Introduction:

I was inspired by a fellow South African developer who made an online map using data from the Pretoria University Data Science department. You can check it out here: https://coronamap.co.za

The actual data is from this GitHub repo here: https://github.com/dsfsi/covid19za – full credit to authors here: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3724083

They make data available in csv format, so the Processing code needed to parse that. Here is my code on Github: https://github.com/tomjuggler/parseCoronavirusSA

You can use Desktop or Android mode to run it.

How it works:

Although it is possible to use a real map for the background, I opted for an image since that saves time and bandwidth. The case information is parsed from the csv source and added up in an Array, sorted by province. *Update: there are now too many cases to track each one, the researchers are collating up to date provincial results here, I changed the source code to use that.

The numbers are inserted into the correct place, using a formula to account for resizing of the image (on Android, there are many different screen sizes and I wanted to have a full-screen image)

What’s next?

Processing code is basically Java, and it is not difficult to add to a “real” Android app, using Android Studio. I have included this map sketch as well as my virus spread simulator to a full Android Corvid-19 tracking app here:

https://circusscientist.com/CoronavirusSA.apk

Coming soon: source code and how to add your own Processing sketches to a proper Android Studio App, with a menu. Also: global data! I found a reliable source here for global data, lets use the data to track global results in Processing*!

*Update: I just started this repo here, initial code example using http requests to parse international data api from https://github.com/ExpDev07/coronavirus-tracker-api – only three countries so far but the code works at least!

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