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Simple Cafe app control question

B

Baguji

Lurker
Hello everyone!

I've recently started learning about android app development and I'm following tutorials to get more acquainted with the different tools at my disposal, which seems to be going quite well

There is one question that I have about a simple app I want to make that seems really straightforward but I'm not sure what's the best way to tackle it as I've never handled this sort of thing before

So the app I want to make is for a student café I frequently go to, the app is really simple - it shows whether the café is open or closed (giving a push notification when it opens) and it also shows in a simple textview whether there will be free food or not.

My question relates to how I'll do the actual controlling of this app, I want the clients to simply be able to view if it's open or not and I want to be able to have some way of 'admins' being able to control these variables.

What do you think is a good way to approach this? Should I have a website that handles it and the app updates from it or should I make a login feature for admins or should there be another "controller" app controlling the app the clients view? Maybe even another alternative?

If you could give me some insight on this basic question I'd be really thankful, cheers!
 
Do you specifically want to write an app for this, because it could be implemented fairly easily with a simple web page.
 
Yeah I'd really prefer to make a dedicated app to it as we already have a facebook page that covers this but it's simply not practical for students to be checking a dedicated website or social media page to see if it's open or not. With an app it would be far more convenient for the clients, but I see your point of it being much easier with a web page
 
Also, what triggers the push notifications? Are you wanting an alert displayed on all subscribed devices?
 
Oh I think this Firebase messaging is exactly what I want! Thank you!

So what I imagine that would happen is that whenever we want to open the café, the person opening the cafe would "activate" something and so not only would the client app's Closed logo change to an Open logo but also a notification to everyone with the app installed would pop up saying something of the sort "Hey! the cafe is open now!"

To give you a better idea of why this would be nice is that since it's a student-run café and everything is voluntary work then it means that we don't have fixed opening times or dates, so it's not like a regular café at all
 
Sounds like a nice project. Good luck.
If you have any issues, post back here and we'll try to help.
 
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