Food journal mobile app

You’ll create a mobile app, using your preferred technology for mobile development, to capture photos and information about what you eat. Keeping track of the food you eat is a proven way to make better diet choices. As an added benefit, many popular mobile apps - including Instagram - work in a similar way to the food journaling app you’ll build here.

• The user can take a photo of whatever they’re eating or drinking using their phone’s inbuilt camera
• The user can then add a description of the food to accompany the photo
• The user can browse through all the photos and descriptions they’ve added by swiping up or down

The following image shows one way to implement the UI. Feel free to interpret the requirements however you'd like!

For an extra challenge

• The user can add hashtags to group related foods together, e.g. #tacos
• The user can add their location to posts automatically, e.g. Tony’s Calzones

• To learn iOS development, implement the app using Swift
• To learn Android development, implement the app using Java and the Android SDK
• To learn how to build multi-platform apps, use React Native
• Use SQLite for the app database

If you’re new to mobile app development, we’ve collected some documentation, tutorials, and courses to help you get started with both iOS mobile development and Android mobile development.

Before you begin development, make sure to familiarize yourself with similar mobile apps in the food diary space (this is a good list of the most popular ones). Download a few and try creating a journal entry with them. Take note of what you like - and don’t like - about the user experience. What would you change in your app? Many mobile developers sketch their UI ideas on paper before writing a single line of code. Give it a try!

• The basic building blocks of this app are photos accompanied by a small amount of text - the exact same primary element as Instagram. If you get stuck during development, there are many excellent tutorials available on creating an Instagram clone that should be helpful.
• If you decide to allow users to add their location to posts, you’ll want to check out Google’s Places API, a part of the Google Maps Platform. Google is currently offering $200 per month in free usage, so the API is effectively free to use for small projects.