Newbie - Help needed!

[SamJHannan]

I am a 17 year old first time windows phone app developer. I have some experience of VB.Net, CSS/HTML and C#.

I'm in the UK and studying A Level Computing, where I have to produce some form of application to a high standard for my coursework. I really love my 920 so I decided to go for a windows phone app. My initial idea is for an app that allows A Level Spanish students to be tested on the verb endings in various tenses etc. This would follow a relatively simple "You are correct" (with a score tally) or "You are incorrect, the correct answer is X". I would look to put a lot of effort into a fun, usable UI.

I have installed Visual Studio Express 2013, with the Windows Phone SDK. Unfortunately I only have 32bit Windows so I can't use the emulator, but I have registered my 920 to debug on, and may purchase a used 520 if needs be.

So, I really need pointers on where to start! Is a database required for the 'true or false' style element? If any extra description of what I intend to create is needed please just let me know!

Thanks for reading! :grin:

 

[1101x10]

I'm assuming you're storing all the data in the app. I guess it depends on how much there is. If you're only testing on a subset of the language you could define a class and use that within a List.

 

[SamJHannan]

I imagine there'll be between 50 and 100 pieces of data, but I'd like for it to be relatively easy to add to this - does your advice still apply?

 

[1101x10]

You could:

Store it in an XML file and use serialisation to load it
Use a comma delimited flat file (such as saving a .txt in notepad)
Hard code it within the app ( List<T>.Add )

If you're doing it for coursework the last option might be seen as a bit of a hack.

 

[SamJHannan]

Awesome, thank you! I think I'll go for the .txt file option, thank you. Now to brush up on my C# and figure out how to program this thing haha.

 

[mreck]

If all you want to do is store Key Value Pairs you can use AppSettings to store them in.
How to create a settings page for Windows Phone 8

 

[SamJHannan]

If all you want to do is store Key Value Pairs you can use AppSettings to store them in.
How to create a settings page for Windows Phone 8

Thanks for the tip and for the link! Based on the amount of data I'll be using, do you think this is the best option?

 

[drachen23]

Key value pairs aren't what you need. Your best bet is the text file. Make the text file in your solution and make sure the build type is set to "content". It will get built into the appx itself, then you can read it from the appx directly using StorageFile.GetFileFromApplicationUriAsync and then reading it using something like FileIO.ReadLinesAsync, which will give you a list of text lines that you can process assuming you put one question/answer pair on each line. When you need to update the questions, edit the text file in the solution then rebuild and redeploy to the phone.

 

[George Kounas]

I think it could be easier and lighter to use a locally stored json file, rather than an xml file or a db. json has less markup than xml (so less bytes in your storage file) and you can save or load data easily, using Windows.Data.Json library. Then you can either use a list or an ObservableCollection to manipulate this data into your app.