I was the Lead Architect for an Android/iOS Tablet Application project, commissioned by Chuck Latham Associates, Inc. The project was designed for in-store representatives to interact with potential customers by showing them photos, videos, and information about various pet products. Clients include Kong, Purina, Petsafe and Nature's Recipe. The front end is an AS3/AIR powered cross-platform app, and it receives data from a Drupal-built CMS.
CMS
CLA needed the ability to maintain the app's content. We built the CMS with Drupal, leveraging its powerful UI, data-feeds and media-handling capabilities. This allows the client's team to control all content the app loads.
Network Capabilities
Users are required to login to the app. Upon successful authentication, client content is downloaded and cached for display. To improve performance, and because representatives are in the field and often without web access, the app uses local storage to keep downloaded content available. When a network connection is available, the app checks with the server to see if there have been any updates since the last data sync, and downloads the appropriate resources when necessary.
Display
The data feed that drives the app's menu system is modeled in JSON, and mimics the structure of HTML and CSS. Display objects are defined with various properties and classes, and are rendered when the app loads data. A server-side adapter consumes raw Drupal data and outputs a data structure that the app uses to display content. All media, style information, positional information, menu linking and rendering instructions are supplied by the feed.