When all the bubbles have been popped, more are added. It never ends!

Download the project or check it out on GitLab.

Enhancements idea include:

  • Add more bubble colors.
  • Keep track of how many bubbles are popped.
  • Handle screen rotations so that bubbles that are off screen get repositioned.
  • Take advantage of multi-touch to allow multiple bubbles to be popped at once.

Add your project to the week 6 forum conversation.

Download and check out earlier projects:

]]> #JustCode Challenge Week 5 – Math Quiz https://blog.xojo.com/2018/07/20/justcode-challenge-week-5-math-quiz/ Fri, 20 Jul 2018 10:00:01 +0000 https://blog.xojo.com/?p=4565 For week five of the Just Code Challenge, I made a web app. My wife is a middle school math teacher and sometimes she needs to give the kids quizzes to help them with their math skills.

This Xojo web app generates random math problems for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and then displays the score. It demonstrates the use of a WebContainer for dynamically displaying content and encapsulating behavior. In this case MathProblem is a WebContainer that generates a random math problem and determines if the correct answer was entered.

Download the MathQuiz project or check it out on GitLab.

Add your project to the week 5 forum thread.

Download and check out earlier projects:

]]> #JustCode Challenge Week 4 – Mini Golf ScoreKeeper https://blog.xojo.com/2018/07/13/justcode-challenge-week-4-mini-golf-scorekeeper/ Fri, 13 Jul 2018 08:05:11 +0000 https://blog.xojo.com/?p=4387 Sometimes the idea for a great little app comes down to solving a silly little problem.

Last month, the family went mini-golfing for my son’s birthday. It was a lovely course called Pirate’s Cove Adventure Golf right next to the ocean. But they didn’t have scoring stands and we had to use a tiny pencil on a little cardboard scorecard to keep score. So this week’s app is a simple iOS app track of mini-golf scores!

The iOS app has two screens. The main screen has a giant Table that lists all the 18 holes. You tab on the detail button for a row (it’s the “I” icon) to go to the scoring screen.

The scoring screen has places to enter scores for up to four players. It also keeps a running score total for each player.

The scores are stored in a two-dimensional array that is 4 x 18. Keep in mind that Xojo arrays are 0-based so this array is declared, as a property on the App object, with these dimensions: 3 x 17.

Download the Mini Golf project.

This app is pretty simple, so here are some ideas for enhancements:

  • Enter and display player names
  • Allow for more than 4 people on a team
  • Allow entry for “par” for each hole
  • Give each hole a name and save it separately so you can reload it should you go there to play often

Download and check out earlier projects:

]]> #JustCode Challenge Week 3 – Dogs Up! https://blog.xojo.com/2018/07/06/just-code-challenge-week3/ Fri, 06 Jul 2018 10:00:23 +0000 https://blog.xojo.com/?p=4373 After 2 desktop apps in week 1 and week 2 of the Just Code challenge, my project this week is an iOS app. Its very important job is to display dog pictures. I call it Dogs Up!

If you were at XDC 2018 maybe you caught my iOS session where I showed how to send an update to the App Store. The app I updated was Cats Up!, a simple iOS app that display cat pictures. Dogs Up! is the dog version and it uses the Dog API.

To make this app, I made a copy of the Cats Up! project and then started changing the parts necessary to hook it up to the Dog API. Changing existing projects is a great way to learn and one of the reasons we are doing the Just Code Challenge.

The Cats Up! project used a single HTTPSocket to connect to its web service for the cat pictures. The Dog API required two HTTPSockets: one to request a URL to a dog picture and another to download the picture itself.

Once these steps were done, I just needed to update the JSON file with dog facts (instead of cat facts), find something to use for the dog icon and get a recording of a dog bark to use when a new picture is displayed.

Download the Dogs Up! project.

Download and check out earlier projects:

]]> #JustCode Challenge Week 2 – Password Generator https://blog.xojo.com/2018/06/29/just-code-challenge-week2/ Fri, 29 Jun 2018 01:00:53 +0000 https://blog.xojo.com/?p=4364 In week 2 of the Just Code challenge I took inspiration from a feature in 1Password that can generate a password suggestion. This desktop app allows you to specify a desired password length and the number of digits and symbols to include in it.

