Location Based Restaurant Finder

Application Android

Abhinav Jain(10103596)

Harsh Agrawal(10103631)

Lets put on our Thinking Hats

Imagine you are just visiting a city like Delhi for the first time on a travel tour and you have no idea that where to eat the delicious food as per your choice and also satisfy your pockets?

You are standing at a place and have no idea about the nearest hang out spots. What will you do?

IntroductionLocation-Based Services or LBS allow software to obtain the phone's current location. This includes location obtained from the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite constellation, but it's not limited to that.

The API is considered as "optional“ API as an application can still be build without using the Location-Based API.

For example, an Android application cannot be written without using the Activity and Intent APIs, but an application may not need to know where the user is, so the need of the Location-Based Services API maybe not be use. In this sense, the LBS API is optional where the Activity API is not.

Why this Domain?!?!?!• Because there is lot of scope in this

domain. In today’s world everyone is equipped with powerful smart devices.

• No need to handle or manage big data.

• Low Cost effective application for smooth run and there is no need to care about the dynamicity of data

What is Restaurant Finder?

The Prime objective of “Restaurant Finder Application” is to create a full fledged Android application which could locate a list of restaurants based on the location & type of the cuisine entered by the user. The user not only finds all the restaurant in the city, but also he can make a choice of the best restaurant based on the rating. The user can also map the location of the restaurant on Google Maps rendered to the user on the phone & find the path from his current location or from any other location to the restaurant. The user has the facility to make a call directly to the restaurant and can also obtain the detailed review provided by the others users. They can also send their own review to their friends via E-mail.

Introduction to Restaurant Finder

The user interface is kept simple and understandable. The user need not take any additional effort to understand the functionality and navigation in the application. The colors are chosen in such a way that user can easily understand where the input has to be given. Hints are given to help the user in giving the correct input.

The following are the main screens and features in this application.

•Home Screen

•Map Screen Where Tagging is done

•Profile Of each Restaurants

•Search Screen

•Dialing screen

•List Of restaurant Screen

•Email Screen

1.)HOME SCREEN

As soon you launch the app this screen will appear first. In this screen you will find 4 option i.e Restaurant, bars, cafes and Search. Clicking You any of the above 3 option you will go to the loading screen and after loading of the data you will get the location on the map. On clicking on the last option you will go to the search screen where you can write any text and find any restaurants.

2.)Map Screen

This screen will display or tag all the location that are present in the 5 KM radius from the current location and will show you the location as shown in the figure. On clicking on any of the pins you will redirected to the profile page of the restaurant.

3.)Profile Screen

This is the profile screen where you will find all the related information about the restaurant like that address, website , phone no., ratings etc . you can view this information and decide on which restaurant stand as per your liking.

4.)Search Screen

If User want to search for a particular restaurant then this option suits for him the best. This option is available on the home page. Just click on the option and this page is displayed. Write the name of your restaurant and the app will display according to the google page rank the top 5 restaurant in the list. You can click on any one of them and they will take you to the profile page of the restaurant.

5.)Dialing Screen

This option is made to ease the user to contact to restaurant. The contact no. is available on the profile. If user want to book a table or contact the restaurant of any of the assistance then they can directly call from the app itself and come back to the same position without the app being shutdown.

6.)List Of Restaurant Screen

After you search for a particular restaurant then this screen will be shown displaying the top restaurant as per google page rank. On clicking on any of this option you will get the desired information from their page only.

7.)Email Screen

As you can see that you can share your reviews regarding a particular restaurant over mail to your loved ones and to a social group through share your review option on the home screen.

Tools Used in our project!

Eclipse

Google Places APIs

Android SDK

Javascript

Google Map API V2

Findings

During the course of this project there are many finding that we have come across. In big cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore etc majority of population are of professional, industrialist etc who have got money but less time to waste. These type of community people usually have their breakfast, lunch and dinner outside as they have no time to cook or they are bachelors or both husband and wife are working. What problem they come across is that they have got very less time so they go to whichever restaurant they find first. What happen after getting into the restro is either they don’t like the food or if the food is good then they have to pay more for the same taste of food available nearby that restaurant that to with great ambience. This finding really motivated us to make an app for this community so that we can save both their time as well as money. But later on we realized that other communities like that of students, workers etc can also find this app useful and that give us idea to put a search box as well for specific finding by the user. The most important data of Restaurant Information is the ratings and the user reviews. So we have provided an e-mail option to the user in order to provide reviews over mail to his friends or to some restaurant page through this service.

Conclusion

This is my first attempt in developing a mobile application with the use of Google Place APIs which gave me a basic understanding of development and challenges of getting information from the APIs and parser it to the desired format. The main aim of the project is to provide an easy to use application for searching the restaurants. So that we can save time of person in finding a good restaurant at not well known place. The Developer can also build this kind of app with their own database to improve the quality content and to make his app as little bit faster. The database application will be useful for the user when there is no facility of the going online as well. There are many improvement that are to be done in this application but as of know whatever we have come up is performing as per standards and is upto the mark. The application has been implemented and tested on real devices.

Future PlansThe application can be improved in many ways and can be extended to support more devices like the tablets and iOS devices. Following are some of the possible extensions:

1.) The application can be extended to provide a more advanced search by taking the zip code as the input.

2.) For the selected distance range, all the restaurants in the distance range can be displayed irrespective of the city.

3.) There can also be ways to directly navigate the user to the restaurant’s site or provide a way to call the restaurant when clicked on the phone number.

4.) The user can post on social networking sites the place which the user presently visiting.

5.) Can tag the dishes he likes at a particular restaurant for the future aspects.

6.) Can invite friends at a particular restaurant for any special occasion.

7.) Can provide feedback to different groups on social networking sites.

8.) Database of all the user information can be created which in turn can be used for blogs, newsletters etc.

References1. Manav Singhal and Anupam Shukla (January 2012). Implementation of Location based Services in Android, IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 9, Issue 1, No 2, January 2012 ISSN (Online): 1694-0814. Available: http://ijcsi.org/papers/IJCSI-9-1-2-237-242.pdf

2. Location Based Services (LBS) on Mobile in India (14 April 2008) Indicus Analytics Pvt. Ltd. For IAMAI. Available: http://www.iamai.in/Upload/policy/LBS_Draft_Indicus.pdf

3. Prof. Nilima Walde, Pravindra Singh Khatri,Dheeraj Mehta and A V Avinash (3 March 2014) Android Location Based Services, International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering Vol. 3, Issue 3. Available : http://www.ijarcce.com/upload/2014/march/IJARCCE4J%20%20%20a%20%20dheeraj%20Android%20Location.pdf

4. Valerie Bennett and Andrew Capella (29 May 2002) , Developing and deploying a location-based service application. Available: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0205_bennett/bennett.html

Thank You!!!