Let's build an app.

There's only one app in Google Play that mentions fimfiction, Ponu News, and all it does is pull the feature box content. Why don't we build an app? Of course, the api would need to be expanded, and some other steps would need taking, but it seems doable...

I'm willing to give it a shot. Here's what it'll need.

Caching.
The app would, when online, pull down all unread chapters for stories in the favorites list, optionally pulling down all chapters for stories not yet marked complete (for those who want to reread some when the story updates). Another option would allow the downloading of some or all stories on the read later list. Ideally, you'd be able to filter the list so, for example, only comedies would get loaded from the read later list. Search functionality equivalent to the site's browse feature would be good, though likely limited to those stories cached already (a metadata cache for the whole site would be really cool, but the api would need to support a way to report delta updates)

The caching goes further. While offline, the app will cache chapter read status, upvotes, likes, favorites, maybe even unpublished blog posts, stories, and chapters. Who cares if the site's gone 502 if that only means your unpublished chapter doesn't get uploaded imediately?

Obviously, we would want to not have this app result in lost ad revenue, so it might have to have in app ads, or require payment for some of the features. That said, it could potentially reduce the server load by a fair bit, so maybe this wouldn't be necessary.

Thoughts?

Comments

[Sparkler]

Where's the API documented at, and what does it take to get permission to hack around with it?

[yrfoxtaur]

1158071
In the FAQ, way down in the bottom, there's this bit:

Does the site have an API I can use?
It's being worked on, but you can currently grab story information using http://www.fimfiction.net/api/story.php?story=[story_url_here], supporting JSONP with a ?callback parameter, as well as CORS. I'll make proper documentation for it when it's done.

I believe it's only used for the bot in the irc channel, to report titles and some basic metadata for pasted links. Should have mentioned that the API would need some major work too...