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 quick guided tour of Android Studio


To get started, look at this annotated diagram of Android Studio, and then we will reacquaint ourselves with the parts we have already seen and look more deeply too, finding out about the parts that we have not discussed yet:

I thought it would be useful to formally point out and name the various parts of the Android Studio user interface so that I can refer to them by name rather than describing their location and showing images all the time. So, let's run through them from number 1:

  1. This is the Project window and will be the focus of much of this chapter. It enables us to explore the folders, code, and resources of the project, and is also referred to as the Project Explorer. Double-click a file here to open the file and add a new tab to area 3 on the diagram. The structure of the files and folders here closely resembles the structure that will eventually end up in the finished APK.

    Note

    As we will see, while the structure of folders for an Android project...