Book Image

Hands-On Android UI Development

By : Jason Morris
Book Image

Hands-On Android UI Development

By: Jason Morris

Overview of this book

A great user interface (UI) can spell the difference between success and failure for any new application. This book will show you not just how to code great UIs, but how to design them as well. It will take novice Android developers on a journey, showing them how to leverage the Android platform to produce stunning Android applications. Begin with the basics of creating Android applications and then move on to topics such as screen and layout design. Next, learn about techniques that will help improve performance for your application. Also, explore how to create reactive applications that are fast, animated, and guide the user toward their goals with minimal distraction. Understand Android architecture components and learn how to build your application to automatically respond to changes made by the user. Great platforms are not always enough, so this book also focuses on creating custom components, layout managers, and 2D graphics. Also, explore many tips and best practices to ease your UI development process. By the end, you'll be able to design and build not only amazing UIs, but also systems that provide the best possible user experience.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
13
Activity Lifecycle

Accessing your Room database


So far, you've built all the components for a Room managed SQLite database, but you still don't actually have access to it. You can't instantiate the ClaimDatabase class directly because it's abstract, and you have the same problem with the DAO interfaces, so what's the best way to access the database? Room provides you with an entry class that will correctly instantiate the generated ClaimDatabase implementation, but that isn't the whole story; your entire application relies on this database, and it should be set up when the application starts and should be accessible by the entire application.

You can use a singleton ClaimDatabase object, but then where will the SQLite database file be placed? In order for it to be stored in your application's private space, you need a Context object. Enter the Application class, which when used, holds the first onCreate method that will be invoked in your application. Follow these quick steps to build a simple Application class...