How did you discover MIT App Inventor?

How did you discover MIT App Inventor?

I discovered App Inventor just as Google was handing AI classic off to MIT. At the time I was looking at different kinds of development tools for mobile devices, and App Inventor showed up in some online searches.

I took a look at it and found it  intriguing – at the time, AI classic did not seem quite capable of doing the things I was likely to need, but I intended to keep an eye on it.

A few months later, I was asked if we could quickly train some high school students to write Android apps? I have been a volunteer engineering mentor with FIRST Robotics programs for eight years. The new high school team where I was volunteering had intriguing ideas for mobile apps. When I was asked about the feasibility of quickly building some Android apps, I immediately proposed MIT App Inventor!

Our first student was so enthralled he literally stayed up half the night teaching himself App Inventor and soon was writing bundles of code for our Android tablet applications. Eventually another student joined the effort (from an iPhone background!) and rapidly came up to speed, writing a neat app in App Inventor.

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App Inventor 2: Databases and Files – available shortly

Volume 3 – focusing on TinyDB, TinyWebDB, Fusion Tables and text files – is now Available.

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App Inventor 2: Databases and Files is a step-by-step guide to writing apps that use TinyDB, TinyWebDB, Fusion Tables and data files for information storage and retrieval. Includes detailed explanations, examples, and a link to download sample code. This is the first tutorial to cover all of these App Inventor database and file features.

If your apps need to work with data or files – you need this book!

TinyDB stores data on your smart phone or tablet and is a primary way for App Inventor apps to save data, even when the app is no longer running or if the device is turned off.

TinyWebDB is similar to TinyDB, but stores your data on a remote server in the network cloud.

Multiple apps can share a TinyWebDB database, plus you can update the content of your TinyWebDB using just a web browser. This means you can distribute an app whose content can change over time – just by changing the values in TinyWebDB.

A big challenge is the need to set up a TinyWebDB server – this book shows how to do that through free services offered by Google.

Fusion Tables provide a powerful, cloud-based database system for App Inventor apps. Creating, retrieving, updating and deleting data is done using the industry standard Structured Query Language or SQL. Fusion Tables reside in the Google network cloud – this book shows you how to set up and configure Fusion Tables for you own apps using free services of Google. As your app requirements grow, Google’s cloud can provide low cost servers and bandwidth for your needs.

Underneath the Android OS user interface, there is a file system, similar to the file system found on Windows or Mac OS X. With App Inventor your apps can write and read data from files, and if using the special “CSV” format, App Inventor data can be shared with many spreadsheet programs. This book shows you how to create, use and access data files, and how to convert data to and from the CSV format.

Over 28,000 words. Amazon’s page count is 322 pages. Over 250 screen shots and illustrations. Numerous sample programs and code.

App Inventor 2: Databases and Files – Table of Contents
1 – Introduction
2 – Using the TinyDB database
3 – Implementing Records Using Lists in TinyDB
4 – Simulating Multiple TinyDB Databases
5 – How to Use Multiple Tags in TinyDB
6 – Introduction and Setup: TinyWebDB
7 – Managing TinyWebDB in the Cloud
8 – Programming for TinyWebDB – Demo 1
9 – Adding a Tags List to TinyWebDB – Demo 2
10 – Handling Multiple Users with TinyWebDB – Demo 3
11 – Implementing a Student Quiz Application using TinyWebDB
12 – Introduction to Fusion Tables
13 – Developing Your Fusion Table App
14 – Using Text Files in App Inventor