Event Organising Application

Daniel O'Sullivan - P15217764

Set transition

Why Did I choose this project?

My main goals for this project were:

To make it easier for users to create an event
To make it easier to meet new people
To Learn the Swift programming language
To gain experience using a Google API

Planning

Target

Older iOS devices aren't supported.
Any iOS device running at least iOS 11.0.2 works fine.

Designs

Custom views

Logo

ERD Diagram

Database

Firebase

My Database - My Storage - My Authentication

The database for my application stores all of the user information, event information, messages, and any database connection issues that occur. In order to make sure that the correct messages are downloaded, I used an approach called fanning out. This is where there is a seperate table of user id's with message id's. Using this information, I can target specific messages that I wish to download. * The storage of my application stores all of the user profile pictures. Inside of the database, there is a URL that points to their profile image. This is where the image is downloaded from. The images are uploaded with a unique id as its name, so that the user's privacy is not breached. As well as this, if the user changes their profile picture, the original picture is deleted, before the new image is uploaded, and the database is updated. The image is also deleted when a user deletes their profile. * Finally, I make use of Firebase Authentication. This is a good platform because it allows me to check whether an account has been created with a specific email address before or not. There is loads of really useful functions, such as being able to validate any email address's and passwords. There is also a feature which allows the user to send an email address to themselves if they would like to reset their account's password. Another good thing about this is that it handles all of the security of logging in and registering, so no passwords need to be stored inside of the database.

Firebase

So why did I choose Firebase? I chose Firebase because it allows you to nest lists into a datatype, which allows you to create much more structured databases. This is a great thing to have, and I have used it a few times. For example, inside of the events table, there is many events. Inside of each event, there is all of its variables, such as title, time, etc. As well as this, there is a location variable, inside of which contains 3 variables; latitude, longitude and a description of where it is. Having this functionality is great because it helps to minimise the time taken to create a backend of an application, and instead allows the developer to concentrate on making a better product. * Another great thing about using Firebase is that the database updates in realtime. This means that when a message is sent to a certain person, their application updates instantly. This is done because when you initially get the messages from the database, you create a reference to the node on the messages table that your messages are stored in. Once you have this reference, you can either check everytime a child is added, a child is removed, or you can just grab the values that are stored. This allows you to easily check for any updates that should be checked. and most importantly, using firebase is * free and easy to use for anybody.

Tree Structure
Nested Tables
Real Time database
Free

Data Structures

Tuples

Polymorphic
Uses Generics

Github

My Github -> dosullivan557

Security

All traffic between the device and the database is encrypted

As well as using Firebase's encryption for any information being sent, I still believed that because the information is stored in plain text in the database, it would be good to have this encrypted as well. Therefore, I created a vignère cipher which encrypts the messages. I take the unique message id, perform alterations to it, and then use that as the key for each message's key. Each key can vary in length as well; between 12 and 15 characters long. The fact that the key is different each time, means that brute forcing it becomes exponentially harder. By using the formula * Here, I was able to calculate how many possible key combinations there would be for each length, and by calculating this, * I was then able to figure out how long it would take to crack the code.

Vignère Cipher is used

Number of possibile combinations formula

Tabular Tables

Key Length	Possible Combinations	Time to crack
12	2176782336	3.3
13	13060694016	19.6
14	78364164096	117.5
15	4.70185E+11	705.2

Smart features

Event Conflicting

Checks both calendars for conflicting events

Event Message Recognisition

Recognises messages that are about events

Many more that are outlined within the final report

Issues & Solutions

Issues encountered include:

Creating the encryption

Crashes Would often occur due to nil values

Image Flickering

When downloading and sorting table items, the images would flicker.

For more sophisticated algorithms, such as the encryption and decryption functionalities, they were written in Java; which is my most proficient language. By writing them in this language, issues were able to be combatted that surfaced by thoroughly testing and working version of the methods, which could then be translated over into Swift. This allowed complex algorithms to be developed much more easily and quickly. * Downloading images from the internet can take a while when there are many of them, especially when they are needed at different times within an application. Therefore, to combat this issue, it was decided to store the images in an NSCache object was the right decision. This object was given a type of , so it could be stored as a string and an image. The user's unique id is used as the key for this object and the image as the body. By doing this, the profile image can be checked for a particular user, and if it is, it can set the profile image there. Otherwise, it can be download and added into the cache, so it is there for future usage.

Solutions

Creating the encryption

Initially Written in Java

Image Flickering

Cache the images

Event Organising Application

Why Did I choose this project?

My main goals for this project were:

Planning

Target

Designs

Custom views

Logo

ERD Diagram

Database

Firebase

Firebase

Free

Data Structures

Tuples

Github

Security

Tabular Tables

Smart features

Event Conflicting

Event Message Recognisition

Many more that are outlined within the final report

Issues & Solutions

Issues encountered include:

Solutions

DEMO!