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

Exploring the auto-generated code and assets


In the drawable folder, there are a number of icons, as shown in the following screenshot:

These are the usual icons but also the ones that appear in the menu of the navigation drawer. We will not take the trouble to change these, but if you want to personalize the icons in your app, it should be plain by the end of this exploration how to do so.

Next, open the res/menu folder. Notice that there is an extra file titled activity_main_drawer.xml. This next code is an excerpt from this file, so we can discuss its contents:

<group android:checkableBehavior="single">
   <item
         android:id="@+id/nav_camera"
         android:icon="@drawable/ic_menu_camera"
         android:title="Import" />
   <item
         android:id="@+id/nav_gallery"
         android:icon="@drawable/ic_menu_gallery"
         android:title="Gallery" />
   <item
         android:id="@+id/nav_slideshow"
         android:icon="@drawable/ic_menu_slideshow"
  ...