UML Class Editor - (Repository Link)

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About UML Class Editor

I came across this project while browsing FOSSdroid. After I took an OOP class, I realized the importance of planning out a project before coding it up. In a project with lots of moving parts, I found that it was helpful to draw out classes, their attributes, public/private methods, how they should interact, and to use that as a "to do" list of sorts. Nothing beats pen and paper, but I had recently purchased a Samsung tablet that came with a stylus, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I found websites like Draw.io incredibly useful, but it wasn't compatible with tablet devices. I really like the tactile experience of interacting with an application or website, so finding something similar to Draw.io for an Android tablet was a challenge. I found that the application suited my purposes perfectly, however I had a few issues with it. First and foremost, the application toolbar/menu bar color irritated me. It initially was a bright purple, which was a bit of an eyesore. Functionality wise, the menu organization wasn't the most intuitive, it had no icons, and there were some bugs related to saving data.

I had experience working on 2 mobile applications, so tracking down the bugs was fairly easy. All I had to do was set a breakpoint and replicate the actions that caused the application to crash.

Thoughts

This was a great application, but I had some issues with the way it was initially coded. Firstly, the author didn't wrap file/data operations in try(){...}catch(){} blocks, which is why the application was crashing initially. I was trying to run a delete operation when I had no saved projects which threw a NullPointerException(), causing the application to crash. That was an easy fix. The next issue I came across was that the application used a deprecated API for loading/exporting data, onActivityResult(). This wasn't causing the crash, but it was something that needed to be addressed. This took a bit more time to figure out as I didn't fully understand what it did, and how to implement the correct API, registerForActivityResult().

Roadmap

I have a few ideas for how to make this application better, at least for my purposes.

• Color customization. I like to be able to choose the theme of the applications I use, like in Slide for Reddit for example and I'd love to add that functionality to this application.
• Exporting to different file types. Currently the data exports to .html files, which isn't the most practical when it comes to sharing files with others. I intend to create options to export the diagrams to PDF and possibly JPG/PNG formats.
• Cloud Storage integration. A lot of applications like this have the ability to sign in with a cloud storage account such as Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, etc. and I want to add that functionality to this application as well.
• Sharing diagrams as PDF/JPG/PNG to either email or some sort of messaging platform. Software development is a highly collaborative profession, and adding this feature will make this more functional.