Presented

Evaluation of an Application Programming Interface through implementation

Johanna Lynn (D04)

Abstract

Many of the mobile phones today has a GPS receiver which can be used by the programs on the phone. In the future the amount of programs that use the knowledge of where the phone is located will increase, but the source code of the new programs do not always need to be started from nothing. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for some of the functionality requested, such as a map with the position, are available from Waynder Systems for usage by others, so called third parties. The focus of this master thesis is to evaluate some of these APIs to improve them. This is done by developing a program as a third party using the APIs. Part of the task is investigate a development process and the format of transferring GPS data (.gpx) used in one of API. An observation and a literature study formed the basis for the development process that resulted in a program for writing .gpx files to the mobile phone. It can be used for remembering where a place (for example a restaurant) is located. The evaluation was executed continually and suggestions for features and clearer documentation led to an improvement of the APIs at the company. However, the APIs will require continuous improvements to meet the needs from third party developers.

Advisor: Jonas Sellergren (Wayfinder) and Maria Kihl (EIT)

Examinator: Maria Kihl (EIT)