Mobile app for used item giveaway

Abstract

The objective of the project is to design and develop a Mobile Application that provides an avenue for users to donate to or receive used items from others. The project is constructed using Swift as the main programming language to develop an iOS application.

The main purpose of this application is to allow users to donate or receive used items at their own convenience and time. Branches of charitable organisations such as Salvation Army and The Red Cross may not necessarily be conveniently accessible in terms of transport and location. The app allows users to post pictures of items they want to give away, which other users can view on the app. If other users are interested in the items, they can communicate with the donator and set up a time and location to meet. The increase in convenience encourages people to donate their items such as clothes or toys which helps Singapore reduce its waste generation.

The system’s frontend is built on Swift, a general-purpose, multi-paradigm language developed by Apple for the purpose of iOS app development. It also works with Cocoa, Apple’s native object-oriented application programming interface (API) which provides the only application environment for iOS. It consists of an array of object-oriented software libraries, a runtime system and an integrated development environment. The system’s backend is developed and built using Google Firebase, a cloud-hosted database to store all user data. The products used to develop this application from Firebase are Authentication, Firestore Database and Storage which help to store user data such as account email, password, username and captioned posts uploaded by each user.