Bluetooth-based mobile social network

Project Description

The project consists in the development of a Bluetooth-based social network application for mobile devices. This application allows users to interact with other users via Bluetooth and to add friends to their contact lists. The friends in the contact list are either defined as “close” or “virtual” friends. “Close” friends are those friends that can be found in the range of the Bluetooth. They will remain “close” friends afterwards even if they are no longer reachable via Bluetooth. In addition the application is able to manage so-called “virtual” friends. “Virtual” friends are users in the contact list that have not been added via Bluetooth; they can later become “close” friends if they are reachable via Bluetooth at a certain point.

The application is realized by using the MIDP of the J2ME. A central server is used to interact with the MySQL DBMS. This DB stores and manages all the “close” and “virtual” friends. In addition it allows to calculate paths between different contacts and therefore to discover paths between friends. The Java APIs for Bluetooth (JSR-82) are used to support the communication between friends. In order to increase modularity and maintainability of the software all messages that are sent with this application are pieces of XML, which are defined by simple DTDs.

Scenario

A user is at a certain location and starts the application by performing a login on a central server. The application first scans for other users in the Bluetooth range. Once such a user has been recognized, their user information is exchanged. Now there exist several possibilities:

1. The user is already stored as a “close” friend in the contact list. In this case no information has to be updated on the central server

2. The user is already stored as a “virtual” friend in the contact list. In this case a connection to the central server is established and the contact is updated to be a “close” friend.

3. The user is stored neither as a “virtual” nor as a “close” friend. In this case the user can choose if he wants to add the other user as a “close” friend to its contact list.

The application stores the state of each friend in the contact list, i.e. a friend may be reachable via Bluetooth, via Internet or not at all, and updates the state as soon as the state of another user is changing. The user now can use this contact list to interact with one or more friends. In addition the user has the possibility to explore paths between friends. These paths allow the user to determine from which other friends he knows a certain person.  

Use cases

Schedule

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