What this book covers
Chapter 1, Beginning Android and Java, will see you not waste any time in getting started with developing Android apps. We will look at what is so great about Android, what exactly Android and Java are, how they work and complement each other, and what that means to us as future developers. Moving quickly on, we will set up the required software so that we can build and deploy a simple first app.
Chapter 2, First Contact: Java, XML, and the UI Designer, explains how, at this stage, we have a working Android development environment and we have built and deployed our first app. We need to explore this autogenerated code so that we can begin to understand Android and then learn how to build on this useful template
Chapter 3, Exploring Android Studio and the Project Structure, explains how to create and run two more Android projects. The purpose of these exercises is to explore in more depth Android Studio and the structure of Android projects. Along with understanding the composition of our projects, it will also be beneficial to make sure we get the most from the emulator.
Chapter 4, Getting Started with Layouts and Material Design, covers the building of three more layouts—still quite simple, yet a step up from what we have done so far. Before we get hands-on, we will have a quick introduction to the concept of Material Design. We will also cover the different types of layout called LinearLayout, ConstraintLayout, and TableLayout. We will also write some Java code to switch between our different layouts within a single app/project. This is the first major app that links together multiple topics in one neat parcel.
Chapter 5, Beautiful Layouts with CardView and ScrollView, is the final chapter on layouts before we spend some time focusing on Java and object-oriented programming. We will formalize our learning on some of the different attributes we have already encountered, and we will also introduce two more cool layouts: ScrollView and CardView. To conclude this chapter, we will run a CardView project on a tablet emulator.
Chapter 6, The Android Lifecycle, will see us become familiar with the lifecycle of an Android app. The lifecycle is the way that all Android apps interact with the Android OS. We will see the phases of the lifecycle that an app goes through, from creation to destruction, and how this helps us know where to put our Java code, depending on what we are trying to achieve.
Chapter 7, Java Variables, Operators, and Expressions, covers the core fundamentals of Java: the code that goes into the classes and the methods that we create, along with the data that the code acts upon. In this chapter, we will focus on the data. We will dive into learning how to write our very own Java code. By the end of the chapter, you will be comfortable writing Java code that creates and uses data within Android.
Chapter 8, Java Decisions and Loops, explains how we can take a course of action dependent upon the value of a variable. We will look at making decisions in Java with if, else, and switch. We will also look at loops in Java with while, do – while, for, and break.
Chapter 9, Learning Java Methods, takes a closer look at methods, because although we know that you can call them to make them execute their code, there is more to them than we have discussed hitherto.
Chapter 10, Object-Oriented Programming, explains how in Java, classes are fundamental to just about everything. We will begin to understand why the software engineers at Sun Microsystems back in the early 1990s made Java the way they did. We have already talked about reusing other people's code, specifically the Android API, but in this chapter, we will really get to grips with how this works and learn about object-oriented programming and how to use it.
Chapter 11, More Object-Oriented Programming, is the second part of our whirlwind tour (theoretical and practical) into OOP. We have already briefly discussed the concepts of encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism, but in this chapter, we will get to see them in action in some demo apps. While the working examples will show these concepts in their simplest forms, it will still be a significant stepping stone toward taking control of our XML layouts via our Java code.
Chapter 12, The Stack, the Heap, and the Garbage Collector, reveals the missing link between Java and our XML layouts, leaving us with the power to add all kinds of widgets to our apps, as we have done before, but this time we will be able to control them through our Java code. In this chapter, we will get to take control of some fairly simple UI elements, such as Button and TextView. To enable us to understand what is happening, we need to find out a bit more about the memory in an Android device and two areas of it—the Stack and the Heap.
Chapter 13, Anonymous Classes – Bringing Android Widgets to Life, explains how, now that we have a good overview of both the layout and coding of an Android app, as well as our newly acquired insight into object-oriented programming and how we can manipulate the UI from our Java code, we are ready to experiment with more widgets from the palette alongside anonymous classes. In this chapter, we will diversify a lot by going back to the Android Studio palette and looking around at half a dozen widgets that we have either not seen at all or have not used fully yet. Once we have done so, we will put them all into a layout and practice manipulating them with Java code.
