SpaceX Explorer

The challenge is to create a simple Ionic application to consume data from the awesome SpaceX api in 7 days.

Day One

• Created initial project.
• Changed to dark theme.
• Added interfaces to map to http responses.
• Added a simple service that requests capsules, cores, dragons and launch data.
• Added pages for capsule, core, dragon and launch data.
• Added http request cache for launch data.

Day Two

• Added support for travis CI. Travis CI should be used to build and manage apk's. (Unsigned)
• Did some code cleanup. Removed all component.ts files. But in that way I would be unable to use lazy loading. See Ionic 3 Lazy-loading. Reverted all the changes, and removed imports from app.component.ts that referenced Pages that already had a module.ts. Now, all pages components are lazy loaded.
• I also spent some time on how to manually zipalign and sign an apk. I'm writing the required steps below.

Day three

• Finally finished automatic builds on travis CI. Travis CI is now able to successfully generate apk's from source.
• Cleaned up .travis.yml file.
• Created a new basic page to show upcoming launches, added a new method to space-x.ts provider.
• Bumped app version to v0.0.2.
• Added Historic events list.
• Created an app and splash icon. This was easily done with ionic cordova resources. The cli will look for an icon and splash image in the assets folder and automatically generates resources for android and iOS.
• Added caching for core, capsules and dragons.

Day Four

• Added rocket and rocket detail and launchpad pages.
• Improved styles for the future launches page.
• Added pages deploy support to travis CI. Meaning that travis will now also build for the web and deploy it using the github pages, creating the webapp at https://andrevarandas.github.io/space-x-explorer/.
• Did some minor improvements to core, capsules and corresponding details pages.

Day five

• We got a new logo! Thanks to Candy Skull for the awesome work.
• Working on custom cordova plugin to be able to set both the wallpaper and lock screen images, that should work at least for android - struggling with the current outdated docs and tutorials.

Day six

• Finished the cordova plugin to manage home and lock Screen wallpapers. I am now able to set a home wallpaper/lock screen with a simple image url.
• Reversed order from launches list (now shows the top most recent).
• Minor style tweaks. (Home and launch-detail)

Current status - Day six

Added rocket details, improved future launches page.

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Some Notes

Building apk

# apk is generated at platforms/android/app/build/outputs/apk/release

ionic cordova build android --minifyjs --minifycss --optimizejs --prod --release

Zipalign the unsigned apk

# Input app-relase-unsigned.apk and outputs app-relase-unsigned-aligned.apk

zipalign -f -p 4 app-release-unsigned.apk app-relase-unsigned-aligned.apk

Sign the aligned apk

# Note --ks points to the keystore file. You will be prompted for credentials.

apksigner sign --ks ~/Documents/spacexstore --out app-release.apk app-relase-unsigned-aligned.apk

zipalign and apksigner not found

# Just replace the 27.0.3 with the desired version

echo "export PATH=\$PATH:~/Library/Android/sdk/build-tools/27.0.3/" >> ~/.zshrc && . ~/.zshrc

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Postmortem

Working with Nodejs 12.22.12

• Build app bundle instead with: (APK's are no longer supported)

ionic cordova build android --ks path/to/keystore.jks --prod --release --minifyjs --minifycss --optimizejs -- -- --packageType=bundle

LICENSE - GPLv3 - André Varandas