Book Image

Android Studio 4.0 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By : Neil Smyth
Book Image

Android Studio 4.0 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By: Neil Smyth

Overview of this book

Kotlin as an Android-compatible programming language is becoming increasingly popular. Fully updated for Android Studio 4.0, this book will teach you the skills necessary to develop Android-based applications using Kotlin. Starting with the basics, this book outlines the steps necessary to set up Android development and testing environments, and goes on to introduce you to programming in Kotlin. You’ll practice Java to Kotlin code conversion and explore data types, operators, expressions, loops, functions, as well as the basics of OOP in Kotlin. You’ll then learn about Android architecture components and advanced topics, such as intents, touchscreen handling, gesture recognition, multi-window support integration, and biometric authentication. As you make progress, you’ll explore Android Studio 4.0’s key features, including layout editor, direct reply notifications, and dynamic delivery. You’ll also delve into Android Jetpack and create a sample app project using ViewModel, the Android Jetpack component. Finally, you will upload your app to Google Play Console and model the build process using Gradle. By the end of this Android book, you’ll be fully prepared to develop applications using Android Studio 4.0 and Kotlin.
Table of Contents (97 chapters)
97
Index

96.2 Gradle and Android Studio

Gradle brings a number of powerful features to building Android application projects. Some of the key features are as follows:

96.2.1 Sensible Defaults

Gradle implements a concept referred to as convention over configuration. This simply means that Gradle has a pre-defined set of sensible default configuration settings that will be used unless they are overridden by settings in the build files. This means that builds can be performed with the minimum of configuration required by the developer. Changes to the build files are only needed when the default configuration does not meet your build needs.

96.2.2 Dependencies

Another key area of Gradle functionality is that of dependencies. Consider, for example, a module within an Android Studio project which triggers an intent to load another module in the project. The first module has, in effect, a dependency on the second module since the application will fail to build if the second module cannot...