Sue Brandreth's Learning Resources

INTRODUCTION xxi

CHAPTER 1: GETTING STARTED WITH ANDROID PROGRAMMING 1

What Is Android? 2

Android Versions 2

Features of Android 3

Architecture of Android 4

Android Devices in the Market 6

The Android Market 8

The Android Developer Community 9

Obtaining the Required Tools 9

Android SDK 10

Installing the Android SDK Tools 11

Confi guring the Android SDK Manager 12

Eclipse 14

Android Development Tools (ADT) 15

Creating Android Virtual Devices (AVDs) 17

Creating Your First Android Application 20

Anatomy of an Android Application 29

Summary 33

CHAPTER 2: ACTIVITIES, FRAGMENTS, AND INTENTS 35

Understanding Activities 36

Applying Styles and Themes to an Activity 41

Hiding the Activity Title 41

Displaying a Dialog Window 42

Displaying a Progress Dialog 47

Displaying a More Sophisticated Progress Dialog 50

Linking Activities Using Intents 53

Resolving Intent Filter Collision 58

Returning Results from an Intent 59

Passing Data Using an Intent Object 63

Fragments 69

Adding Fragments Dynamically 73

Life Cycle of a Fragment 76

Interactions between Fragments 80

Calling Built–In Applications Using Intents 85

Understanding the Intent Object 89

Using Intent Filters 91

Adding Categories 96

Displaying Notifications 98

Summary 103

CHAPTER 3: GETTING TO KNOW THE ANDROID USER INTERFACE 105

Understanding the Components of a Screen 105

Views and ViewGroups 106

LinearLayout 107

AbsoluteLayout 115

TableLayout 116

RelativeLayout 117

FrameLayout 118

ScrollView 121

Adapting to Display Orientation 123

Anchoring Views 125

Resizing and Repositioning 127

Managing Changes to Screen Orientation 130

Persisting State Information during Changes in Confi guration 133

Detecting Orientation Changes 135

Controlling the Orientation of the Activity 135

Utilizing the Action Bar 136

Adding Action Items to the Action Bar 139

Customizing the Action Items and Application Icon 144

Creating the User Interface Programmatically 146

Listening for UI Notifications 148

Overriding Methods Defined in an Activity 149

Registering Events for Views 152

Summary 156

CHAPTER 4: DESIGNING YOUR USER INTERFACE WITH VIEWS 159

Using Basic Views 160

TextView View 160

Button, ImageButton, EditText, CheckBox, ToggleButton, RadioButton, and RadioGroup Views 161

