Inspiration
PetitionFinder aims to raise awareness about current political and social issues through the means of signing petitions. Petitioning is one of the many ways that Americans help bring about political and social change.
What it does
Anyone who wants to make a difference can sign up for an account and prioritize their top interests, so the petitions related to their interests will appear first on their newsfeed. The topics of these petitions include the advancement of women’s rights, civil rights, LGBT rights, educational rights, minority rights, and immigrant rights. After the user creates an account and gives information on which kinds of rights are most important to them, the program creates "petition feed" based on their preferences. Then, they can choose to sign specific petitions that they support and become more aware of social and civil issues.
How I built it
I used Android Studio to program the mobile application. The code was written in JAVA. The data for each user is stored using an SQL Database. User authentication in the application allowed me to use the user email and password in order to create a profile for every user which has data on what kind of social and civil issues are most important to them.
Challenges I ran into
The SQL Database was hard to work with. I also ran into problems with working with Serializable Objects which I used in order to pass objects between different parts of my program. This was my first time working with the Serializable interface, so it took some time to understand how to implement it.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
This is the first time I was able to use SQL Databases successfully and I was able to make the user authentication process efficient. I used multiple ways to store data as well including arrays, ArrayList, and databases which I had never done before. We also worked hard on perfecting the logo.
What I learned
I learned how to use a SQL to store user data.
What's next for XXHacksProject
I hope to further improve this app by adding more categories for example veterans’ rights and animal rights, allowing users to create their own petitions and include global issues as well. I hope this app can help spread awareness about political and social issues by raising awareness about issues, I hope that people will take an initiative to solve them through petitions that promote civil rights. I also want to be able to update the news-feed in real time.
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