IceCo

About

The Ice Converter or IceCo app is a 100% Java with JavaFX and @fxml mobile application for Android. It’s open source and free to use (Apache 2.0 license).

The mobile app converts any numerical input to and from the Icelandic króna. I created it because I went to Iceland for a holiday and thought it would be a great tutorial project to create my own currency conversion app. That very first version converted using a hard coded conversion rate (compiled just before I went on the holiday). But it was running on my and my wife’s mobile phone and was built using Java and JavaFX (with a @fxml scene), therefore it did the job!

Most conversion apps require an input and then convert your input to a selected currency. Just depending on the situation, I wanted to convert to a currency but in some other cases I meant converting from (just not caring what it is I wanted). The IceCo app just accepts the input and converts to and from both.

After the first implementation, I wanted to change the behavior to show the numerical keyboard from your phone instead of text keyboard when you entered the input textfield. And also acting on focus-lost of the textfield should reduce clicks. But these would require some more interaction with the mobile phone (to show the numerical keyboard instead of the default one) and that would mean usage of the com.gluonhq packages. That would result in probably the show for the warning to use the commercial version of Gluon. So for now, this not my intention.

Build

The IceCo mobile Android application is developed in Intellij using GraalVM with Gluon 23 as an SDK (see their github page for more info) and Maven 3.9.9 as build tool. Check my [ubuntu-setup] blog to see how I have set up my environment. And check the [.apk] blog on how to put .apk files on your phone.

Features

Current version is v0.2 and features:

  • Currency is no longer hard coded, but fetched from here.
  • Nice logo for the IceCo app.
  • 100% Java and 100% open source.

Google Play Store / F-Droid

It will be my first attempt to deploy a mobile application in the Google Play Store or on the F-Droid platform. It’s still something to get into and finish. See [F-Droid] for more information about F-Droid. You can check all source code on GitHub [here] and since F-Droid checks the application itself before placing it in their store, you can see for yourself the application does not collect any information about you and does not include any ads (I wouldn’t know (yet) how to program that in my application ; )

For now, I haven’t been succesful in doing so. I’ll keep this up to date with the latest developments.

Todo

  • Use a custom font for the numerical input (a font which ships in the app, not from the phone).
  • Not something visible, but a proper exit.
  • Buy a (refurbished) Macbook and package an iPhone version.
  • Actually getting it in the Google Play Store or on the F-Droid platform.
  • Make a donate option.

Licence

I’ve created this open source application under Apache 2.0 License model, which means you can see, use, modify, distribute and contribute to this project, see [Apache] for more information.