Android Development Patterns: Best Practices for Professional Developers

by Phil Dutson

Overview

“A must read for all developers that want to begin serious Android development.”
—Justin Anderson, Freelance Android Developer

 

“From start to finish, this book contains a variety of great tips and insight into the most important attributes of Android design. This book will definitely be required reading for any of our future Android engineers.”
—Cameron Banga, Cofounder, 9magnets, LLC

 

There’s a downside to Android’s amazing openness and versatility: it’s easy for developers to write code that’s inefficient, unreliable, insecure, or hard to maintain. In Android Development Patterns, enterprise Android developer Phil Dutson helps you leverage Android 5.0+’s amazing power without falling victim to those pitfalls. Dutson presents today’s most comprehensive set of patterns and procedures for building optimized, robust apps with Android 5.0+.

 

First, Dutson guides you through establishing a highly efficient development environment and workflow, and testing your app to ensure that your code works just as you expect. Then, he walks through the modern best practices for structuring apps, using widgets and components, and working with views.

 

You learn how to build apps that are easy to manage and update, deliver accurate and up-to-date information without wasting precious battery power, and take advantage of new hardware, such as Android Wear and Android TV. Dutson concludes by presenting powerful strategies for optimizing your apps and packaging them for distribution.

 

Coverage includes

• Using testing to build more trustworthy, dependable, maintainable apps
• Understanding subtle but critical differences between Android and traditional Java programming
• Building consistent, modern user interfaces with views and layouts
• Leveraging the proven MVC pattern to cleanly organize logic
• Creating rich visual experiences with 3D graphics, animation, and media
• Simplifying capture and use of location data with the new Locations API
• Integrating optional hardware, such as Bluetooth, NFC, or USB
• Building better apps with Google Play Services
• Creating Android Wear notifications and apps
• Tuning and improving apps with Google Analytics
• Designing Android TV apps for the “ten foot view”

informit.com/aw | https://github.com/dutsonpa/adp-files

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780133924046
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	02/18/2016
Series:	Developer's Library
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	19 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Phil Dutson is a Solution Architect over client-side and mobile implementation for one of the world’s largest e-commerce retailers in fitness equipment. He has been collecting and developing for mobile devices since he got his hands on a US Robotics Pilot 5000. He is the author of Sams Teach Yourself jQuery Mobile in 24 Hours (Sams, July 2012), jQuery, jQuery UI, and jQuery Mobile: Recipes and Examples (Pearson, November 2012), Android Developer’s Cookbook, Second Edition (Pearson, July 2013), and Responsive Mobile Design (Addison-Wesley Professional, September 2014).

Table of Contents

Preface     xiv

1     Development Tools     1

Android Studio     1
     Installing Android Studio    2
     Using Android Studio    4
     Starting a New Project     6
Standalone SDK Tools    9
Android Device Emulation     10
     Android Virtual Device     11
     GenyMotion     12
     Xamarin Android Player     13
Version-Control Systems     14
     Subversion    14
     Git     14
     Mercurial     15
Summary     15

2     Testing and Debugging     17
Unit Testing     17
Integration Testing    20
Debugging     25
     Profiling    25
     Tracing    27
     Messaging    29
Summary    32

3     Application Structure    33
Manifests    34
Java     36
Res (Resources)     37
     Drawable     37
     Layout     39
     Menu     39
     Values     40
     Other Resources     41
Gradle     41
Summary     42

4    Components     45
Intents     45
     Intent Filters     46
     Broadcast Receivers     47
Activities     48
     Creating an Activity     48
     Activity Lifecycle    49
Fragments     52
     Creating a Fragment     52
     Communicating with Fragments     55
     Loaders    56
Summary     58

5    Views     59
The View Class     59
     The AnalogClock Subclass     60
     The ImageView Subclass     60
     The KeyboardView Subclass    60
     The MediaRouteButton Subclass    62
     The ProgressBar Subclass     62
     The Space Subclass     64
     The SurfaceView Subclass    64
     The TextView Subclass    65
     The TextureView Subclass     65
     The ViewGroup Subclass     66
     The ViewStub Subclass     68
Creating a Custom View     68
Summary    70

