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

Coding the database class


Here, we will put into practice everything we have learned so far and finish coding the Age Database app. Before our Fragment classes from the previous section can interact with a shared database, we need a class to handle interaction with, and creation of, the database.

We will create a class that manages our database by implementing SQLiteOpenHHelper. It will also define some final Strings to represent the names of the table and its columns. Furthermore, it will supply a bunch of helper methods we can call to perform all the necessary queries. Where necessary, these helper methods will return a Cursor object that we can use to show the data we have retrieved. It would be trivial then to add new helper methods should our app need to evolve:

Create a new class called DataManager and add the following member variables:

public class DataManager {

    // This is the actual database
    private SQLiteDatabase db;

    /*
        Next we have a public static final string...