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)

Using the Canvas class

Let's look at the code and the different stages required to get drawing, and then we can quickly move on to drawing something for real, with the Canvas demo app.

Preparing the instances of the required classes

The first step is to declare the instances of the classes we require:

// Here are all the objects(instances)
// of classes that we need to do some drawing
ImageView myImageView;
Bitmap myBlankBitmap;
Canvas myCanvas;
Paint myPaint;

The previous code declares references of the ImageView, Bitmap, Canvas, and Paint types. They are named myImageView, myBlankBitmap, myCanvas, and myPaint, respectively.

Initializing the objects

Next, we need to initialize our new objects before using them:

// Initialize all the objects ready for drawing
// We will do this inside the onCreate method
int widthInPixels = 800;
int heightInPixels = 800;
myBlankBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(widthInPixels,
         ...