How I built an App in a day.
“ Hey Malik, Can you build this App by Tomorrow? “
But its Impossible to make an App in a day !
Yep, that’s what I told my friend who needed an app ASAP.
To give some background, he started distributing food packets to daily wage laborers since the COVID-19 pandemic worsened. He started small, with only 50 people showing up the first day, 100 on the second, gradually increasing, and now distributes to a 1000 people (Huge thanks to all the people who donated).
He asked me to build a phone number verification system, which would allow him to store phone numbers of the people who were receiving food packets to ensure no hoarding or repetition would happen, and thus covering the needy.
Generally, when building an App, I go through the following steps:
1) Requirement Analysis
2) Design
3) Deciding an Architecture
4) Actual Development
5) Finishing / Releasing / rigorous testing
6) Submission to App Store/Play Store
But now, I only had a day, and NO time to waste. The target audience being his team, made it relatively easy to build.
Lets talk about the Features:
i created 2 lists in the app:
1) Pending List :
The numbers added in the “ADD” screen were diplayed and stored in the pending list. Meaning that food has to be given to these numbers.
2) Given List:
The numbers swiped from the Pending List were then moved to the given list. And by now , as you might have already guessed, this list stored and displayed the numbers that were already given food.
3) Search:
This was the most important feature and had to be built perfectly since most of the use depended on the application’s search functionality. A searched number would try to match with a searched query. If it was successful, it would be highlighted in RED, or else the background remained white.
And so, I built an app in 10 hours!
Yes, that is correct, 10 hours. All thanks to the amazing Flutter team for creating such amazing technology for building apps quick and easy.
This article aimed to inspire all developers out there to step up and help wherever they could. I feel incredibly honored to be of use in these tough times. We’re all in this together, and will make it through!
