Book Image

How to Build Android Apps with Kotlin - Second Edition

By : Alex Forrester, Eran Boudjnah, Alexandru Dumbravan, Jomar Tigcal
5 (1)
Book Image

How to Build Android Apps with Kotlin - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Alex Forrester, Eran Boudjnah, Alexandru Dumbravan, Jomar Tigcal

Overview of this book

Looking to kick-start your app development journey with Android 13, but don’t know where to start? How to Build Android Apps with Kotlin is a comprehensive guide that will help jump-start your Android development practice. This book starts with the fundamentals of app development, enabling you to utilize Android Studio and Kotlin to get started with building Android projects. You'll learn how to create apps and run them on virtual devices through guided exercises. Progressing through the chapters, you'll delve into Android's RecyclerView to make the most of lists, images, and maps, and see how to fetch data from a web service. You'll also get to grips with testing, learning how to keep your architecture clean, understanding how to persist data, and gaining basic knowledge of the dependency injection pattern. Finally, you'll see how to publish your apps on the Google Play store. You'll work on realistic projects that are split up into bitesize exercises and activities, allowing you to challenge yourself in an enjoyable and attainable way. You'll build apps to create quizzes, read news articles, check weather reports, store recipes, retrieve movie information, and remind you where you parked your car. By the end of this book, you'll have the skills and confidence to build your own creative Android applications using Kotlin.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Part 1: Android Foundation
6
Part 2: Displaying Network Calls
12
Part 3: Testing and Code Structure
17
Part 4: Polishing and Publishing an App

To get the most out of this book

Each great journey begins with a humble step. Before we can do awesome things in Android, we need to be prepared with a productive environment. In this section, we will see how to do that.

Minimum hardware requirements

For an optimal learning experience, we recommend the following hardware configuration:

  • Processor: Intel Core i5 or equivalent or higher
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM or more
  • Storage: 8 GB available space minimum

Software requirements

You’ll also need the following software installed in advance:

  • OS: 64-bit Windows 8/10/11, macOS, or 64-bit Linux
  • Android Studio Electric Eel or higher

Installation and setup

Before you start this book, you will need to install Android Studio Electric Eel (or higher), which is the software you will be using throughout the chapters. You can download Android Studio from https://developer.android.com/studio.

On macOS, launch the DMG file and drag and drop Android Studio into the Applications folder. Once this is done, open Android Studio. On Windows, launch the EXE file. If you’re using Linux, unpack the ZIP file into your preferred location. Open your Terminal and navigate to the android-studio/bin/ directory and execute studio.sh.

Next, the Data Sharing dialog will pop up; click either the Send usage statistics to Google button or the Don’t send button to disable sending anonymous usage data to Google:

The Data Sharing dialog

In the Welcome dialog, click the Next button to start the setup:

The Welcome dialog

In the Install Type dialog, select Standard to install the recommended settings. Then, click the Next button:

The Install Type dialog

In the Select UI Theme dialog, choose your preferred IDE theme—either Light or Darcula (dark theme)—then click the Next button:

The Select UI Theme dialog

In the Verify Settings dialog, review your settings and then click the Finish button. The setup wizard downloads and installs additional components, including the Android SDK:

The Verify Settings dialog

Once the download finishes, you can click the Finish button. You are now ready to create your Android project.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.