A year of Ler

A year ago, I published Ler - a feed aggregator app for Android. After releasing it, my plan was to clean the code to open source it, and write posts about its architecture and how I code. Almost none of that happened but version 1.1 is out!

Recap

Not much writing happened in regards to the app, but I kept working on it. Not often, but enough to rewrite a lot of the old implementation.

I replaced the usage of Fragment with a custom Screens navigation implementation. Because, why not? Also, I ditched the XML layouts in favor of using regular Android views. Big props to Contour, a layout view for Android by CashApp, it really helped with that.

I use this app as a test bed for new frameworks and libraries. These changes didn't add anything to the feature set, but they felt really good! And I learned how to build an app without relying on fragments.

One thing I am still learning is how to cut scope so I can finish something. I had to give up on the idea of "cleaning up" the code base. By that I mean adding missing tests and restructure the files to make more sense to some other dev. I realized that I would not be able to muster the energy to do it, so the project is now open source for everyone to check out.

Version 1.1 is out!

After a year, the new release of Ler comes with a new feature and a couple of fixes. You can download it here, or check for an update if you are already a user.

Changes since 1.0.2:

• New posts notification! You will now be notified when there are new posts for you to read
• New settings screen, where you can configure the new posts notification time (or disable it)
• You can now disable the subscriptions background refresh
• Fixed update URL for a subscription not getting parsed correctly
• Fixed post published date parsing, now uses the device locale (and it actually works)

Ding, there are new posts!

I have the notification set so it triggers about the time I wake up, that way I don't miss any new posts. It really helps me stay on top of things, and I can read posts while eating breakfast ;) You can set this to trigger at any time of day.

The rate subscriptions refresh data changed as well, it was overly eager before and now I have set it to refresh every 12 hours. You can disable the refresh in the settings.

Happy reading!

I hope you like the new notification, it was surprisingly complicated to build. I almost gave up on it. A year ago I would have parked the idea before completion. But something I learned this year is how to keep at it, instead of waiting for the right motivation to come around.