Here is the Window layout in the Xojo IDE:

I’m using a read-only TextField to display the generated password. There are a couple PushButtons for copying the password text to the clipboard and for generating a new password. I use Slider controls to set the length of the password and the number of digits and symbols to include, along with corresponding labels.

When the window opens, it populates some arrays with the acceptable characters that can be used for letters, digits and symbols. In particular, some characters are excluded such as “O”, “o”, “0” and quotes because those are difficult to distinguish. The code to do this is in the Open event:

The last line calls the GeneratePassword method which uses the settings from the user interface to generate a password. This way you’ll have a password displayed immediately when the window appears.

The GeneratePassword method first determines how many digits are needed, making sure it does not exceed the requested password length. Then it adds any symbols, also ensuring it does not exceed the set length. Lastly, if more characters are needed it adds letters to reach the desired length.

The characters are added to a String array that is then shuffled to mix all the parts together. Try commenting the Shuffle line out and when you run the project you’ll see that numbers always appear first, followed by symbols and then the letters. Here is the GeneratePassword code:

A similar technique is used by the RandomDigit, RandomLetter and RandomSymbol. It uses the Shuffle method to randomize the appropriate array and then returns the first item.

Download the Password Generator project file.

Download and check out earlier projects:

Week 1: Color Picker Desktop App

Discuss your Week 2 project in the Xojo forum:

Just Code Challenge Week 2 Projects

]]> #JustCode Challenge Week 1 – Color Picker https://blog.xojo.com/2018/06/22/just-code-challenge-week1/ Fri, 22 Jun 2018 03:50:05 +0000 https://blog.xojo.com/?p=4358 It’s the first week of the Just Code challenge so I’m starting with something pretty simple. This app lets you choose a color using the system color picker and then shows you the color values in hexadecimal (useful for programming, HTML and CSS), RGB (red, green, blue), HSV (hue, saturation,value) and CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow).

This is a desktop app that demonstrates the use of a PushButton, the SelectColor method, a simple Canvas and the Color data type. It has less than 30 lines of code.

This is the layout of the Window user interface:

Here you can see the source code that displays the selected color and the related values:

Download the Color Picker project source.

]]> Jump Right In! Just Code Challenge https://blog.xojo.com/2018/06/18/jump-right-in-just-code-challenge/ Mon, 18 Jun 2018 22:37:56 +0000 https://blog.xojo.com/?p=4341 I’m often asked by kids and adults how they can start coding and learn to make apps? You could start with the usual books or videos.

But maybe you want to jump right in. When I started programming that is exactly how I learned. I tried things to see what worked and what didn’t work. I also looked at and modified other programs I found.

You can learn to code if you just code.

So let’s kick off this summer’s Just Code challenge. The idea is that you try to make one app a week throughout the next 14 weeks of the summer. These apps don’t need to do anything fancy, although they should do something. Any type of Xojo-made app counts — desktop, iOS or web. No need to compile, you are only required to submit your project to complete the challenge.

This contest is a great way to show people new to coding what it takes to make an app, and to show how much fun coding is. Even if you already know how to code, you’ll find that this contest is a great way to bring some fun back to coding kinda like Gavin Smith did just last week in his personal 14 day iOS app challenge.

The Just Code challenge starts today, June 18 and ends Friday, September 21. Submit a project on at least 10 out of 14 Fridays to complete the Just Code challenge! Complete the challenge and you’ll get one of our super soft, new Xojo shirts (while supplies last) and you’ll be entered to win a Xojo Pro license plus $100! UPDATE: Because of growing interest, we’ll also be giving away a limited number of Xojo Lite licenses!

I’ve started a forum conversation called Just Code challenge. Go there for ideas, to ask questions and post your projects on Fridays. Of course, I’ll be doing the Just Code challenge too. Each week I will post my project to start the Friday forum thread.

Each Friday add your new project to the forum thread I started with that week’s app. Share a description of your project, a screenshot and a download link. Talk about your app and how much fun it is to #JustCode!

So what are you waiting for? Go on, just code.

Check out this forum post for a list of 100+ projects submitted by Xojo customers:

Just Code Challenge Submissions

And find out the winners here:

Just Code Challenge Winners

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