👨🏽‍💻 AASTU Students App v4

Welcome to the 4th iteration of the AASTU Students App—a productivity and social networking platform tailored for the students of Addis Ababa Science and Technology University. Unlike previous versions, this release is built using FlutterFlow, a Flutter-based UI framework that enhances both development efficiency and user experience.

🚀 Features

Productivity & Academics

• Class Schedule Builder — Build your weekly timetable, set classes across multiple days, edit or remove anytime
• Daily Negarit (Task Manager) — Create tasks with reminders, categorize by assignment/test/other, mark as complete
• Grade Calculator — Calculate GPA & CGPA, save grade history across semesters
• Grading System — Interactive grade scale table with a built-in grade checker playground
• Quiz Generator — AI-powered quiz generation from course topics using Google Gemini
• Academic Calendar — View academic calendars for all batches (UG & PG)

Social & Community

• Social Feed — Post text & media, like, comment, and share with the campus community
• Stories — Share temporary updates visible to all students
• Real-time Chat — Direct and group messaging with media sharing, read receipts, and unread badges
• User Profiles — Follow other students, view posts, and connect
• Push Notifications — Get notified when someone follows you or likes your post

Campus Life

• Virtual ID Card — Digital student ID with QR code support
• Campus Gallery — Explore campus through photos and videos
• Religious Communities — Find fellowships and religious groups on campus
• Associations & Clubs — Discover student-led organizations
• Student Handbook — Official AASTU student handbook

Marketplace

• Campus Store — Buy and sell items within the student community
• Category Filtering — Browse items by category with a mixed card layout
• Item Management — Upload, manage, and track your listed items

Utilities

• Student Portal — Quick access to the official AASTU student portal
• QR Code Scanner — Scan QR codes for campus services
• Dark/Light Mode — Full theme support with persistence
• Pull-to-Refresh — Refresh feed content with a simple pull gesture

🏗 Why FlutterFlow?

This project has gone through four major iterations, each built with a different technology stack based on the needs of the time:

Version	Year	Technology	Notes
v1	2021	Android Native (Java)	First release — core features, Android only
v2	2022	Android Native (Java)	Improved UI, more features, still Android only
v3	2023	Flutter (Pure)	Cross-platform rewrite — iOS + Android from one codebase
v4	2025	FlutterFlow (Flutter)	Current version — web, mobile, and Telegram Mini App compatible

Why the switch to FlutterFlow?

After v3 proved Flutter's cross-platform capabilities, we needed to expand beyond mobile. The app needed to run as a web app and as a Telegram Mini App — platforms where rapid UI iteration and responsive layouts matter. FlutterFlow gave us:

• Faster UI development — Visual builder for layouts while keeping full code access for custom logic
• Web & Telegram Mini App compatibility — Responsive design primitives that work across all form factors out of the box
• Same Flutter foundation — All custom Dart code, Firebase integration, and platform channels work exactly the same as pure Flutter
• Easier onboarding for contributors — New developers can understand and modify the UI without deep Flutter widget tree knowledge

The result is a single codebase that ships to Android, iOS, Web, and Telegram — while still allowing full custom Dart code for features like the AI quiz generator, push notifications, and NFC/QR scanning.

📜 Previous Versions

Version 1 - (2021)      Version 2 - (2022)      Version 3 - (2023)      Version 4 - (2025)

🛠 Installation

To run the app on your local machine, follow these steps:

1. Install Flutter

• Follow the official Flutter installation guide: Flutter Docs

2. Clone the Repository

  git clone https://github.com/chisa-dev/aastu-students-app-v4.git
  cd AASTU-Students-App

3. Set Up Firebase

• Place the google-services.json file inside android/app/.
• Configure Firebase credentials in lib/backend/firebase/firebase_config.dart.

4. Run the Project

Android

flutter run

iOS

cd ios && pod install && cd ..
flutter run

Web

flutter build web
flutter serve

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Choose one of the following ways to contribute:

1. Build standalone features separately in Flutter and submit your code.
2. Report issues by creating a GitHub issue.
3. Directly fix an issue and submit a pull request.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙌 Acknowledgements

• Gemechis Elias - Project Developer
• Getabalew Asfaw - UI Designer
• Ayenew Tarekegn - Developer / Early Tester
• Dagimawi Babi - Early Tester
• Abigail F - Product / Early Tester
• Yohannes - Early Tester