ProgressBar View 171

AutoCompleteTextView View 177

Using Picker Views 179

TimePicker View 179

DatePicker View 184

Using List Views to Display Long Lists 191

ListView View 191

Using the Spinner View 199

Understanding Specialized Fragments 202

Using a ListFragment 202

Using a DialogFragment 207

Using a PreferenceFragment 210

Summary 214

CHAPTER 5: DISPLAYING PICTURES AND MENUS WITH VIEWS 219

Using Image Views to Display Pictures 219

Gallery and ImageView Views 220

ImageSwitcher 226

GridView 231

Using Menus with Views 234

Creating the Helper Methods 235

Options Menu 238

Context Menu 240

Some Additional Views 242

AnalogClock and DigitalClock Views 242

WebView 243

Summary 249

CHAPTER 6: DATA PERSISTENCE 251

Saving and Loading User Preferences 251

Accessing Preferences Using an Activity 252

Programmatically Retrieving and Modifying the Preferences Values 259

Changing the Default Name of the Preferences File 261

Persisting Data to Files 263

Saving to Internal Storage 263

Saving to External Storage (SD Card) 268

Choosing the Best Storage Option 271

Using Static Resources 272

Creating and Using Databases 273

Creating the DBAdapter Helper Class 273

Using the Database Programmatically 279

Pre–Creating the Database 285

Summary 289

CHAPTER 7: CONTENT PROVIDERS 293

Sharing Data in Android 293

Using a Content Provider 294

Predefi ned Query String Constants 300

Projections 303

Filtering 304

Sorting 305

Creating Your Own Content Providers 305

Using the Content Provider 314

Summary 319

CHAPTER 8: MESSAGING 321

SMS Messaging 321

Sending SMS Messages Programmatically 322

Getting Feedback after Sending a Message 325

Sending SMS Messages Using Intent 328

Receiving SMS Messages 329

Caveats and Warnings 344

Sending E–mail 345

Summary 347

CHAPTER 9: LOCATION–BASED SERVICES 351

Displaying Maps 352

Creating the Project 352

Obtaining the Maps API Key 353

Displaying the Map 355

Displaying the Zoom Control 358

Changing Views 361

Navigating to a Specific Location 363

Adding Markers 366

Getting the Location That Was Touched 369

Geocoding and Reverse Geocoding 371

Getting Location Data 375

Monitoring a Location 384

Project ― Building a Location Tracker 385

Summary 390

CHAPTER 10: NETWORKING 393

Consuming Web Services Using HTTP 393

Downloading Binary Data 396

Downloading Text Content 402

Accessing Web Services Using the GET Method 404

Consuming JSON Services 409

Sockets Programming 417

Summary 426

CHAPTER 11: DEVELOPING ANDROID SERVICES 429

Creating Your Own Services 429

Performing Long–Running Tasks in a Service 433

Performing Repeated Tasks in a Service 439

Executing Asynchronous Tasks on Separate Threads Using IntentService 442

Establishing Communication between a Service and an Activity 445

Binding Activities to Services 449

Understanding Threading 454

Summary 460

CHAPTER 12: PUBLISHING ANDROID APPLICATIONS 463

Preparing for Publishing 463

Versioning Your Application 464

Digitally Signing Your Android Applications 466

Deploying APK Files 471

Using the adb.exe Tool 471

Using a Web Server 474

Publishing on the Android Market 476

Summary 481

APPENDIX A: USING ECLIPSE FOR ANDROID DEVELOPMENT 483

Getting Around in Eclipse 483

Workspaces 483

Package Explorer 485

Using Projects from Other Workspaces 486

Using Editors within Eclipse 487

Understanding Eclipse Perspectives 490

Automatically Importing Packages 490

Using the Code Completion Feature 491

Refactoring 492

Debugging your Application 494

Setting Breakpoints 495

Dealing with Exceptions 497

APPENDIX B: USING THE ANDROID EMULATOR 499

Uses of the Android Emulator 499

Creating Snapshots 501

SD Card Emulation 502

Emulating Devices with Different Screen Sizes 504

Emulating Physical Capabilities 506

Sending SMS Messages to the Emulator 508

Making Phone Calls 509

Transferring Files into and out of the Emulator 511

Resetting the Emulator 513

APPENDIX C: ANSWERS TO EXERCISES 515

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Burnette, Ed. (2015) Hello, Android: Introducing Google’s Mobile Development Platform, Fourth Edition,The Pragmatic Bookshelf

Download Source Code (ZIP 9.2MB)

Companion Web Site: https://pragprog.com/book/eband4/hello-android

Google Android dominates the mobile market, and by targeting Android, your apps can run on most of the phones and tablets in the world. This new fourth edition of the #1 book for learning Android covers all modern Android versions from Android 4.1 through Android 5.0. Freshly added material covers new Android features such as Fragments and Google Play Services. Android is a platform you can’t afford not to learn, and this book gets you started.

Android is a software toolkit for mobile phones and tablets, created by Google. It’s inside more than a billion devices, making Android the number one platform for application developers. Your own app could be running on all those devices!

Getting started developing with Android is easy. You don’t even need access to an Android phone, just a computer where you can install the Android SDK and the emulator that comes with it. Within minutes, Hello, Android gets you creating your first working application: Android’s version of “Hello, World.” From there, you’ll build up a more substantial example: an Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe game. By gradually adding features to the game, you’ll learn about many aspects of Android programming, such as creating animated user interfaces, playing music and sound effects, building location-based services (including GPS and cell-tower triangulation), and accessing web services. You’ll also learn how to publish your applications to the Google Play Store.

This fourth edition of the bestselling Android classic has been revised for Android 4.1-4.3 (Jelly Bean), 4.4 (KitKat), and Android 5.0 (Lollipop). Topics have been streamlined and simplified based on reader feedback, and every page and example has been reviewed and updated for compatibility with the latest versions of Android.

If you’d rather be coding than reading about coding, this book is for you.

Android is a software toolkit for mobile phones and tablets, created by Google. It’s inside more than a billion devices, making Android the number one platform for application developers. Your own app could be running on all those devices!

Getting started developing with Android is easy. You don’t even need access to an Android phone, just a computer where you can install the Android SDK and the emulator that comes with it. Within minutes, Hello, Android gets you creating your first working application: Android’s version of “Hello, World.” From there, you’ll build up a more substantial example: an Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe game. By gradually adding features to the game, you’ll learn about many aspects of Android programming, such as creating animated user interfaces, playing music and sound effects, building location-based services (including GPS and cell-tower triangulation), and accessing web services. You’ll also learn how to publish your applications to the Google Play Store.

This fourth edition of the bestselling Android classic has been revised for Android 4.1-4.3 (Jelly Bean), 4.4 (KitKat), and Android 5.0 (Lollipop). Topics have been streamlined and simplified based on reader feedback, and every page and example has been reviewed and updated for compatibility with the latest versions of Android.

If you’d rather be coding than reading about coding, this book is for you.

Top Five Android Development Tips by Ed Burnette

1. Use Android Studio. Android Studio has replaced Eclipse as the go-to IDE for Android development. It features increased speed and stability, native support for gradle builds, and a fanstastic user interface editor.

2. Understand the Activity and Fragment lifecycle. Android development is not like development for desktop applications. The system controls when your app is launched, paused, resumed, and terminated. It calls methods you write, such as onStart(), to tell you what is about to happen. Your job is to play nicely with the system and be a good Android app citizen. Your users will thank you!

3. Target the latest version of Android. To maintain compatibility with the widest possible range of devices, you should always use the latest build tools and set the target SDK to the most recent version of Android. Your app can still work on older versions through clever uses of version testing and alternate resources.

4. Keep long-running tasks in the background. The smooth performance of your app is paramount. Long-running tasks such as network and database I/O must not be allowed to interfere with that performance. The solution? Use threads and Loaders to offload that work to a background thread.

5. Remember, logging is your friend. Sure, IDEs like Android Studio come with a fancy debugger, and you’ll have to use that from time to time. But often, simpler is better. A few well-placed messages in the Android log can help you diagnose problems quickly, even hard to reproduce ones.