Final Project Overview

Estimated time: 3 minutes

Project description

In this project, you will develop a mobile application that tracks daily fitness activities, such as the steps taken and calories burned. Through this project, you will gain a solid understanding of mobile app design, user interface creation, and implementation of fitness tracking features.

Objectives

After completing this reading, you will be able to:

• Apply the basic concepts of mobile app design

• Create user-friendly interfaces for fitness-tracking apps

• Create activities that contain business logic for the app

• Implement user stories in the app

Key features

• Track daily fitness activities like the steps taken and calories burned
• Validate user input to ensure required fields are filled
• Navigate between different screens (activities) within the app

Concepts

• View/ViewGroups: Understanding and using various views and view groups to structure the app
• Layouts: Designing intuitive and responsive layouts using LinearLayout
• Navigation: Implementing navigation between activities using Intents
• Material Design: Applying material design principles to enhance the user interface
• Click Events: Handling click events for buttons and other interactive elements
• User Input Validation: Ensuring required fields are filled before proceeding
• Emulator Testing: Using an emulator to test and debug the app

Technical terms

• Activity: Single screen with a user interface
• Intent: Abstract description of an operation to be performed
• findViewById: Method used to retrieve a view by its ID
• setOnClickListener: Method used to set a callback for when a view is clicked
• startActivity: Method used to start a new activity
• Toast: Small message that pops up on the screen
• Toast.makeText: Method used to create a toast message
• LinearLayout: View group that aligns all child widgets in a single direction, either vertically or horizontally

Tools and technologies

• Android Studio: For app development
• Emulator: To test the app

Instructions

Your task is to implement the following user stories in this project. A user story is an informal, straightforward description of a software feature from the end user's perspective. It aims to explain how the feature will offer value to the user.

User stories

1. As a user, I want to enter the number of steps I have taken to track my daily activity.
2. As a user, I want to enter my weight and age to get a more accurate calculation of the calories burned.
3. As a user, I want to see the calories I have burned based on my steps, weight, and age to monitor my fitness progress.
4. As a user, I want to navigate back to the main screen from the Calories screen to enter new data if required.

Approach

Follow these seven steps to create the Daily Fitness Tracker App.

Step 1: Create a new project in Android Studio

• Create a new project in Android Studio with an empty activity.

Step 2: Create the main activity layout

• Design the main screen layout (activity_main.xml) with:
  • A title text view
  • An input field for the number of steps
  • A button to calculate calories

Step 3: Create the calories activity layout

• Create a new "Empty Views Activity" named CaloriesActivity.
• This will generate a new Java file (CaloriesActivity.java) and a corresponding XML layout file (activity_calories.xml).

Step 4: Update the MainActivity.java file

• Add logic to open the caloriesActivity when the user selects the Calculate button.
• Pass the number of steps to the caloriesActivity by adding to the Intent.

Step 5: Implement the CaloriesActivity.java file

• Implement logic to receive Intent from the MainActivity and extract the number of steps.
• Implement the calculateCalories method, which calculates the number of calories based on the provided formula.

Step 6: Update the AndroidManifest.xml file

• Ensure all activities are listed in the manifest file.

Step 7: Run the application

• Ensure your Android virtual device (AVD) is set up and select the Run button.
• Verify that the main screen appears, and on entering the steps taken and selecting Calculate Calories, you are taken to the Calories screen displaying the calculated calories burned. Ensure that the Back button navigates to the main activity and that the toast message is displayed if no steps are entered.

Author

UL