Book Image

Mastering Android Development with Kotlin

By : Miloš Vasić
Book Image

Mastering Android Development with Kotlin

By: Miloš Vasić

Overview of this book

Kotlin is a programming language intended to be a better Java, and it's designed to be usable and readable across large teams with different levels of knowledge. As a language, it helps developers build amazing Android applications in an easy and effective way. This book begins by giving you a strong grasp of Kotlin's features in the context of Android development and its APIs. Moving on, you'll take steps towards building stunning applications for Android. The book will show you how to set up the environment, and the difficulty level will grow steadily with the applications covered in the upcoming chapters. Later on, the book will introduce you to the Android Studio IDE, which plays an integral role in Android development. We'll use Kotlin's basic programming concepts such as functions, lambdas, properties, object-oriented code, safety aspects, type parameterization, testing, and concurrency, which will guide you through writing Kotlin code in production. We'll also show you how to integrate Kotlin into any existing Android project.

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Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Title Page
Title Page
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Customer Feedback
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Starting with Android
Starting with Android
Why Kotlin?
Kotlin for Android - it's official
Downloading and configuring Android Studio
Setting up Android emulators
Android Debug Bridge
Other important tools
Initializing a Git repository
Creating an Android project
Setting up Gradle
Explaining directory structure
Defining build types and flavors
Additional libraries
Getting familiar with Android Manifest
Main Application class
Your first screen
Summary
2
Building and Running
Building and Running
Running your first Android application
Meet the Logcat
Using the Gradle build tool
Debug your application
Summary
3
Screens
Screens
Analyzing the mockup plan
Android layouts
Understanding Android Context
Understanding fragments
Creating View Pager
Making animations with transitions
Dialog fragments
Notifications
Other important UI components
Summary
4
Connecting Screen Flow
Connecting Screen Flow
Creating an application bar
Using the navigation drawer
Connecting activities
Looking deeper into Android Intents
Passing information between activities and fragments
Summary
5
Look and Feel
Look and Feel
Themes in the Android Framework
Styles in Android
Applying coloring
Make your buttons look pretty
Setting animations
Summary
6
Permissions
Permissions
Permissions from Android Manifest
Requesting permissions
Doing it the Kotlin way
Summary
7
Working with Databases
Working with Databases
Introduction to SQLite
Describing our database
CRUD operations
Summary
8
Android Preferences
Android Preferences
What are Android preferences?
How can you use them?
Defining your own preferences manager
Summary
9
Concurrency in Android
Concurrency in Android
Introduction to Android concurrency
Handlers and threads
Understanding Android Looper
Summary
10
Android Services
Android Services
Service categorization
Android service basics
Defining the main application service
Defining the intent service
Summary
11
Messaging
Messaging
Understanding Android broadcasts
Creating your own broadcast messages
Using on boot and on shutdown broadcasts
Listening for network events
Summary
12
Backend and API
Backend and API
Identifying entities used
Working with data classes
Connect data models to a database
Introduction to Retrofit
Introduction to Gson with Kotson library
What else is available?
Executing our first API call
Content providers
Android adapters
Content loaders
Data binding
Using lists
Using grids
Implementing drag and drop
Summary
13
Tuning Up for High Performance
Tuning Up for High Performance
Optimizing layouts
Optimizing battery life
Keeping your application responsive
Summary
14
Testing
Testing
Adding dependencies
Updating folder structure
Writing your first test
Using test suites
Running tests
Summary
15
Migration to Kotlin
Migration to Kotlin
Preparing the migration
Danger signs
Updating dependencies
Converting classes
Refactoring and cleanup
Summary
16
Deploying Your Application
Deploying Your Application
Preparing for deployment
Code obfuscation
Signing your application
Publishing to Google Play
Summary

Keeping your application responsive

How many times has it happened to you that you use some Android application and get the message saying that the application is not responding? Why does this happen? We will explain! Pay attention to these points so you don't have the same thing happening with your application:

  • Make sure nothing blocks your input (any intensive operation, especially network traffic).
  • Don't perform long tasks on the main application thread.
  • Don't perform long running operations in the onReceive() method for your broadcast receivers.
  • Make use of the AsyncTask class as much as you can. Consider the use of ThreadPoolExecutor.
  • Try using content loaders whenever it's possible.
  • Avoid executing too many threads at the same time.
  • If writing to filesystem, do it from a separate thread.

If it still happens that you have ANRs, or your application behaves sluggishly, use tools such as systrace and Traceview to track the roots of your problems.

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