Using IATI Data in MIT App Inventor 2

Hi, I’ve been messing around with IATI in MIT App Inventor 2, bringing in IATI data via the Datastore API (there’s specific XML and JSON ‘translators’ in the package that you can use) to create an Android app based on IATI data.

I think in terms of getting people to start playing with IATI data, App Inventor is potentially really useful. It’s very similar to Scratch (used in schools to teach kids to code) in that it gives you blocks of code to use so you can build apps quickly (I’m also learning Python and Ruby, and it’s sloooow getting to a point where it can be useful).

App Inventor also has a direct link to your Android phone (if you have one) so you can see the results of changing and fixing errors straight away whilst you are building the app. You can also link it to Google Fusion tables, which would be another way of calling the data off if you wanted to do store the data somewhere first and it allows you to connect the sensors on your phone or via Bluetooth to the app. There is a simple database (TinyDB) and it supports some SQL, again on a simple level.

Unfortunately the documentation around using XML in App Inventor isn’t great, and the examples that I’ve found are a bit buggy ie there are errors in the code. And the documentation is a bit basic and aimed at schools. But it seems to have a community around it and Q&As on Stack Overflow so I have generally been able to resolve issues.

We’ve just starting running workshops on ‘using IATI data for mere mortals’ (we had the first one in July) where we introduce simple tools, tips and tricks that are useful if you are using IATI data, so I will include App Inventor in the next one we run and see how people take to it.

Has anyone else played with App Inventor with IATI data? What do you think?