Is Appium only used for testing? What about an app/bot assistant?

Question

i'm looking for some guidance on what the best approach is/ what software I need.

My bf owns a promotional company, books about 15 shows a month and spend a lot of time on his phone, creating event pages, linking up the bands facebook and bandcamp url to events, contacting bands with set times and backline info, etc. I thought I would help him out (and other music promoters that I've talked to) with automating some of these tasks. I know there might be other apps currently out there that have some of these capabilities, but I wanted to create something myself as it be a fun project that I could practice my programming skills(beginner-ish).

The app/bot will act as an assistant. It should be able to create an event, ask for the date and let the user input band names. Maybe there will be a series of check boxes that the user can select whether the band is from out of state(what state), touring, local, EP/album release, etc. Select co-host, location. Then depending on the # of bands and the location it will also generate a set time list, and backline info that the user can copy it and send to the bands(or maybe it will do this automatically, if it has access to the bands instagram or facebook?) Once the user presses done it will automatically create an event page, with date, and all the other info. Under the description of the event page, the app will automatically populate that with info depending on what the user selected. For example if its 2 out of state bands and 2 local bands, then it will write something like: "We welcome our 2 touring friends XX from FL? and xxx from NY? With local support from XX and xx" - something along those lines with a link to their pages.

Maybe in the future the app will also be able to go in and look at the bands facebook pages, go to their events and see what people pressed going/interest in their events, then invite those people to their upcoming show?

How do I get started. Should I use Appium and android studio to develop this app/bot assistant? Is Appium only used for testing? I have some basic programming experience from college and other courses i took, such as Selenium webdriver. More important is this doable or am I setting myself up for failure?

Answer 1

In addition to being a developer, I also am a part-time promoter and perform all of those same tasks that your boyfriend does. If there was some way to automate any of it, I would have done so a long time ago. Unfortunately there is, in my opinion, too much variability between different events, venues, and musical acts.

The biggest time sink for me is tracking down information about each act such as their web site URL, Facebook page URL, Soundcloud profile URL, logo, bio, and photo. (Some of the artists I deal with have a press kit but most don't.) Once the information is compiled, creating the Facebook pages is the easy part.

So, maybe a better use of time would be to create a web form that collects that information from each act and stores it in a folder in a structured way.