Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners

By : John Horton, Paresh Mayani
Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners

By: John Horton, Paresh Mayani

Overview of this book

Android is the most popular OS in the world. There are millions of devices accessing tens of thousands of applications. It is many people's entry point into the world of technology; it is an operating system for everyone. Despite this, the entry-fee to actually make Android applications is usually a computer science degree, or five years’ worth of Java experience. Android Programming for Beginners will be your companion to create Android applications from scratch—whether you’re looking to start your programming career, make an application for work, be reintroduced to mobile development, or are just looking to program for fun. We will introduce you to all the fundamental concepts of programming in an Android context, from the Java basics to working with the Android API. All examples 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, make location-aware apps with Google Maps integration, and store your user’s data with SQLite. In addition, you’ll see how to make your apps multilingual, capture images from a device’s camera, 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 (37 chapters)
Android Programming for Beginners
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Fragment reality check


So, what does this Fragment stuff really do for us? Our first Fragment mini app would have exactly the same appearance and functionality had we not bothered with Fragment at all. In fact, using Fragment has made the whole thing more complicated! Why would we want to do this?

We kind of know the answer to this already, but it just isn't especially clear based on what we have seen so far. We know that Fragment or fragments can be added to the layout of an Activity. We know that a Fragment not only contains its own layout (view), but also its very own code (controller), which although hosted by Activity, the Fragment is virtually independent.

Our quick mini app only showed one Fragment in action, but we could have an Activity that hosts two or more fragments. We can then effectively have two almost-independent controllers displayed on a single screen. This sounds like it could be useful.

What is most useful about this, however, is that when the Activity starts, we can detect...