Book Image

Mastering Android Application Development

By : Antonio Pachon
Book Image

Mastering Android Application Development

By: Antonio Pachon

Overview of this book

There are millions of Android apps out there for people to download – how do you make sure yours has the edge? It’s not always about innovation and ideas – the most successful apps are those that are able to satisfy customer demands – they’re the ones that look the best, the fastest, and the easiest and most intuitive to use. This book shows you how to create Android applications that do precisely that – it has been designed help you consider and answer those questions throughout the development process, so you can create applications that stand out against the crowd. Learn how to create exemplary UIs that contribute to a satisfying user experience through the lens of Material Design, and explore how to harness the range of features within the Android SDK to help you. Dive deeper into complex programming concepts and discover how to leverage concurrency and navigate memory management and image handling. You’ll also find further guidance on testing and debugging so you can guarantee that your application is reliable and robust for users. Beyond this you’ll find out how to extend your app and add greater functionality, including notifications, location services, adverts and app billing (essential if you want to properly monetize your creation!). To make sure you have confidence at every stage in the process, the book also shows you how to release your app to the Play store – to make sure your maximising your efforts to create a popular Android application!

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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Mastering Android Application Development
Mastering Android Application Development
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
Getting Started
Getting Started
Introducing Material Design
Introducing Android 6 Marshmallow
Creating MasteringAndroidApp
Getting the tools ready
Summary
2
Designing our App
Designing our App
Selecting an app-navigation pattern
Fragments
ViewPager
Transitions
Summary
3
Creating and Accessing Content from the Cloud
Creating and Accessing Content from the Cloud
Creating your own cloud database
Storing and consuming content from Parse
Google Volley and OkHttp
JSON and Gson
Summary
4
Concurrency and Software Design Patterns
Concurrency and Software Design Patterns
Concurrency in Android
The importance of patterns
Summary
5
Lists and Grids
Lists and Grids
Starting with lists
Introducing RecyclerView
Summary
6
CardView and Material Design
CardView and Material Design
CardView and UI design tips
The design support library
Summary
7
Image Handling and Memory Management
Image Handling and Memory Management
Downloading images
Mastering images
Memory management
Summary
8
Databases and Loaders
Databases and Loaders
Creating the database
Content providers
Sync database with UI
Summary
9
Push Notifications and Analytics
Push Notifications and Analytics
Push notifications
The importance of analytics
Summary
10
Location Services
Location Services
Configuring the project
Adding the map
Adding a marker
Summary
11
Debugging and Testing on Android
Debugging and Testing on Android
Logs and the debug mode
Testing on Android
Testing from a UI perspective
Continuous integration
Summary
12
Monetization, the Build Process, and Release
Monetization, the Build Process, and Release
Using build variants
Monetization in Android
Releasing our app to Play Store
Summary
Index
Index

About the Reviewers

BJ Peter DeLaCruz graduated with a master's degree in computer science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He started his career as a software developer at Referentia Systems, Inc. in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he helped develop a network performance management software called LiveAction. After working at Referentia, he was hired as a Java web developer by the University of Hawaii where he upgraded Laulima, a learning management system based on Sakai that the university uses for traditional face-to-face, online, and hybrid classes. He is currently employed by Hawaii Information Consortium (https://portal.ehawaii.gov/), where he develops web applications for the State of Hawaii.

BJ is a successful Android developer with seven Android apps published on Google Play. He is certified by Oracle in Java 8 programming and holds three certifications from CompTIA: Security+, Cloud+, and Storage+ Powered by SNIA.

BJ has also reviewed Gradle in Action, Manning Publications and Learning Android Application Testing, Packt Publishing.

During his free time, he teaches himself Japanese, reads books on the Japanese culture, and watches anime. BJ also enjoys shooting videos and uploading them to YouTube.

You can learn more about him by visiting his website, www.bjpeter.com, or contact him directly via e-mail at .

I would like to thank God, Paushali Desai, and Judie Jose for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

Kyrre Havik Eriksen is an independent and curious person with a master's degree in informatics from University of Oslo, Norway. He works full time as a Java developer, but in his spare time he studies Android, game development with Löve 2D and libGDX, and Ruby. He is currently working on getting his pet project, Tag Story (http://tagstory.no/), up and running. Tag Story is an interactive and social mobile game, designed to let you experience the psychical environment in a new and exciting way.

Ankit Garg works as a mobile engineer for AOL. He works in product research and development team. He has around 5 years of experience in developing mobile applications and is really passionate about making user-friendly mobile apps.

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