Book Image

Android 3.0 Application Development Cookbook

By : Kyle Merrifield Mew
Book Image

Android 3.0 Application Development Cookbook

By: Kyle Merrifield Mew

Overview of this book

<p>Android is a mobile operating system that runs on a staggering number of smartphones and tablets. Android offers developers the ability to build extremely rich and innovative applications written using the Java programming language. Among the number of books that have been published on the topic, what&rsquo;s missing is a thoroughly practical, hands-on book that takes you straight to getting your job done without boring you with too much theory.<br /><br />Android 3.0 Application Development Cookbook will take you straight to the information you need to get your applications up and running. This book is written to provide you with the shortest possible route between an idea and a working application. <br /><br />Work through the book from start to finish to become an Android expert, or use it as a reference book by applying recipes directly to your project.<br /><br />This book covers every aspect of mobile app development, starting with major application components and screen layout and design, before moving on to how to manage sensors such as internal gyroscopes and near field communications. Towards the end, it delves into smartphone multimedia capabilities as well as graphics and animation, web access, and GPS. <br /><br />Whether you are writing your first app or your hundredth, this is a book that you will come back to time and time again, with its many tips and tricks on the rich features of Android 3.</p>
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Android 3.0 Application Development Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Playing an audio file from within an application


One of the first things that we may want to do with regards to multimedia is play back an audio file. Android provides the android.media.MediaPlayer class for us and this makes playback and most media related functions remarkably simple.

In this recipe we will create a simple media player that will play a single audio file.

Getting ready

Before we start this project we will need an audio file for playback. Android can decode audio with any of the following file extensions:

  • .3GP

  • .MP4

  • .M4A

  • .MP3

  • .OGG

  • .WAV

    Note

    There are also quite a few MIDI file formats that are acceptable but have not been included here as their use is less common and their availability often depends on whether a device is running the standard Android platform or a specific vendor extension.

Before you start this exercise create or find a short sound sample in one of the given formats. We used a five second Ogg Vorbis file and called it my_sound_file.ogg.

How to do it...

  1. Start...