Book Image

Xamarin Mobile Application Development for Android, Second Edition

Book Image

Xamarin Mobile Application Development for Android, Second Edition

Overview of this book

Related Content you might be interested in

Current Title:

Small book image
Xamarin Mobile Application Development for Android, Second Edition
Aug, 2015 | 296 pages
Small book image
Xamarin Mobile Development for Android Cookbook
Matthew Leibowitz
Nov, 2015 | 456 pages
Small book image
Xamarin Cross-platform Application Development
Jonathan Peppers
Feb, 2015 | 298 pages
Small book image
Creating Dynamic UIs with Android Fragments
Jim Wilson
Mar, 2016 | 154 pages
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Xamarin Mobile Application Development for Android Second Edition
Xamarin Mobile Application Development for Android Second Edition
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
The Anatomy of an Android App
The Anatomy of an Android App
The Android platform
The application framework
The building blocks of the Android application
Summary
2
The Xamarin.Android Architecture
The Xamarin.Android Architecture
Getting started with Xamarin
Why Xamarin.Android?
What is Mono?
Mono and Dalvik side by side
The Android bindings design
Development environments
Summary
3
Creating the Points Of Interest App
Creating the Points Of Interest App
The sample POIApp
Installing Xamarin.Android
Installing platforms and tools
Creating Android Virtual Devices
Cloning a virtual device
Speeding up the Android emulator
Creating the POI app
The Xamarin Studio IDE
The Project Options view
The Xamarin Studio layout designer
Setting the app icon and package name
The launcher activity
Running and debugging the app
Debugging with an Android device
The AndroidManifest.xml file
Summary
4
Adding a List View
Adding a List View
Creating the POI ListView layout
Creating POIListActivity
Creating the POI list row layout
Creating the PointOfInterest apps entity class
Populating the ListView item
Creating POIListViewAdapter
Populating row Views
Hooking up POIListViewAdapter
Consuming the web service
Adding actions to ActionBar
Defining the menu XML file
Setting menus in OnCreateOptionsMenu()
Handling selection in OnOptionsItemSelected()
Handling the ListView click event
Handling no network condition
Toast
Summary
5
Adding a Details View
Adding a Details View
Creating the POIDetail layout
Creating POIDetailActivity
Adding navigation to POIDetailActivity
Receiving the data in POIDetailActivity
Populating user interface widgets
Adding the save and delete actions
Adding the save and delete actions in POIService
Creating SavePOI()
Creating DeletePOI()
Adding validation
Refreshing POIListActivity
Summary
6
Making Your App Orientation-aware
Making Your App Orientation-aware
The Android behavior on configuration changes
Locking the Android application orientation
Dynamically requesting the orientation
Saving the activity state for configuration changes
Building the orientation-aware layout
Manually handling the orientation behavior
Summary
7
Designing for Multiple Screen Sizes
Designing for Multiple Screen Sizes
An introduction to Android tablets
Creating an Android tablet emulator
An introduction to fragments
Making POIApp compatible with Android tablets
Using fragments for displaying POIDetails
Using the list fragment for displaying the POI list
Creating a multi-pane layout for tablets
Updating the POIApp to support the multi-pane split layout
Working with DialogFragment
Fragments for older Android devices
Handling configuration changes with fragments
Summary
8
Creating Data Storage Mechanisms
Creating Data Storage Mechanisms
Data storage in Android
Using the SQLite.net ORM component
Using the Xamarin.Android NUnitLite
Implementing the caching logic to POIApp
Summary
9
Making POIApp Location Aware
Making POIApp Location Aware
Working with location services
Requesting location change notifications
Adding location services to POIApp
Adding map integration
Summary
10
Adding the Camera App Integration
Adding the Camera App Integration
Picking an integration approach
Permissions and features
Configuring the emulator
Extending the data service
Capturing an image from POIDetailFragment
Upload an image using an HTTP multipart
Summary
11
Publishing an App to the App Store
Publishing an App to the App Store
Preparing the application for release
Publishing a signed APK for uploading
Different app distribution options
Summary
Index
Index

Speeding up the Android emulator

The default Android emulator that comes with the Android development toolkit is quite sluggish. It is often disappointing and painful to test an application in the Android device emulators. The wiser choice for developers is to have a real Android device to test on. However, because the Android ecosystem has various form factors and device manufactures, it is practically impossible to buy each targeted device to test the app. You have to go for some cost effective solution to test your app on all targeted devices.

The following section will guide you through some of the tips to make your Android emulator faster and other alternative options available to test Android apps.

Using the x86 emulator

Android provides an x86 emulator that can speed up the development considerably due to faster start and execution times for the AVD. The x86 emulator is not a part of the base Xamarin installation, but the directions for the installation can be found on the Xamarin website...

Previous Section
End of Section 7
Next Section