App Feasibility

Getting Started
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I have an idea for an app and wanted to see if it were feasible with Xojo. The app will prompt the user for a folder and parse the data inside. The data would consist of a csv (with chats inside), text files and images. The parsed data will be stored in a Sqlite database.

Would it be feasible to display the chats in a chatbox like format? Would I be able to display the images within the app? There’s a chance they could be heic (iPhone images). Should I insert the images into the database? Or would leaving them in a folder be best? I’m also considering having the folder contents zipped so would there be a means to have the program work with a zip file for parsing?

Thanks in advance!

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Oh, it would be Windows based

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That’s feasible.

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4

Although with not much effort, an app can be mae to run on any of the three desktops.

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5

I’m not entirely sure Windows and HEIC are friends. A super quick search lead me to a tutorial for installing an extra component from Microsoft just to get the images to display in the system. I would test that aspect before considering this project feasible.

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ImageMagick supports HEIC:

The poster could use IM to convert any oddball images to PNG, for example.

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So now, out the gate, the project requires plugins. For some, that’s a non-starter and makes a project infeasible.

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You say that with the distaste of a diner in a fine restaurant discovering that only mustard available for the prime rib is in a squeeze bottle.

The poster didn’t claim any problem with plugins (or externals - IM can be used as a command line tool). Plus, it will handle virtually any image thrown at it; it is an incredibly flexible utility.

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I’m just pointing out possible points of pain when dealing with the requirements listed instead of blindly diving in and saying “Yup, use Xojo for this”

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10

Thanks all I really appreciate it! Going to move forward with the project so be prepared for lots of questions from the n00b!

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That’s not the question he asked and not the answer anyone gave. He asked if it is feasible. Yep, it’s feasible. Next! :wink:

The poster can follow up with any questions they have as to specifics, of which there will be many.

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All ribbing aside, @Tim_Parnell is right. You really should put together a comprehensive plan for this endeavor, mapping out the functionality you need from the UI down to the code level to make sure everything you need is within easy reach. There are a lot of questions I’d want to answer before proceeding.

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Thanks for the advice! I will be proceeding slowly adding features as I go. Chats will be first and once I have that solidly figured out I can move to images/videos. I have a couple of projects to work on so this will be a labor of love as it were.

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Personally I’d copy images and other attachments to a folder and insert a reference to the path in the database. Desktop databases like SQLite are generally not great at manipulating tables containing large blob fields. Filesystems are of course optimised for managing files.

The answer is yes, one way or another.

The question begging is why? No point zipping picture files as the most commonly used formats are already compressed. ZIP and other run length encoded compression formats will typically increase the file size.

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