iPhone application back-end

Qualogy implements iPhone application backend

Shopping at Albert Heijn with Appie

Number one in the App Store, an average rating of 4.5 stars and an immense buzz on Twitter. The introduction of Appie, the new Albert Heijn iPhone application, was a huge success. Qualogy took care of the backend implementation.

Party piece: pick route

Appie users can throw pen and paper away. They can search in more than 8000 recipes and special offers on their phone and copy the necessary ingredients directly to their shopping list. They can add notes (‘car wash!’), browse their usual or favorite items, or get information on nearby stores and opening hours. They can even use their phone while cooking: the application can show recipes in landscape format in a large font. But that’s not all.

Appie’s party piece is the pick route: simply select the Albert Heijn store you will visit to sort the groceries according to the route of that particular store. Of course it is possible to adjust the order according to your preferences. And while shopping you simply tick off each item you put in the cart.

From mobile site to phone application

We’re sorry to say we didn’t build that marvelous frontend interface running on the phone, but it would not have been possible without the Qualogy backend running on servers at Albert Heijn. A REST-based API (Spring 3, Spring MVC 3), enabling messages through XML. Project Manager and Qualogy Consultant Ronald Bakker recalls how Appie came to life. “Albert Heijn Marketing had been thinking about the mobile market for a considerable time. We built their website, so asking us to experiment with a mobile version was a logical step. But when the iPhone apps caught on, they decided to build a mobile phone application instead.”

Ronald Bakker was not the only one to work on the implementation. “Andrea Zanardi, Arthur Arts, Sander Nieuwenhuijzen and Gerard Pex also contributed to the project. It took us about half a year from start to finish, including communicating and consulting with the application developers about the REST interface.”

Security and hard work

How does it work? “The concept is quite simple. The user asks for data while using Appie on his phone: recipe ingredients, special offers or opening hours. That XML request is sent over the internet to our backend running at Albert Heijn. The backend processes the request, retrieves the answer and sends it back to the phone. Appie takes care of presentation and layout.”

One of the biggest challenges was security. “Access to the REST interface needed to be blocked thoroughly. We did not want the entire world talking to it, only the Appie application.” What about the pick route? “That was not very complex algorithmically, it was just hard work. The necessary information was available in the database, but it was outdated and needed a big overhaul.”

Appie Happy

Ronald Bakker is proud of a major implementation achievement, and with good reason. “Qualogy emphasizes reuse of components, and that is exactly what we did in this backend. The same logic and business rules that are available for the regular website, have been used for the mobile platform. We did not need to copy anything, both the website and Appie call the same building blocks. Everything we can do on the website is possible on the mobile platform, and vice versa.”

Albert Heijn customers are thrilled about Appie. “They consider it the shopping of the future. It helps them to shop much more efficiently. Albert Heijn is happy too, and not just because their customers are happy. The project was completed according to plan, works well and experienced no technical problems.”

More information (sorry, Dutch only) is available on the Albert Heijn website. Appie is available for both iPhones and Google Android phones.