King Catalog

An offline-first Android app for browsing and tracking the Stephen King bibliography.

Prerequisites

• Android Studio Hedgehog (2023.1.1) or newer, or JDK 17 + Android SDK (API 34)
• ANDROID_HOME environment variable set to your SDK path

Build

cd app
./gradlew assembleDebug

The APK is written to app/app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk.

Install to device / emulator

cd app
./gradlew installDebug

Run tests

cd app
./gradlew test

Project structure

app/                        Android project root
├── app/src/main/
│   ├── assets/
│   │   └── king_catalog.json       Seed data (230 entries)
│   └── java/com/mattnicol/kingcatalog/
│       ├── KingCatalogApp.kt       Application; triggers seed import on first run
│       ├── MainActivity.kt
│       ├── data/
│       │   ├── db/                 Room database, DAO, type converters
│       │   ├── model/              Domain models (Book, Adaptation)
│       │   ├── repository/         BookRepository
│       │   ├── datastore/          UserPreferencesRepository (DataStore)
│       │   └── seed/               SeedImporter – parses assets JSON on first launch
│       └── ui/
│           ├── navigation/         Bottom nav + NavHost
│           ├── components/         BookCard, BookCover
│           ├── screens/
│           │   ├── home/           Currently Reading / Recently Read / Next Up
│           │   ├── books/          Full catalog with search, sort, filter
│           │   ├── library/        Owned books with long-press actions
│           │   └── other/          Other authors (extensible)
│           └── theme/              Material 3 colour scheme
data-tools/                 Python scripts used to build the seed JSON
├── scripts/parse.py        Parse source TSV → king_catalog.json
└── scripts/enrich.py       Enrich JSON with covers (Open Library) and word counts

Seed import

On first launch KingCatalogApp checks DataStore for a seed_imported flag. If absent it calls SeedImporter.load() which reads assets/king_catalog.json, maps every entry to a BookEntity, and bulk-inserts it via Room. The flag is set so the import never runs again.

Adding another author's catalog

1. Produce a JSON file in the same schema as king_catalog.json but with a different author field on each entry.
2. Place the file in assets/ and extend SeedImporter to load it.
3. The observeOtherAuthors() DAO query will pick up any rows where author != 'Stephen King'.

Data pipeline

The enriched seed data lives at data-tools/enriched/king_catalog.json. To refresh it:

# requires Python 3.11+ and internet access
source .venv/bin/activate          # or: python3 -m venv .venv && pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 data-tools/scripts/parse.py    # re-parse source TSV (only needed if source changes)
python3 data-tools/scripts/enrich.py   # fetch Open Library covers + estimate missing word counts

After running, sync enriched outputs to app assets:

cp data-tools/enriched/covers/*.jpg app/app/src/main/assets/covers/
cp data-tools/enriched/king_catalog.json app/app/src/main/assets/king_catalog.json

Audible lengths are populated from the source TSV where present. Entries without audible data are left null (no reliable free API exists for bulk Audible metadata). Covers for short stories inside collections are typically unavailable on Open Library; those entries are flagged needs_review in data-tools/enriched/king_catalog_review.csv.

Tech stack

Layer	Library
UI	Jetpack Compose + Material 3
Navigation	Navigation Compose 2.7
Local DB	Room 2.6
Preferences	DataStore 1.1
Images	Coil 2.6
JSON	Gson 2.10
Build	AGP 8.3 / Kotlin 1.9 / KSP