I Created Another Free Android Cellar App

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sardonicus87

Lifer
Jun 28, 2022
1,317
13,863
37
Lower Alabama
I know occasionally people ask about cellaring apps, not often but some do.

Many are fine with using Excell/spreadsheets, others their memory, and that's fine, but I don't like getting on the computer, I do all I can from my phone and spreadsheeting sucks on a phone.

So I made an app, and I decided if anyone else wanted it, I'd share it. I've put 6 or 8 months work into it so far. Version 1.0 is done.

I decided best way to share it would be the Google Play store. Well, I can't put it there where people can trust it unless I can get 20 people to sign up to test it for 2 weeks. The kicker? I have to get 20 people to agree to share their e-mail that they use for Google Play with me.

So, anyone want to? PM me your emails, don't list them publicly. I promise I won't spam you, and you don't have to be hardcore testing or anything. I know it's a bit of a long-shot.

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sardonicus87

Lifer
Jun 28, 2022
1,317
13,863
37
Lower Alabama
Are there provisions for tins or ounces and dates?
Not at the moment. There's a whole number "quantity" field, but no specifics like ounces, pounds, grams, etc, and no provisions for dates.

Future updates will include fields for dates, but I have to wait for Android to fix their broken Compose date picker stuff before I can. They actually updated the coding for date-picker stuff last month. However if you look at Android apps made with compose (maybe the YouTube app, but the play store for sure), you'll see they don't even follow their own crap they foist on developers (not that I am a developer). You can look up their Android 15 forced edge-to-edge stuff and a lot of actual developers grumbling about Google messing it up and basically expecting devs to make their apps compatible for Android 15 instead of making things backwards compatible and not breaking. Without going into detail, I found a way essentially to bypass the edge-to-edge enforcement by putting the insets stuff way at the top level. Pretty sure that's what Google did with it's own apps, since edge-to-edge doesn't work right on Android 15.

Bear in mind, I am also not a developer, I only just started learning coding to make this app and a lot of stuff I had to figure out and had to make from scratch because it doesn't exist in Compose (like autocomplete textfield suggestions, previously a parameter available in Views, still not available in Compose and they've been working on Compose for like 3-4 years now).

I actually had to custom make and boilerplate from scratch half of the stuff used because the out-of-the-box components have immutable and inaccessible parameters that make them basically useless. The textfield at the top of the home page for instance for searching blends. If you see on the add/edit entry screen how relatively huge the text fields are? Unless you custom make them from scratch, that's how big they have to be to not cut-off the entered text. On the add/edit entry screen, I had to write maybe 150 lines of code by hand from scratch to create an autocomplete suggestions for the brand field.

It's 6-8 months of work just to get what I got so far, that I already had to re-work 4-5 times due to breaking changes in the codebase over that short time.

I quickly learned why so many actual developers abandon app development for phones and why many just quit trying to keep their apps up-to-date. They push their half-baked, incomplete and broken APIs/SDKs, force you to use them, then force you to deal with their incompetence and broken/incomplete crap. Like they give you a car frame, half an engine, and then expect you to make it run with the supplied plywood that you have to somehow make work to complete the engine.

Anyway, there are expansion plans for more, but right now, it's just the basics and usable.
 

sardonicus87

Lifer
Jun 28, 2022
1,317
13,863
37
Lower Alabama
For the curious and for a bit more information as to what it is/does...

Essentially it's just like spreadsheets like what other people use, but easier to use for a phone environment. It doesn't connect to the internet at all, all the data is stored locally and offline (which isn't much data, what you put in for blends amounts to a few KB because it's just text data).

It's essentially just a cellar tracking app, like having a list of all your blends, but one that you can search, filter and sort quickly and easily. At the moment, included fields are just: brand, blend, type (broad genre category), "quantity" (a simple, generic, whole-number value which you can just decide for yourself what a quantity of "1" represents, like is that 1 tin, 1 gram/oz, etc), very simple personal ratings (favorite, neutral or dislike), and notes. All fields are filterable so you can see say, only the blends you have from C&D, or only the blends you have from Sutliff that are also aromatics and in your favorites, etc.

