alexramey / mbird-ios

mbird-iOS

This is a project to create an iOS reader app for Mockingbird.

Design Decisions

This project introduces coordinators that manage view controller transitions.

Setup

We are going with SwiftLint to enforce a consistent coding style. The setup is outlined in the readme on the swiftlint website. Once you install the SwiftLint pod locally, you will need to add $PODS_ROOT environment variable to your .bash_profile so that the build phases script "${PODS_ROOT}/SwiftLint/swiftlint" actually works.

Github Usage

To make changes to master, you must create a new branch and submit a pull request with your proposed changes. Once a reviewer signs off on the changes, then you will be allowed to merge them in. This policy is enforced on everyone.

Helpful Links

1. SwiftLint Repo
2. Coordinator Pattern
3. Coordinator Example

mbird-ios's Issues

Task: Setup TestFlight and push a build to DZ

Filtering podcasts

Don't prompt users for notifications until they visit devotions VC. Even then, have them select an option to schedule daily devotions or something

that way, it is absolutely clear why our app is requesting permission, and the user is the one prompting it

Also, the user should get to choose and be able to change the time of day they appear

Article Paging

Right now, the backend exposes a syncAllData and getArticles method.

syncAllData just grabs the 25 most recent articles from the API and saves them to the device.
getArticles reads them from the device.

We need some way for the user to scroll and get more articles. The backend should expose a syncLatestArticlesForCategoryWithOffset(num, category, offset, completion) function that tries to download the next batch of num articles at the given offset. On completion, it can invoke a completion closure.

Then the articleController could call this method and load more articles when it's done. Each table view cell can manage loading more articles for its specific category.

A maximum of 50 articles per category should be allowed.

Related: Investigate NSFetchedResultsController

Bookmarks

Take care not to let these get deleted by the delete job (should just need to add a predicate to the fetch requests in that function to ignore bookmarked articles)

Investigate: Only store article objectIDs in the state

This is the simplest way to keep things immutable in the state. There will be ramifications in the articles view controller, which now needs to actually get the articles from core data.

Note: bookmarks can be stored as a list of object ids in state as well. investigate using a middleware to persist bookmarking and to initially read articles from disk and or fetch them . . .

User Settings

Users should be able to adjust:

Max Number of Articles Saved on Device

Accessibility

Make sure our app honors bigger font sizes

Articles: - TODO
Bookmarks: - TODO
Devotions: - TODO
Podcasts: - TODO

Investigate Cancelling Notifications and Devotions Update Process

Suppose we want to do an app update and change our data source for devotions. (Realistically, this will probably be us dropping a new file into the app bundle and pushing an update to the App Store)

We need some facility to recognize the change (consider adding a version number in the data source somehow), and then we need to cancel outstanding notifications and reschedule new ones.

Think through this and come up with a way to do this

Update ReadMe

Include Podcast Addresses

Mockingcast
https://themockingcast.fireside.fm/rss
PZ
http://www.mbird.com/feed/pz-podcast
Mockingpulpit
http://www.mbird.com/feed/podcast/

And document use of API for Articles data and devotions data source

Data Cleanup Task

After we sync data, do some smart cleanup.

Example: If there are now over 200 articles saved to device, delete the oldest ones that aren't bookmarked to get the number back to 200.

Most Recent articles at the top

Article sharing

Category Sections

Our articles home screen needs to be split into sections. Maybe the 10 latest can go in latest up top. Then there needs to be categories.

https://www.mbird.com/wp-json/wp/v2/categories?parent=0&per_page=20

will return all the base level categories. We can discover what base category an article belongs to by grabbing its categories and working up the tree until we find a base category.

obviously, if a category has 0 posts, just dynamically omit it from the table. This can get us closer to the Apple News look

Make it possible to hear podcasts when ringer is off

Better Empty State for Bookmarks Screen

If they have no bookmarks, then there should be some text displayed to that affect in a stylish way

Investigate off-line mode and disappearance of articles data

Solve Startup Crash that starts after having the app installed for a while

This is really bad, b/c, once it starts crashing, it always crashes . . . And I have no idea why

Guesses: 1) Core Data or ReSwift Threading issues ?

Ideally we could reproduce this on the simulator. Think of what might happen after a long period of time? Is it related to the article sync after a week in viewDidLoad of ArticlesController? Is there some data inconsistency that happens after a new sync?