App shows earthquake data in your region (donations)

The terrible earthquakes in Turkey and Syria has been on everyone’s mind. We all pray that more people are found, and that the survivors can rebuild and regain their resolve and strength.

App with earthquake data

I was thinking what type of app I could create related to earthquakes, maybe that could help in some way. I found the U.S. Geological Survey, which includes the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program. They provide real-time earthquake information – including free APIs.

I actually knew about the services because there is a Python LinkedIn Learning course I took that uses the earthquake data as part of its tutorial.

APIs

The APIs are located here: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/

The main 2 APIs I found were:

• A set of feeds with real-time data of the latest earthquakes (location, strength, and so forth). There are feeds for earthquakes in the last hour, day or week, and feeds for different strength earthquakes.
• A query service that lets you query, for example, based on location, strength, and so forth.

There is also a call to get information about a specific earthquake, including all different kinds of maps. I used this for the detail screen.

Screen 1 – List of earthquakes

So I decided to build 2 screens. The first is one that displays different lists of earthquakes: A list of all magnitude 4.5 or above in the last 24 hours, and a list of the all earthquakes in the past hour.

You can also query for the earthquakes near a certain spot (or by clicking the button near your location), and you can set the radius from your location and the minimum magnitude.

A nice feature here would be enter a city and the app would determine its latitude and longitude.

Screen 2 – Earthquake details

I created a second, detail page to which you can navigate by clicking on any of the earthquakes in any of the lists on the first page.

On the detail page is a lot of basic information, but coolest is the map to locate where the earthquake occurred.

There is also a button to take you to the USGS page where you can provide details if you felt the earthquake.

SAP Build Apps features

There were several SAP Build Apps features that I took advantage of to make this possible.

• Containers: I nested containers and set the width and layouts to help me organize the and align the components:
• Soft Tabs: A Marketplace components to help create tabs in your apps.
• Conditional Render: A component to create several UIs and to switch between them – used in conjunction with the soft tabs.
• Scroll View: Lets you create an area that will scroll while the rest of page stays still, which I used for the lists of earthquakes.
• Basic List: A core component for displaying an item in a list that includes several text fields.
• Web View: A Marketplace component for displaying web pages, in this case, for displaying the map.
• Open Web Browser: A Marketplace flow function for opening a web page in the device’s web browser.
• Page Parameters: I used the standard practice of creating a page parameter in the detail page to hold the ID of the specific item. This is passed when navigating from the home page.

Install app

I will do a tutorial about how to create this app. In the meantime, you can import the app, and maybe you can find ways to improve upon it or to make it useful for people in the field or elsewhere.

1. Download the project.
2. Create a new app project and call it Earthquakes.
3. In the top-right of the empty app you created, click on the 3 dots and select Replace. Select the project you downloaded (.gpg), and click Replace.