OfflineManager: A Lightweight Approach for Managing Offline Status in Mobile Applications

Abstract

Most current mobile applications work with a back-end server over the Internet. But in many occasions network connectivity is not available and a proper offline treatment must be provided. This question can be solved in many ways, such as storing requests for later attempts, caching data and full client-server synchronization, among others. There are solutions both in the industry and academia, however two challenges remain: to solve the problem in a way that covers many software layers, including interface and usability issues; and to support different kinds of treatment to the absence of connection. This paper presents a mobile library built to help developers provide offline functionality on their apps, while trying to solving these two challenges. To do that, the library, called OfflineManager, offers different ways to treat each call to the back-end, both in the case of missing Internet connection and unavailable server. It also offers feedback messages, and a point of interaction via pop-up messages. To evaluate the library, four evaluation methods were used, including experts, developers, users and well-known heuristics. The collected evidence indicates that the library achieves its goal to overcome the two presented challenges, and also uncovers some problems and points for improvement.