User Feedback on CheckBoxGroup project in GSoC'21 App Inventor

Open Source Development Google Summer of Code
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Hello everyone!

I'm Hardik and I will be working on the project "Implement a CheckBox Group in App Inventor" this summer.

Full Project Proposal: here (The Implementation plan in this is clearly outdated :sweat_smile:).

Please do give it a read and provide your valuable feedback. You can comment on the doc or reply to this topic. Any feedback is most welcome :blush:.

Short Project Description:

The project aims to add a CheckBox Group (similar to RadioGroup in Android but for CheckBox) component to the existing App Inventor which would automate the task of unchecking the rest of CheckBoxes in a group once one of the CheckBox is checked.

Currently in MIT App Inventor if a user wants to have such functionality, they will have to use blockly like in the screenshot below:

1057Ɨ478

However, this method is quite tedious and not scalable as for each CheckBox you will have to add a block which would set the other CheckBoxes to unchecked. This problem was also discussed here.

The following are the resources that Iā€™m referring to plan the implementation of my project:

  1. Checkboxes - Introduction to CheckBox

  2. RadioGroup - Documentation of RadioGroup

  3. CheckBox - Documentation of CheckBox

  4. RadioGroup.java - Source code for RadioGroup

  5. xeoh/CheckBoxGroup - Android library for handling multiple checkbox

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Nice project. It will certainly help with making things easier. Good luck.

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Good luck with your Project this summer Hardik.

There are many ways to create a 'group box' using existing Blocks
including the example using CheckBoxes I provided in 2018 in the old Forum

https://groups.google.com/g/mitappinventortest/c/i4MJIXFIWoA/m/5ac6_9AVz5EJ

Perhaps :cry: , however the developer will still have to populate it; when you design the real GroupBox keep it simple.

Here is an example of some other ways to create GroupBoxes using Blocks

  • using a Spinner; you might look at the Spinner code as part of your resources.
  • the original CheckBox example
  • using a ListView for an un-linked GroupBox (where all elements respond independantly)
  • using a ListView for a linked GroupBox (where clicking an element closes any open elements). It is similar to the CheckBox example.
    groupBox
    groupBox600Ɨ960 35.9 KB
    GroupBoxBlocks.aia (17.8 KB)

Perhaps there are some ideas there you might find useful.

Both linked and unlinked options will be useful (select only one option at a time versus selecting a few or all the options at a time)

It will be interesting to see what you come up with.

-- Steve

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