That's the main purpose, a filterable list of what you have, not to dissimilar to how people that use spreadsheets use their spreadsheets. The main page also has a table view mode if you prefer a table to a list, and eventually if I can figure out how to make the bottom app bar disappear on scroll, you'll have a lot more screen real estate in landscape orientation. The table also is sortable by clicking the columns at the top for brand or blend (alphabetically sorting ascending, descending, and then the default sort order of the order in which you added things to the database).

Adding stuff is pretty easy, it only requires filling out the brand and blend fields, all others remaining blank (though leaving the quantity field blank, it presumes the quantity is 1). The brand field in adding also has an autocomplete suggestions that pop up based on what you already have in your database. Text enterable fields in the future will also have this if it's a type of field where you might be entering the same data a lot.

There's also a stats page that also reacts to the filtering, with several pie charts for visualization.

It also has a function for importing a CSV file, so if you have a spreadsheet, you can export the spreadsheet as a CSV and then import it to the database without having to manually enter in everything. There's an import wizard that allows you to map the CSV columns to the correct columns in the database table. It also has an option to export CSV files too, so if you want to keep spreadsheets on the computer or keep the list backed-up, you can easily do that.

In the future, I plan to expand on this with additional fields like in- vs out-of-production status, subgenres, components, cut, purchase/manufacturing and open dates. I also plan to expand the options, like default list sort order, CSV import options for updating missing fields in existing entries, overwriting chosen fields for existing blends, etc. I am also considering adding a pipe database for saving your pipe collection with stats for that and fields for various parameters (like bowl and chamber diameters, height, length, finish, stem material, etc). I'll also extend layout support to tablets (taking advantage of the larger screens).

It will never have ads, or track your personal information, or device information, and it will always be free, and requires no special permissions.

Some things it will never do involve anything that requires internet connection or connection to existing tobacco websites (due to Android policies about tobacco and the facilitation of its purchase).

I made a quick video to showcase what it's current capabilities are. In the video when I demonstrate the note entry, you may notice the first line get duplicated... that's not a bug that you'll ever see unless you are, like me, using a very out-dated keyboard (even then, you only see it because I'm being way more rapid in entering than anyone would be actually typing a note):
 
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sardonicus87

Lifer
Jun 28, 2022
1,317
13,863
37
Lower Alabama
Just a thought. Would it be difficult to add a 'Unit' field after 'Amount'? It could just be a free-form text field to make it easier.
Yeah, that's something I could do theoretically, but would involve a lot of stuff to deal with like the stats involving hidden conversion tables (so that it knows 1 oz is not the same thing as 1 pound or one gram). That part actually wouldn't be difficult... that's just "business logic" (that part is easy for me).

But the reality of it is... are people going to say, choose oz and then consistently update the quantity after measuring out every time they drop an ounce? How are people even commonly tracking their quantities? By tin/jar, pound, gram, oz, etc?

In which case, how is that any different than just picking a particular quantity to represent 1? In my head, I consider 50 grams or 1.75 oz to be equal to 1, so when I add something, if I get a 100 gram or a 3.5 oz tin, I set the quantity to 2, if I get a pound, I set it to 9. Then I just don't update the quantity until I finish a tin, so if I finish a 1.75 oz tin, I dop the quantity by 1, if it's a 3.5 oz I drop it by 2.

One of the goals is simplicity, not pedantry. Besides, how long until people start complaining they can't add half oz, or can't add ____ measurement type, etc and then the thing is more bloated than a beached whale. I've seen some absolutely nightmarishly huge spreadsheet formats and that's kind of the exact opposite of one of the goals.
 
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sardonicus87

Lifer
Jun 28, 2022
1,317
13,863
37
Lower Alabama
Sounds cool, but alas I am hooked to an iPhone….
Well, if anyone knows how to do development for an iPhone, I'm willing to collaborate, I do have all the code uploaded to a Github repository. Eventually I might multi-platform it, but iPhone would have to third-party side-load it, no way it would ever be able to get on the Apple app store.
 
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