I built a pretty good mobile app, but now it’s not doing well (so I’m rebuilding it!)

One of the most rewarding things about being a programmer/coding is having the ability to solve your own problems through software development. 👨🏾‍💻

Back in 2017, I wanted an easy way to save all the things I needed to often copy/paste somewhere so that I could easily copy/paste them again later. Well, I made an app for it 👍.

It is called “Snippeta”, for iOS! ✂️📋

You can copy, manage, and paste snippets of text to your clipboard with a single tap; no highlighting/long-tapping!

Since it’s been a few years since it’s been updated, it’s time for some enhancements. Many of the competing apps have caught up to it in features and style.

I also want to add some new features, like a Home Screen widget, and keyboard shortcuts.

How did I technically build this mobile app?

• Front-end: Xamarin cross-platform mobile app framework for the app itself; using C# language
• Back-end: A pure PHP web API with scripts for each endpoint, to serve, process, and store the snippet and account data to the database
• Database: MySQL relational database since it integrates well with PHP; tables for users, snippets, and pro version purchases
• Payments (PRO version): Using Apple’s In-App payments system ($1 for lifetime PRO version! LOL)
• Hosting: A Google Cloud Platform virtual instance of Windows Server that hosts the web API and database; using Internet Information Services (IIS) as the web application server (as opposed to NGINX)

It’s been a few years since it’s been updated so it’s time for some enhancements.

Re-architecture Plan

💡 Here’s what I’m considering for re-architecture:

• Front-end: React Native cross-platform mobile framework, coding in JavaScript (Xamarin is deprecated now)
• Back-end + Database + Hosting (option 1): Google Firebase for little-to-no-code web API + database + hosting
• Back-end + Database + Hosting (option 2): stick with Google Cloud Platform, use a Linux server, move the web service to Node.js (I think it may perform a bit better), and change the database to MongoDB (the data leans more non-relational)
• Payments (PRO version): Charge $1 monthly, instead of lifetime access (LOL)

What do you think? (Feedback)

If you have some time, please go check it out in the Apple AppStore and let me know what you think of the app!

⁉️ Let me know your thoughts and/or any features you think I could add.

👍🏾 Please share if you want to support, and subscribe to my YouTube (@kg.codes) for more content like this.