Note to self…
To-do lists, alarms, birthday reminders, notes, shopping lists, and the list goes on. There should be an app to keep a list of the different apps that keep lists! At the time of writing this book, there were already over 8,000 iOS apps that were lists, planners, or alarms. Perhaps, there's room for one more…
It could take a lot of research, and money, to explore all the reminder apps that are out there. The majority of apps will have a lot of features that you'll never use and at least one vital feature that is missing. If you're lucky, some combination of apps may do all the things you want in a reminder. However, don't forget that you use LiveCode and can make your own reminder app!
In this chapter, we will:
- Discuss what is meant by a reminder
- Create some time measuring utility functions
- Define a data structure to store information about an event
- Make use of mobile device "notifications"
- Create a flexible reminder app
Here is the list of a few of the things that you might call a "reminder":
- A shopping list
- A Christmas present list
- A to-do list
- An alarm clock
- An egg timer
- A birthday reminder
Now, is there a single way to describe all of these things? Well, it may get wordy, but a reminder could be described as a notification message or sound that either appears automatically or shows when you look for it. It is used to let you know that a certain time has passed, a moment has arrived, or that an outstanding task has not been completed.
See, pretty wordy. Breaking it down like this helps us to see what features a reminder app will need to have. Before getting to that, let's test the definition against the preceding examples:
A shopping list: In this case, you go looking for the reminder. Although, we could set it up to automatically show when your location happens to be near the store! Other than that, this is effectively a task that has not been completed.
A Christmas present list: This is much the same as a shopping list, but it could use a timed message that let's you know how few shopping days are left for you to buy a Christmas present for your loved ones.
A to-do list: Again, this is simply a list of tasks that are not yet complete.
An alarm clock: This gives you a notification that a moment in time has been reached.
An egg timer: This is a notification of a certain amount of time that has passed, which could be used as a sequence of such events that might be used in a cooking-buddy app.
A birthday reminder: This shows whether a certain moment has been reached. Really though, you want to set the reminder so that it can notify you ahead of the actual event.
At least as a starting point, we can use the definition to guide us as we outline the abilities the app will need to have.