Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners - Second Edition

By : John Horton
Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners - Second Edition

By: John Horton

Overview of this book

Are you trying to start a career in programming, but haven't found the right way in? Do you have a great idea for an app, but don't know how to make it a reality? Or maybe you're just frustrated that in order to learn Android, you must know Java. If so, then this book is for you. This new and expanded second edition of Android Programming for Beginners will be your companion to create Android Pie applications from scratch. We will introduce you to all the fundamental concepts of programming in an Android context, from the basics of Java to working with the Android API. All examples use the up-to-date API classes, and are created from within Android Studio, the official Android development environment that helps supercharge your application development process. After this crash course, we'll dive deeper into Android programming and you'll learn how to create applications with a professional-standard UI through fragments and store your user's data with SQLite. In addition, you'll see how to make your apps multilingual, draw to the screen with a finger, and work with graphics, sound, and animations too. By the end of this book, you'll be ready to start building your own custom applications in Android and Java.
Table of Contents (35 chapters)
Android Programming for Beginners - Second Edition
Contributors
Preface
Other Books You May Enjoy
Index

A note for early adopters of this book


At time of completing this book, Android 9 and Android Studio 3.2 had just been released. This book was written to accommodate these latest versions. One of the changes in the new releases is the way that Android supports devices running older versions of Android. It has just been significantly improved. Android uses a support library, which means that old devices (within reason) can make use of newer features.

The good news is that this book uses the new, improved version!

However, if you are a very early adopter (late 2018 and maybe into early 2019) of this book and you look very closely at the code generated by Android Studio, you will notice some slight differences with the code presented in the book. The differences occur in the import… statements at the top of the Java code files. The book presents code that looks a bit like this:

import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;

Whereas you might notice code in Android Studio 3.2 or earlier that...