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Commons

Rewrite of Commons for Android. Under active development but not yet released.

Buzzwords

Aside from being a useful tool, I am writing this app as a demo reel because I want to write software for a living.

Here are some of the app's technical selling points:

  • Dependency injection using Dagger and Hilt.
  • Written in Kotlin with coroutines and flow.
  • Modular code structure.
  • MotionLayout/ConstraintLayout for interactive layouts and overall UI design.
    • UI implemented entirely with Jetpack Compose - migrated from old View-based implementation.
  • Retrofit for network calls and extensive use of Room for local data persistence, using the repository pattern.
  • Single activity architecture with the Jetpack Navigation Component.
  • Social features use Google Sign-In for account creation.
  • Unit tests ensure integrity of data structures and transformations.

About the project

Several years ago I released an Android app called Commons which aimed to make it easier to keep up-to-date with UK politics. It looked nice and made a lot of data readable and easy to access... but outside of the time I spent developing it, I never actually used it. It was ultimately an encyclopaedia which failed to make its content engaging.

It also suffered from a very basic backend which required a lot of manual intervention to update.

v2

I still believe the app should exist so this is the all-new remake with the following goals:

  • Engagement - give people (myself included) a reason to use the app regularly.

    • Users can discuss and vote on any parliamentary divisions, bills, election results, members, etc.
    • Users will be able to follow and get updates on particular bills as they progress through parliament

  • Accessibility - data needs to be well-structured, readable, and easy to find.

  • Maintainability - data updates are now fully automated.

  • Transparency - source code is public for server and client(s).

Server

The backend of the app is written in Django: https://github.com/beatonma/snommoc

It is running on AWS at https://snommoc.org - feel free to contact me if you want to know more about the API or would like access to it for your own project.