This application was created back in February, 2016, over the course of a weekend for an against the clock challenge, with the objective of showcasing the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) basic capabilities when creating a task planner app.
The premise and objective were straightforward: Create an application that will manage a simple to-do list using the UWP framework.
The application has some extra functionality added on top of the original premise:
- It enables copying a to-do task into the Windows calendar app
- When the application is pinned to the Start menu, a background task will try to update it every 15 minutes with the relevant information of the next task on the calendar
- An extra background task was added, responsible for synchronizing tasks arriving from external sources
In order to be able to compile the application, make sure the following components are installed on your machine:
- Windows 10 SDK 10240 or higher
- Sqlite 3 VSIX package for the Universal Windows Platform
Make sure the target platform for each project is set to x86 and the project build order is configured to:
- DataAccess.Interfaces
- DataAccess
- DataModels
- BackgroundTasks
- SystemIntegration
- TaskPlanner
The BackgroundTasks project output type (found on the project properties) needs to be configured to Windows Runtime Component, otherwise the background tasks can't be registered and the application will throw an exception when loading.
The application was originally created utilizing the SDK 10240.
By the time it was uploaded to a public repository, the UWP framework had gone through several minor and major updates. Minor changes were done to the code to ensure proper functioning of the code with newer versions of Windows 10, while retaining compatibility with the original target.
The application makes use of Template10's hamburger template to avoid having to implement an MVVM framework from scratch.
Template 10 is an open source project started by Microsoft employees, aimed at providing a light MVVM framework with common functionality for UWP applications.
This project makes use of the ViewModelBase class which facilitates communication between objects and the UI layer, by implementing the INotifyPropertyChanged interface, and navigation between views.
While no dependency injection framework was used on the application, user interfaces were put in place and implemented on every layer and module, making it possible to implement one without much hassle.
The System Integration module implements manager classes marked as static in an attempt at improving performance.
The usage of Entity Framework and a proper database engine were discarded as a possibility due to lack of support by the .Net UWP framework at the time and the complexity overhead they would have brought to the project.
A custom implementation for data access with a database created with Sqlite was used instead.
Given the simplicity of the application and time constraints, no web services or APIs were implemented on the backend, impacting the implementation of the data models project.
This resulted in only one data entity used for the overall project, with no distinction between backend and frontend objects, the TaskItem class.
It implements an observable pattern via the INotifyPropertyChanged implementation as well as the PrimaryKey and AutoIncrement attributes from the SQLite library, effectively coupling the DataModels project to layers outside its scope.
The UI makes use of XAML adaptive layouts, enabling the application to be used on any Windows 10 device.
A specific architecture based on device is advised if the application is to be improved, adding extra user stories and extending its scope.
Data integrity was a priority when creating a task planner app. In order to ensure this, the following steps were taken:
- The application will cache the main page list whenever enough system resources are available
- The application manages the suspension events by saving all the relevant information into the database before shutting down
- Trying to synchronize a single task with the calendar can sometimes give a range exception based on the selected date for the task. Despite this, the task will get synchronized
- The save, cancel and sync all task buttons are always enabled, even if no tasks are available or their state has not changed
- Synchronizing the same task multiple times will create a new instance in the calendar each time
- Minor UI bugs on the task details panel. The text box width doesn't adapt to the container's width, which has a predefined maximum value