HIKR.DB--Crowdsourcing of Hiking Trail Data through Mobile Applications
Channel: JMU ISAT
Date: 03/07/2017

Full Title: HIKR.DB--Crowdsourcing of Hiking Trail Data through Mobile Applications by Brian Elliot and Victoria Wilson
Advised by: Dr. Anthony Teate
Abstract: Mobile applications that provide dynamically updated information have been on the forefront of the technology craze. Bringing together current information that is accessible anywhere at anytime has been demanded by customers worldwide for years. The goal of this project is to allow users to have access to up-to-date information on hiking trails in and around the Shenandoah Valley, as well as the ability to submit information about the trails to inform other hikers. In order to achieve this goal we are developing, designing, and deploying an Android and web application to access a database we developed called Hikr. db to support users across the Valley. We first created an API using the Loopback framework in conjunction with a MySQL database backend that is hosted on an Amazon EC2 server running the Ubuntu Server OS. We used this API to connect our front end applications to our backend database in order to transfer data between our applications in a safe and clean manner. Our web app front end application was built using the AngularJS framework, and taking advantage of the Loopback SDK to make easy data transactions with our API. For the mobile app, we made use of Android Studio to create a functional user interface to display and post information to our database. Android Studio is a complete IDE that uses the Java programming language for development along with XML to create the user interface and to implement the functionality of the app. We were able to successfully get information from the database and display it to the user in a readable manner and post information back to the database through the use of APIs with web and android applications.