Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners - Second Edition

By : John Horton
Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners - Second Edition

By: John Horton

Overview of this book

Are you trying to start a career in programming, but haven't found the right way in? Do you have a great idea for an app, but don't know how to make it a reality? Or maybe you're just frustrated that in order to learn Android, you must know Java. If so, then this book is for you. This new and expanded second edition of Android Programming for Beginners will be your companion to create Android Pie applications from scratch. We will introduce you to all the fundamental concepts of programming in an Android context, from the basics of Java to working with the Android API. All examples use the up-to-date API classes, and 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 and store your user's data with SQLite. In addition, you'll see how to make your apps multilingual, draw to the screen with a finger, 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 (35 chapters)
Android Programming for Beginners - Second Edition
Contributors
Preface
Other Books You May Enjoy
Index

Fragments


Fragments will likely become a staple of almost every app you make. They are so useful, there are so many reasons to use them, and once you get used to them, they are so simple, there is almost no reason not to use them.

Fragments are reusable elements of an app just like any class, but, as mentioned previously, they have special features, such as the ability to load their own view/layout as well as their very own lifecycle methods, which make them perfect for achieving the goals we discussed in the Real world apps section.

Let's dig a bit deeper into fragments one feature at a time.

Fragments have a lifecycle too

We can set up and control fragments, very much like we do Activities, by overriding the appropriate lifecycle methods.

onCreate

In the onCreate method, we can initialize variables and do almost all the things we would typically have done in the Activity onCreate method. The big exception to this is initializing our UI.

onCreateView

In this method, we will, as the name suggests...