Week 6 (Mar 21 - Mar 25)

Hello blog viewers,

I have just completed the sixth week of my SRP. During this week, I completed researching causes of stress (which I am in the process of converting into questions for the app) as well as coding more animations which will enhance the user interface.

While researching, I found many sources of stress which I would not have been able to come up with off the top of my head such as marriage; marriage, along with many other happy experiences in people’s lives, can be stressful due to new responsibilities and new environments (such as where a person is living). I also found more obvious sources such as bullying, unsafe environments, and lack of sleep. I have compiled twenty questions (with a few slightly overlapping ideas) and would like to cut down on them until I have roughly ten focused questions which will get key information from the user without wasting his/her time.

On the coding side, I finally got the animation working for the core graphics in the first question (which I discussed more in last week’s blog). "You can see it for yourself in the video below" is what I would say if blogger would allow me to upload the video (which is smaller than the 100 MB limit). Instead, I have just provided a few pictures in a time-lapse fashion and you'll have to imagine the actual animation.

After completing this animation, I added the core data files which I coded in a separate Xcode project to the main project which has the actual visuals and animations. This caused a few issues including the test app build failing to run due to a “Thread 1 signal sigabrt” error (this general error has popped up many times for). I looked over all of my code trying to find the cause for this error. I eventually found code for an unused outlet that I had forgotten about; I deleted the code and the app was running again. After overcoming this hurdle, I connected the user input values to the core data so the app will save answers. This is a key part of the app because if the app can’t remember the user’s answers for each stress event, the app will not be able to do what it’s designed to do: display graphs (using the collected data over a period of time) and present stress patterns to help the user and his/her healthcare professional, thus rendering the app useless.

This next week, I plan on narrowing down my final list of questions, working more on the core data, and adding more animations to the app.

I hope to see you all in my next blog post!

Week 5 (Mar 14 - Mar 18)

Hello blog viewers,

I have just completed the fifth week of my SRP, last week being my spring break. This week, I spent a lot of time on the core data for the app (where all the user’s answers will be stored into the app) and started learning (raywenderlich.com has been a great help again) and working on coding some core graphics. Core graphics are displayed in a UIView. They can be coded to display a visual image, hence the “view” in UIView. For example, I can code a circle image with the line of code:

override func drawRect(rect: CGRect) {  var path = UIBezierPath(ovalInRect: rect)  UIColor.greenColor().setFill()  path.fill() }

Although this code does say “oval”, if I set the view’s width and height equal to each other, then the “oval” will look like a circle. This code also shows how to set a basic color for the circle. Custom colors can coded using UIColor(red: x, green: y, blue: z, alpha: w). I use this website: http://uicolor.xyz/#/hex-to-ui in order to pick a color and get values for x, y, z, and w. An example of this is equalling UIColor(red:0.12, green:0.83, blue:0.88, alpha:1.0). With this simple line of code and a website, I have access to any color I want.

Although coding core graphics is an optional part of this app, I think that it will produce a more dynamic user experience since users will be able to visualize questions and their answers more. For example, I have started working on a moving image that will better visualize when a slider is used.

When the user slides (the slider) left to right, the yellow bar in the UIView (with the 3/4ths circle) will move left to right to show an increase in the stress value along with the number in the center showing the exact value. So far, I have only coded the UIView, but have not been able to make the yellow bar coordinate with the slider proportionally. Coding the core graphics of the UIView required some math in order to code part of the circle and not the whole circle.

I had to code for the “stroke” to have a starting angle of 3π/4 and ending angle of π/4. This results in a 270º angle circle. After that, I coded for the outline (the yellow part) of the 270º circle.

These next few weeks both are exciting and stressful since many colleges are releasing their regular decision admissions. While stressing over college decisions, I will continue to work on core data of the app and working on adding core graphics to more parts of the app, including the main “stressed?” button. I hope to see you all in my next blog post!

Week 4 (Feb 29 - Mar 4)

Hello blog viewers,

I have just completed the fourth week of my SRP. During this week, I focused on programming the core data of the app. The core data of the app is where I will be storing all of the answers to the stress related questions from any stress incident. These answers will be stored, converted to numbers, and displayed in the form of graphs. The core data will store data in a “persistent store”.  In other words, if the app is terminated completely and the user restarts his/her mobile device multiple times, the app will retain this information. Each stress incident will capture series of stress related data and the app will compile this data and present it in a graphical user interface. Since the app revolves around retaining stress data from each stress incident, this is the key part of the app. As you may imagine, such a key sub-system requires a lot of careful design and coding. I have never worked with core data before so I have been learning about it and have not gotten to code as much as I would have liked. I found the tutorials on www.raywenderlich.com to be particularly helpful for any of you other Swift coders out there. There is a lot more coding to be done for the core data of the app which I plan to work on next week.  

I also worked on passing variables and constants between view controllers. Each view controller can have its own individual variables and constants (which the programmer codes). However, these variables and constants are not globally shared between all of the view controllers. There are exceptions to this when you only need one instance of an object to live during the lifecycle of an app. These objects are often called “singleton” objects, as you can imagine from the name, a single instance of the object exist during the lifecycle of the application. I have been programming the app so that each view controller passes any necessary variables to the next view controller.

After coding for awhile, I set out to test whether my code worked. I created a label in a view controller after the stress rating (from 1 to 5) question (in a previous view controller). I set up the label so that it would show the number that the user selected (on the previous view controller) on how stressed they felt. After programming this into the app, I tested it out.

I ran the test build and went to the stress rating question. I selected a random number (four in this case) and hit the “Next Question” button, fingers crossed.

Hooray! As you can see, the label (in green text) is showing four, the number I selected in the previous view controller. This may not seem like much, but passing variables and constants between view controllers was a week long struggle for me where I came across countless errors which I had never faced before. Finally conquering this vital piece of code was a huge relief.

As a side note, I also added a pop up alert which comes up whenever the user taps on the “Finish” button after completing the stress incident survey. Here’s a picture of it:

This next week, I plan on continuing learning and coding the core data for the app (and hope to make significant progress). The coding is getting more advanced and intense every day! As I’m developing this app, many new ideas for the app arise to the point that I have started keeping a list of different ideas and adopting the feasible ones and hope to incorporate some of the more advanced ideas for future releases.

I hope to see you all in my next blog post!