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)

Creating the Live Drawing project

To get started, create a new project in Android Studio and call it Live Drawing. Use the Empty Activity project.

Now we will consider the name of the files and the screen real estate. In this project, we will learn something new. It is not always appropriate to use the default name for our Activity class. In this project, the Activity class isn't going to be the most significant class and MainActivity doesn't seem like an appropriate name. Let's rename it.

Refactoring MainActivity to LiveDrawingActivity

It is a good practice to use meaningful names for all the different parts of our code. For this project, I think MainActivity is a bit vague and inconclusive. We could make do with it, but let's rename it to something more meaningful. This will also let us see how we can use the refactoring tool of Android Studio. The reason that we use the term refactoring instead of just renaming is when we change the names we use in...