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)

Coding the database class

Here we will put into practice everything we have learned so far and finish coding the Age Database app. Before our Fragment classes from the previous section can interact with a shared database, we need a class to handle interaction with, and the creation of, the database.

We will create a class that manages our database by using the SQLiteOpenHelper class. It will also define some final strings to represent the names of the table and its columns. Furthermore, it will supply a bunch of helper methods we can call to perform all the necessary queries. Where necessary, these helper methods will return a Cursor object that we can use to show the data we have retrieved. It would be trivial, then, to add new helper methods, should our app need to evolve.

Create a new class called DataManager and add the following member variables:

import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase;
public class DataManager {
    // This is the actual database...