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

Creating Bitmaps


Let's do a little bit of theory before we dive into the code and consider exactly how we are going to bring images to life on the screen. To draw a bitmap, we will use the drawBitmap method of the Canvas class.

First, we would need to add a bitmap to the project into the res/drawable folder—we will do this for real in the Bitmap demo app coming up shortly. For now, assume the graphics file/bitmap has a name of myImage.png.

Next, we would declare an object of the Bitmap type, just the same as we did for the Bitmap we used for our background in the previous demo:

Bitmap mBitmap;

Next, we would need to initialize the mBitmap using our preferred image, which we previously added to the project's drawable folder:

mBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource
                (getResources(), R.drawable.myImage);

The static decodeResource method of the BitmapFactory method is used to initialize mBitmap. It takes two parameters. The first is a call to getResources, which is made available by...