Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners - Third Edition

By : John Horton
Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners - Third Edition

By: John Horton

Overview of this book

Do you want to make a career in programming but don’t know where to start? Do you have a great idea for an app but don't know how to make it a reality? Or are you worried that you’ll have to learn Java programming to become an Android developer? Look no further! This new and expanded third edition of Android Programming for Beginners will be your guide to creating Android applications from scratch. The book starts by introducing you to all the fundamental concepts of programming in an Android context, from the basics of Java to working with the Android API. You’ll learn with the help of examples that use up-to-date API classes and are created within Android Studio, the official Android development environment that helps supercharge your mobile application development process. After a crash course on the key programming concepts, you’ll explore Android programming and get to grips with creating applications with a professional-standard UI using fragments and storing user data with SQLite. This Android Java book also shows you how you can make your apps multilingual, draw on the screen with a finger, and work with graphics, sound, and animations. By the end of this Android programming book, you'll be ready to start building your own custom applications in Android and Java.
Table of Contents (30 chapters)

Declaring and initializing the objects

We know that when we call the setContentView method from the onCreate method, Android inflates all the widgets and layouts and turns them into real Java objects on the heap.

Additionally, we know that to use a widget from the heap, we must first declare an object of the correct type and then use it to get a reference to the UI widget object on the heap by using its unique id property.

For example, we get a reference to a TextView widget with an id property of txtTitle and assign it to a new Java object, called myTextView, as follows:

// Grab a reference to an object on the heap
TextView myTextView = findViewById(R.id.txtTitle);

Now, using our myTextView instance variable, we can do anything that the TextView class was designed to do. For example, we can set the text to show the following:

myTextView.setText("Hi there");

Additionally, we can make it disappear as follows:

// Bye bye
myTextView.setVisibility(View...