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Mastering Android Development with Kotlin

By : Vasić

2.7 (11)

Mastering Android Development with Kotlin

2.7 (11)

By: Vasić

Overview of this book

Kotlin is a programming language intended to be a better Java, and it's designed to be usable and readable across large teams with different levels of knowledge. As a language, it helps developers build amazing Android applications in an easy and effective way. This book begins by giving you a strong grasp of Kotlin's features in the context of Android development and its APIs. Moving on, you'll take steps towards building stunning applications for Android. The book will show you how to set up the environment, and the difficulty level will grow steadily with the applications covered in the upcoming chapters. Later on, the book will introduce you to the Android Studio IDE, which plays an integral role in Android development. We'll use Kotlin's basic programming concepts such as functions, lambdas, properties, object-oriented code, safety aspects, type parameterization, testing, and concurrency, which will guide you through writing Kotlin code in production. We'll also show you how to integrate Kotlin into any existing Android project.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Starting with Android

Starting with Android

Why Kotlin?

Kotlin for Android - it's official

Downloading and configuring Android Studio

Setting up Android emulators

Android Debug Bridge

Other important tools

Initializing a Git repository

Creating an Android project

Setting up Gradle

Explaining directory structure

Defining build types and flavors

Additional libraries

Getting familiar with Android Manifest

Main Application class

Your first screen

Summary

Building and Running

Building and Running

Running your first Android application

Meet the Logcat

Using the Gradle build tool

Debug your application

Summary

Screens

Screens

Analyzing the mockup plan

Android layouts

Understanding Android Context

Understanding fragments

Creating View Pager

Making animations with transitions

Dialog fragments

Notifications

Other important UI components

Summary

Connecting Screen Flow

Connecting Screen Flow

Creating an application bar

Using the navigation drawer

Connecting activities

Looking deeper into Android Intents

Passing information between activities and fragments

Summary

Look and Feel

Look and Feel

Themes in the Android Framework

Styles in Android

Applying coloring

Make your buttons look pretty

Setting animations

Summary

Permissions

Permissions

Permissions from Android Manifest

Requesting permissions

Doing it the Kotlin way

Summary

Working with Databases

Working with Databases

Introduction to SQLite

Describing our database

CRUD operations

Summary

Android Preferences

Android Preferences

What are Android preferences?

How can you use them?

Defining your own preferences manager

Summary

Concurrency in Android

Concurrency in Android

Introduction to Android concurrency

Handlers and threads

Understanding Android Looper

Summary

Android Services

Android Services

Service categorization

Android service basics

Defining the main application service

Defining the intent service

Summary

Messaging

Messaging

Understanding Android broadcasts

Creating your own broadcast messages

Using on boot and on shutdown broadcasts

Listening for network events

Summary

Backend and API

Backend and API

Identifying entities used

Working with data classes

Connect data models to a database

Introduction to Retrofit

Introduction to Gson with Kotson library

What else is available?

Executing our first API call

Content providers

Android adapters

Content loaders

Data binding

Using lists

Using grids

Implementing drag and drop

Summary

Tuning Up for High Performance

Tuning Up for High Performance

Optimizing layouts

Optimizing battery life

Keeping your application responsive

Summary

Testing

Testing

Adding dependencies

Updating folder structure

Writing your first test

Using test suites

Running tests

Summary

Migration to Kotlin

Migration to Kotlin

Preparing the migration

Danger signs

Updating dependencies

Converting classes

Refactoring and cleanup

Summary

Deploying Your Application

Deploying Your Application

Preparing for deployment

Code obfuscation

Signing your application

Publishing to Google Play

Summary

Debug your application

Now, we know how to log important application messages. During development, we will face situations when only logging messages is not enough when analyzing application behavior or investigating bugs.

For us, it's important to have the ability to debug an application code during its execution on real Android devices or on emulators. So, let's debug something! Open the main Application class and put the break point on line where we log the onCreate() method, as shown here:

As you can see, we set the break point at line 18. We will add more break points. Let's add it in our main (and only) activity. Put a break point in each lifecycle event at lines where we perform logging.

We set breakpoints at lines 18, 23, 28, 33, 38, and so on. Run the application in debug mode by clicking on the debug icon or by choosing Run | Debug app. The application is started in debug mode. Wait a little bit and a debugger will soon enter the first break point we set.

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Programming languages

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