Entertainment and music applications are now customary additions available with all smartphones today. On the Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone 7.5 device, we have the Zune music player that allows us to listen to music, watch videos, and subscribe to podcasts and radio as well. Another interesting app that was recently launched in the Windows Marketplace is the Nokia music app, which presents a good UI to listen to music, as well as listing gigs (events) happening nearby.
An events app is a good entertainment companion for your Windows Phone. By using the events application, users can browse for nearby gigs, get to know more about their favorite artists, and find events happening at their favorite venue.
Eventful.com is the leading events and entertainment service that provides real-time events information to millions of users, the killer feature being Demand it! a service that empowers fans to get their favorite artists/performers to come to their town and perform.
In this chapter, we will learn how to build a complete events app from scratch using the Eventful.com API. The application name will be PacktEvents.
This chapter covers:
- Exploring the Eventful.com API
- Extending the
Hello Locationexample for showing nearby events - Filtering events by categories
- Plotting events on Bing Maps
- Building the
PacktEventsapp using Panorama control
Eventful.com provides an extensive concerts and events API via api.eventful.com, which allows third-party developers to:
- Integrate the rich and unique events information into their applications
- Create and edit new events
- Add images and comments
- Create, edit, or modify a venue
- Search for venues and events
- Get user information: User-created events, venues, and events attended by a user
- Add and edit artist information
- Get a list of event categories
- Search for demands and get the details of a demand
The demand feature is a unique concept from Eventful, which can be used by consumers to demand that their favorite artists come to their cities and perform a gig.
The events content is tagged in the following ways:
- Events are tied to a location with latitude and longitude and mapped to a venue(s) in a city
- Events are tied to artists
- Events are categorized into specific pre-defined categories, such as concerts, jazz, dance, and so on
- Event details include start date, end date, time of event, ticket price, and so on
- Events can be searched by keywords and/or location
- Events can also be retrieved based on popularity
Similarly venues and artists have corresponding API endpoints. Find a complete list of API endpoints at http://api.eventful.com/docs. We will explain the various endpoints as we continue building our app.