The repository for the SplashX Swimming Pool Experience android app created by Matthias Bächler and Tomaso Leoni during an external course on the development of mobile android applications.
After taking a look at Switzerland's wiewarm.ch API and some research online, it became obvious that an app that showed you all swimming pools near you and gave you detailed information about them, would indeed be a very welcomed app. Nothing found on the most famous application stores (Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store) was functional here in Switzerland, so me and my project partner Matthias Bächler (@Gnerfedurf) decided to pursue this idea.
We planned to create a map based application, that'd show the user all of the swimming pools in their proximity. Similar to Google's "Find places nearby" feature, but less broad and more focused on what matters the most during the hot months of summer - finding a nice place to cool down. SplashX would then go a step further and also show the user all necessary information to whatever location they might choose. This involves the bath's temperature, its opening hours and the type of pool.
During the one week of working time at our disposal, we had to do our best to include as many features as we had envisioned. I myself took care of the map rendering, the access to the device's location and the retrieval of any information to the location chosen by the user. Matthias Bächler was in charge of handling the application's persistence, the database to save the user's favourite places and the actual display of the information retrieved.
After one week we had a working application that was able to perform almost every task we had planned to implement. Upon start up, the app loaded a map with the user's live location on it and placed a marker on every swimming location near the user. When testes in the city of Berne for example, the most important locations were marked (Marzili, Ka-We-De, Weyermannshaus and the river Aare) and accessible through the map.
Although I personally had not been looking forward to this project, given the environment we would be working with and my prior experience with it, I found myself really enjoying the creation of the application. After getting used to the workflow required for android development in Android Studio during the first day, the final product exceeded our expectations, especially mine. Working together with Matthias Bächler was also very smooth, as we would always discuss every step and show the other, what we had done, why and how.