My Favourite Location

A native Android app to search, save, and map favourite locations using the Google Places API, built with Kotlin and MVVM.

Features

• Location Discovery: Integrates with the Google Places API to search for and discover nearby points of interest.
• Save & Organise: Users can bookmark locations with custom notes and tags, stored locally in a Room database.
• Offline-First: All saved locations are available offline through Room's SQLite abstraction, with Retrofit handling remote API calls when connectivity is available.
• Map View: Displays saved locations on an interactive map, allowing users to visualise their collection geographically.
• Clean Architecture: The MVVM pattern separates concerns cleanly — ViewModel manages UI state, Repository abstracts data sources, Room handles local persistence, and Retrofit manages remote API calls.

Technical Highlights

• Room DB: Type-safe SQLite access with DAO interfaces and LiveData/Flow integration for reactive UI updates
• Retrofit: Type-safe HTTP client for Google Places API integration with Gson serialization
• Glide: Efficient image loading for place photos from the Google Places Photo API
• Android Jetpack: Navigation component, ViewModel, LiveData, and ViewBinding used throughout