CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidasp.netsqlitemobile
super-user
super-user

Reputation: 1057

ASP.NET Registration Form to a Simple Offline-capabled Mobile Application

My question will be really long but I encourage you to read through everything as it will be used for an honest, good cause. Or you can skip to the highlighted questions part.

Let me introduce myself first, I am an independent web application developer here in the Philippines and I work for a non-profit organization where we help less fortunate people by providing IT solutions and services for free. I have a working web application that has dynamic registration forms where users can enter their data online. I developed this application with responsive UI using bootstrap's grid system. But being here in the Philippines, there are remote areas where the target clients don't have access to the internet 24/7, and bringing laptop or desktop computers is a pain because of the terrain and rivers that we need to cross to reach these remote areas.

Now, together with my team, we are thinking of a way to use our mobile phones, mostly androids to create a mobile app version of our web application. Where it can download the registration form (html) when we are connected and then use it even without internet connection.

Ideally the situation should be:
1. Launch the app from my mobile, and while connected to the internet, download the html forms needed from our web application.
2. Travel to remote areas, use the mobile application to encode the native's information offline. (I heard its possible to save it locally to sqlite db)
3. Go back to the headquarters and sync with the online web application to pass all the information gathered and thats it.

Having said all that, I have 3 questions:
1. What should I use to create a mobile app that can display html forms downloaded from the internet?
2. How can I save the data locally (within the phone)? I heard about sqlite db but I am not sure if it will work with my situation.
3. How can I sync the locally saved data to the online web application?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 147

Answers (1)

dumb_terminal
dumb_terminal

Reputation: 1825

This is more like a survey application. You dont need the html here. You design your question definitions in xml or json. You may have multiple types of question like Text Answer Question, Single Choice Multiple Option Question, Multiple Choice Multiple Option question, Image Question, QR Code Question, GPS Coordinate Question etc etc. You design these questions in json or xml and put them in server. For example

{
  questionSetName: "Question Set 1",
  question:[{
      questionText: "What is your name ?",
      questionType: "TextAnswer"
  },
  {
      questionText: "Which one console below do you own ?",
      questionType: "SingleChoiceMultipleOption",
      options:["PS4", "XBox", "Steam Console"]
  }]
}

Now for your mobile client:

  1. When online user will want to download questions for later offline surveys. so user send a request to server for available question sets. then will pull these file from server (in case of android through some HttpClient like OkHttpClient) and put them in sd card. The server will implement rest apis for question lists and downloading individual question sets.

  2. The application will check if files are present in a certain folder (your app designated folder) in the sdcard. The file names will be the list of the questions.It will parse the json or xml and render question windows accordingly, for example for text question a label with the question text and a text box for answer, for single choice multiple options a set of option buttons, for image questions open the mobile camera etc.

    1. When filling up (answering) the questions you save the answers and question number and flush them in a json file. and put the answer files in another directory (you need some sort of identification).

    2. later on upload the answer files to server.

The server side will require the following rest apis : 1. List of Question Sets of a user (from db ??) 2. An api (webservice) to download a set of questions. 3. An api to upload an answer sheet for a question. 4. user management of course.

Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 1

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