In this edition of Backendless Spotlight, we cross the Atlantic to take a closer look at TopAnimals, an educational sticker-collecting app out of Italy. With TopAnimals, users can collect animal stickers of varying rarities that offer descriptions, curiosities, and habitat information. TopAnimals is brand new to the market, launching on iTunes just last week.
Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know have an app using Backendless for its backend and would like to be considered for a future Backendless Spotlight, we want to hear from you! Send us an email with a link to the app or website and a description of how Backendless has helped them be successful.
TopAnimals is designed to make learning about nature fun. Users can purchase sticker packs using the app’s internal currency, seeking to collect all of the animals of different rarities. Each sticker collected is added to the user’s sticker gallery, and tapping on the sticker takes the user to a detail screen where they can learn more about the animal through its description, habitat information, and a “curiosity” about the animal. Take a look at a demo of the app in action:
TopAnimals is currently available only in Italian, but the developer has hopes to expand it throughout the world.
TopAnimals takes full advantage of Backendless Database and File Storage to track its users’ collections. All of the animal details and images are stored in the backend and accessed via API when the user logs in and navigates throughout the app. Additionally, TopAnimals uses Backendless to assist with styles, giving each animal group (terrestrial mammals, marine mammals, birds, etc.) its own unique look and feel within the app, without having to code it manually into the frontend. The app also uses Backendless for managing push notifications and the developer has plans to add live messaging in the future.
The developer of TopAnimals, Jacopo Pappalettera, has used a long-term vision approach to the development of the app. Because of the database API and file storage capabilities that Backendless provides, Pappalettera is approaching the project with the perspective of building a replicable framework for future apps.
So, while TopAnimals is focused on animal stickers and providing information about those animals, the framework that he has developed can easily be repurposed for future releases using different themes. For example, the same app structure could be reused with world flags or even recipes.
Connecting future apps with a Backendless backend will be simple. The developer can easily duplicate the existing project and modify the tables by importing the new information, then add the new sticker image files. With just a small number of adjustments to the frontend, TopAnimals can quickly be reskinned into whatever the developer has in mind. Not only that, but when Pappalettera is ready to branch out to other languages, he can easily add new tables and make minor changes to the Data Service APIs to make sure each app is providing its user with their language of choice.