6     Layout    71
Layout Basics    71
     Layout Measurements    72
     Layout Coordinates     73
Layout Containers     74
     Linear Layout     74
     Relative Layout     76
     Table Layout     79
     Frame Layout     80
     WebView    82
Summary    83

7     App Widgets    85
App Widget Layouts    86
The AppWidgetProviderInfo Object     88
     App Widget Sizing    89
     Update Frequency    90
     Preview Image    90
     Widget Category     92
     Widget Category Layout    92
     Resizable Mode    93
     Sample AppWidgetProviderInfo Object    93
The AppWidgetProvider Class    94
Application Manifest Entries     96
Summary     97

8     Application Design: Using MVC     99
Model     100
View     101
Controller     102
Working Asynchronously     104
     AsyncTask     105
Summary     106

9    Drawing and Animation     107
Graphics     107
     Bitmaps     107
     NinePatch     109
     Drawables     111
     OpenGL ES     114
Animation     117
     View Animation    117
     Property Animation     118
     Drawable Animation     122
     Transition Framework     123
Summary     125

10     Networking     127
Accessing the Internet     127
     Network Detection     127
     Using an HTTP Client     129
Parsing XML     131
Handling Network Operations Asynchronously     133
Volley     135
Summary     138

11    Working with Location Data     139
Permissions     139
Google Play Services Locations API     148
Summary     153

12     Multimedia     155
Working with Audio     155
     Audio Playback    156
     Audio Recording     159
Working with Video     161
     Video Playback     162
Summary     165

13     Optional Hardware APIs     167
Bluetooth     167
     Enabling Bluetooth     168
     Discovering Devices with Bluetooth     169
     Connecting via Bluetooth Classic     171
     Communicating with BLE     173
Near Field Communication     176
     ACTION_NDEF_DISCOVERED     177
     ACTION_TECH_DISCOVERED     178
     ACTION_TAG_DISCOVERED     179
Device Sensors     181
     Detecting the Available Sensors     182
     Reading Sensor Data     183
Summary     185

14     Managing Account Data     187
Getting Accounts     187
Android Backup Service     188
Using Google Drive Android API     191
Using Google Play Games Services     195
     Working with Saved Games     196
Summary     199

15    Google Play Services     201
Adding Google Play Services     201
Using Google API Client     203
Google Fit     207
     Enable API and Authentication     207
     App Configuration and Connection    208
Nearby Messages API    209
     Enabling Nearby Messages     209
     Sending and Receiving Messages     210
Summary    214

16     Android Wear     217
Android Wear Basics     217
Screen Considerations     218
Debugging     221
     Connecting to an Emulator     221
     Connecting to a Wear Device     222
Communicating with Android Wear     224
     Notifications     224
     Sending Data     226
Summary     228

17     Google Analytics    229
Adding Google Analytics    229
Google Analytics Basics     232
     Events     233
     Goals     234
     Ecommerce     235
     Custom Timings     235
     Custom Dimensions    236
     Custom Metrics    236
Summary     237

18     Optimization     239
Application Optimization    239
     Application First     239
     Application Logging     241
     Application Configuration     242
Memory Management    243
     Garbage Collection Monitoring     245
     Checking Memory Usage    245
Performance     247
     Working with Objects     247
     Static Methods and Variables     248
     Enhanced for Loops     248
     float, double, and int     249
     Optimized Data Containers     249
Summary     249

19     Android TV     251
The Big Picture     251
     Ten-Foot View     252
     TV Capabilities     254
     Text, Color, and Bitmaps     255
Building an App     258
Emulation and Testing     261
Summary     263

20    Application Deployment     265
Preparing for Deployment     265
Production Checklist     266
     Certificate Keys     266
     Contact Email     266
     App Website     267
     External Services or Servers     267
     Application Icon     267
     Licensing     268
     Appropriate Package Name     268
     Verifying Permissions and Requirements     269
     Log and Debug Removal     270
     Removal of Excess Unused Assets     270
Preparing for Google Play     270
     Application Screenshots     271
     Promo Video     271
     High-Res Icon     271
     Feature Graphic     272
     Promo Graphic     272
     Banner for Android TV     272
     Getting Paid     272
APK Generation     273
Summary     274

Index     275