Location

[supernova-at]

Currently the app uses the user's current location to query for representatives.

It would be nice to:

• Show the user the location used for the query (City, State would likely suffice)
• Allow the user to pin / save their location so that if they use the app on the go, they can still contact their own reps
• Look up reps by a location that is not the user's current location

The location also is not currently cached. Doing so would be a minor performance improvement and would shield the app from not functioning if the user disables GPS or location services after we cache.

[dallashudgens]

^ I like the offline mentality. If the information has been loaded before, being able to view it offline (as well as if location services are off) would be awesome

[supernova-at]

Unfortunately the Google Civic API that we use to actually fetch the representatives has a restriction against caching its results, so we can't go fully offline.

But we can cache the location and take that part offline.

[dallashudgens]

I came up with some initial ideas for how entering zip code/changing location might work. They are just rough outlines, but they also include possible animations

[supernova-at]

@dallashudgens love it! The tap on the current location to bring down the ZIP input is awesome.

As a heads up, some US House of Representatives overlap zip codes. In other words, two people who have the same ZIP may not have the same rep. Check out http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/Zip.aspx and enter zip code 78613.

I think the common use case is that we'll be able to use the ZIP, but we may be forced to prompt for additional address information as well, which gets clunky 😞

[dallashudgens]

gotcha. We can always modify it to have a couple fields instead of the zip code. I just jumped to zip because it is the smallest haha