Book Image

Android Studio Cookbook

By : Mike van Drongelen
Book Image

Android Studio Cookbook

By: Mike van Drongelen

Overview of this book

This book starts with an introduction of Android Studio and why you should use this IDE rather than Eclipse. Moving ahead, it teaches you to build a simple app that requires no backend setup but uses Google Cloud or Parse instead. After that, you will learn how to create an Android app that can send and receive text and images using Google Cloud or Parse as a backend. It explains the concepts of Material design and how to apply them to an Android app. Also, it shows you how to build an app that runs on an Android wear device. Later, it explains how to build an app that takes advantage of the latest Android SDK while still supporting older Android versions. It also demonstrates how the performance of an app can be improved and how memory management tools that come with the Android Studio IDE can help you achieve this. By the end of the book, you will be able to develop high quality apps with a minimum amount of effort using the Android Studio IDE.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Android Studio Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Build variants


Android Studio supports different configurations for your app. For example, your app might use different API endpoints for debugging. For this purpose, we will use build types.

In addition to this, you may have different versions of your app. A single project can have multiple customized versions of the app. If these changes are minimal and, for example, just change the look of an app in case it is a white label solution using a flavor is the way to go.

A build variant is the combination of a build type and a particular flavor. The upcoming recipe will demonstrate how to use these.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you just need a recent copy of Android Studio.

How to do it...

We will build a simple messaging app that uses different build types and build flavors:

  1. Create a new project in Android Studio, name it WhiteLabelMessenger, enter a company name in the Company Domain field, and click on the OK button.

  2. Next, choose Phone and Tablet and click on the Next button.

  3. Choose Blank activity...