Requirements

The company Tripwolf has developed a successful app for travelers, helping to overcome various difficulties and make the journey easy and memorable. The application has already combined a guide and a community of travelers. This application is available on mobile platforms, Google and Apple for several years. You can find travel information about 50 000 places and get information about more than 500 000 sites, hotels, and restaurants all over the world. Using this application, you can schedule your custom short trips and long journeys. Also, you can create your own itinerary as you like.

Our team had to port the successful mobile travel app - Tripwolf , on Windows 8.1 platform. The developed application must support a wide range of devices: from budget smartphones to powerful tablets.

Challenge

Engineers had to analyze the source code of the Tripwolf app on the Android platform and make some changes. It allowed adapt this application to the peculiarities of the protoform from Microsoft:

• authentication and authorization via social network Facebook;
• download and preservation of large data volumes for use in offline mode;
• display hundreds of objects on the map;
• to calculate the distances to each location using the user's current location;
• the mechanism of restriction of the content provided by users;
• the mechanism of activation of a paid subscription, as well as download content based on the coupons;
• recovery of purchased guides when you reinstall the app or switching to another device;
• implement mode "SnapView" for tablets on Windows 8.1.

Solution

The application was created using the template "Universal App" that allows you to develop apps flexibly and quickly for two platforms: Windows phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1. Embedded database SQLite is used for saving large amounts of data. Our programmers have developed a hybrid solution for data access on the basis of PCL libraries SQLite from Microsoft and SQLite.Net-PCL.

Our engineers used the MVVM pattern (model-view-view-model for separation logic from data. The MVVM pattern organizes your code so that you can easily change individual parts without affecting the other (the developer sets the logic of the data and the designer works with the user interface).

We used caching technology and special HTTP headers such as header If-Modified-Since For optimizing the Internet traffic of the user and reducing the number of requests to the server.

Results

As a result of hard work, we developed the Tripwolf app for Windows 8.1. This app was published in the Windows app store and is available for different architectures: arm, x86, x64. The app has the following features:

• allows you to organize your personal trip and plan the journey on the road or in any other convenient place;
• allows you to make accurate assessments and recommendations for the best sights, restaurants, shops, theatres, hotels, hostels, nightlife;
• allows you to view the most interesting places in different cities, regions, and countries;
• has a stylish and modern design adapted to the different resolution displays on smartphones and tablets;
• the app is available in 5 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian);
• easy search with sorting and filtering attractions;
• use maps to indicate the most popular attractions;
• all the information and functions available offline. No need to pay for roaming fees abroad: all guides, features, and maps available without Internet connection;
• the app is free and the user gets 1 hour of unlimited access to all information and functions. In addition, you can activate a paid membership premium and obtain long-term access to all the information.