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Google Summer Of Code 2019: My journey

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Adeel Zafar edited this page Jun 9, 2019 · 7 revisions

Introduction:

My name is Adeel Zafar. I'm a sophomore computer science student. I've been selected for GSOC'19. In this wiki, I'm going to document my whole journey from Day 1 till the end.

Project:

Create a Kiwix hotspot application that would be an extension to the kiwix android application. It would allow the users to share their ZIM Files with others over the same network. This can be made possible by:

  • Creating a layout for the user to select the files he wishes to host.
  • Working with a web server i.e. kiwix-serve. We can communicate with it via JNI(Java Native Interface).
  • Working with WIFI hotspot(without using data).
  • Presenting the IP address where the files have been hosted.
  • Some networking tricks to polish the application.

Other devices can access the ZIM files by just connecting to the hotspot and simply entering the ip address into their browser.

This project would be really beneficial in areas especially where internet is not so easily available/accessible. For example, a teacher who has the kiwix android application would be able to share the ZIM files with all the students offline.

Community Bonding Period:

It all started with community bonding period. During this, I tried to explore and research more on the project I was going to work this summer. Explored other similar projects and read documentation of the things I was going to work on. During this period, I also started communicating with my mentors and set up my development environment.

Phase 1:

This is where the coding begins. During Phase 1, I had two deliverables i.e. wifi hotspot and a demo server.

Week 1:

  • Started working on a demo application called WifiHotspotAndroid for the functionality of wifi-hotspot.
  • Implemented this feature in my branchof the kiwix-android.
  • Worked with WifiManager and WifiConfiguration classes to successfully turn on this feature but it turned out that it wasn't working with devices>=Oreo.
  • Wrote a workaround using startLocalOnlyHotspot and LocationSettings for devices>=Oreo.
  • Fixed many bugs related to wifi-hotspot.

At this point, the wifi hotspot feature functionality has been achieved.

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