Book Image

Android Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Kyle Mew
Book Image

Android Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Kyle Mew

Overview of this book

The Android OS has the largest installation base of any operating system in the world; there has never been a better time to learn Android development to write your own applications, or to make your own contributions to the open source community! This “cookbook” will make it easy for you to jump to a topic of interest and get what you need to implement the feature in your own application. If you are new to Android and learn best by “doing,” then this book will provide many topics of interest. Starting with the basics of Android development, we move on to more advanced concepts, and we’ll guide you through common tasks developers struggle to solve. The first few chapters cover the basics including Activities, Layouts, Widgets, and the Menu. From there, we cover fragments and data storage (including SQLite), device sensors, the camera, and GPS. Then we move on more advanced topics such as graphics and animation (including OpenGL), multi-threading with AsyncTask, and Internet functionality with Volley. We’ll also demonstrate Google Maps and Google Cloud Messaging (also known as Push Notifications) using the Google API Library. Finally, we’ll take a look at several online services designed especially for Android development. Take your application big-time with full Internet web services without having to become a server admin by leveraging the power of Backend as a Service (BaaS) providers.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Android Application Development Cookbook Second Edition
Credits
Disclaimer
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Kinvey


Kinvey is one of the earliest providers to begin offering mobile backend services. Their features include:

  • User management

  • Data storage

  • File storage

  • Push notifications

  • Social network integration

  • Location services

  • Lifecycle management

  • Versioning

    Note

    Sign up for Kinvey at https://console.kinvey.com/sign-up.

Here's a screenshot of the Kinvey sign up window:

Getting ready

Create a new project in Android Studio and call it Kinvey. Use the default Phone & Tablet options and select Empty Activity when prompted for Activity Type.

Download and extract the Kinvey SDK from the following link: download.kinvey.com/Android/kinvey-android-2.10.5.zip

You will need a Kinvey account (see the preceding link), and will have to register your application through their developer console. Once you have your App Key and App Secret, begin the following steps.

How to do it...

To add Kinvey to your project, follow these steps:

  1. Add the following permission to the Android Manifest:

    <uses-permission android:name="android...