Chapter 14, Android Dialog Windows, covers how to present the user with a pop-up dialog window. We can then put all that we know into the first phase of our first major app, Note to self. We will also then learn about new Android and Java features in this chapter and the four following (up to Chapter 18), and then use our newly acquired knowledge to enhance the Note to self app each time. In each chapter, we will also build a selection of smaller apps that are separate from this main app.
Chapter 15, Arrays, Maps, and Random Numbers, talks about Java arrays, which allow us to manipulate a potentially huge amount of data in an organized and efficient manner. We will also use a close Java relation to arrays, the ArrayList, and see the differences between them. Once we are comfortable handling substantial amounts of data, we will see what the Android API has in order to help us easily connect our new-found data handling skills to the UI without breaking sweat.
Chapter 16, Adapters and Recyclers, first covers the theory of adapters and lists. We will learn how to extend RecyclerAdapter in Java code and add a RecyclerView, which acts as a list to our UI, and then, through the apparent magic of the Android API, bind them together so that RecyclerView displays the contents of RecyclerAdapter and allows the user to scroll through the contents.
Chapter 17, Data Persistence and Sharing, examines a couple of different ways to save data to the Android device's permanent storage. Also, for the first time, we will add a second activity to our app. It often makes sense when implementing a separate "screen", such as a settings screen in our app, to do so in a new activity. We will see how to add an activity and navigate the user between them.
Chapter 18, Localization, explains how to add additional languages. We will see how adding text the correct way via String resources benefits us when it comes to adding multiple languages.
Chapter 19, Animations and Interpolations, covers how we can use the Animation class to make our UI a little less static and a bit more interesting. As we have come to expect, the Android API will allow us to do some quite advanced things with relatively straightforward code, and the Animation class is no different.
Chapter 20, Drawing Graphics, is devoted to the Android Canvas class and a number of related classes, such as Paint, Color, and Bitmap. These classes combined bring great power when it comes to drawing to the screen. If we want to make a drawing app, draw graphs, or perhaps a game, we need to take control of every pixel that the Android device has to offer.
Chapter 21, Threads and Starting the Live Drawing App, gets started on the next app. This app will be a kid's style drawing app where the user can draw on the screen with their finger. This drawing app will be slightly different, however. The lines that the user draws will comprise particle systems that explode into thousands of pieces. We will call the project Live Drawing.
Chapter 22, Particle Systems and Handling Screen Touches, explains how to create the entities that will exist and evolve in this real-time system as if they have a mind of their own and form the appearance of the drawings that the user can achieve. We will also see how the user draws these entities by learning how to respond to interaction with the screen. This is different to interacting with a widget in a UI layout.
Chapter 23, Supporting Different Versions of Android, Sound Effects, and Spinner Widget, explains how we can detect and handle different versions of Android. We will then be able to study the SoundPool class and the different ways we use it, depending on the Android version the app is running on. At this point, we can then put everything we have learned into producing a cool sound demo app that will also introduce us to a new UI widget – the Spinner.
Chapter 24, Design Patterns, Multiple Layouts, and Fragments, is more about your future apps than anything in the book so far. We will look at a few aspects of Java and Android that you can use as a framework or template for making ever more exciting and complex apps at the same time as keeping the code manageable. Furthermore, I will suggest areas of further study that there is simply not enough room to even scratch the surface of in this book.
Chapter 25, Building a Simple Image Gallery App, explains how to create an app using paging and swiping with images as you might find in a photo gallery app. Also, using the RecyclerView widget, we will selectively load just the data required for the current page and perhaps the data for the previous and next pages.
Chapter 26, Advanced UI with Navigation Drawer and Fragment, covers what is (arguably) the most advanced UI. NavigationView can be created simply by choosing it as a template when you create a new project. We will then examine the autogenerated code and learn how to interact with it. Then, we will use all we know about Fragment to populate each of the "drawers" with different behaviors and views.
Chapter 27, Android Databases, explains how, if we are going to make apps that offer our users significant features, then almost certainly we are going to need a way to manage, store, and filter significant amounts of data. JSON and SharedPreferences classes have their place but, at some point, we need to move on to using real databases for real-world solutions. Android uses the SQLite database management system and, as you would expect, there is an API to make it as easy as possible.
Chapter 28, A Quick Chat Before You Go, brings our journey to an end. This chapter is simply includes a few ideas and pointers that you might like to look at before rushing off and making your own apps.