Book Image

Android Studio 3.5 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By : Neil Smyth
Book Image

Android Studio 3.5 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By: Neil Smyth

Overview of this book

Popularity of Kotlin as an Android-compatible language keeps growing every day. This book will help you to build your own Android applications using Kotlin. Android Studio 3.5 Development Essentials Kotlin Edition first teaches you to install Android development and test environment on different operating systems. Next, you will create an Android app and a virtual device in Android studio, and install an Android application on emulators. You will test apps on physical android devices, then study Android Studio code editor, Android architecture, and the anatomy of an Android app. The focus then shifts to Kotlin language. You’ll get an overview of Kotlin language and practice converting code from Java to Kotlin. You’ll also explore Kotlin data types, operators, expressions, loops, functions, and the basics of OOP concept in Kotlin. This book will then cover Android Jetpack and how to create an example app project using ViewModel component, as well as advanced topics such as views and widgets implementation, multi-window support integration, and biometric authentication. Finally, you will learn to upload your app to the Google Play Console and handle the build process with Gradle. By the end of this book, you will have gained enough knowledge to develop powerful Android applications using Kotlin.
Table of Contents (93 chapters)
93
Index

1. Introduction

In 2018 Google introduced Android Jetpack to the developer community. Designed to make it quicker and easier to develop modern and reliable Android apps, Jetpack consists of a set of tools, libraries and architectural guidelines. The main elements of Android Jetpack consist of the Android Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE), the Android Architecture Components and the Modern App Architecture Guidelines, all of which are covered in this latest edition of Android Studio Development Essentials.

Fully updated for Android Studio 3.5 and Android 10 (Q), the goal of this book is to teach the skills necessary to develop Android based applications using the Kotlin programming language.

Beginning with the basics, this book provides an outline of the steps necessary to set up an Android development and testing environment followed by an introduction to programming in Kotlin including data types, flow control, functions, lambdas and object-oriented programming.

An overview of Android Studio is included covering areas such as tool windows, the code editor and the Layout Editor tool. An introduction to the architecture of Android is followed by an in-depth look at the design of Android applications and user interfaces using the Android Studio environment.

Chapters are also included covering the Android Architecture Components including view models, lifecycle management, Room database access, app navigation, live data and data binding.

More advanced topics such as intents are also covered, as are touch screen handling, gesture recognition, and the recording and playback of audio. This edition of the book also covers printing, transitions, cloud-based file storage and foldable device support.

The concepts of material design are also covered in detail, including the use of floating action buttons, Snackbars, tabbed interfaces, card views, navigation drawers and collapsing toolbars.

In addition to covering general Android development techniques, the book also includes Google Play specific topics such as implementing maps using the Google Maps Android API, and submitting apps to the Google Play Developer Console.

Other key features of Android Studio 3.5 and Android 10 are also covered in detail including the Layout Editor, the ConstraintLayout and ConstraintSet classes, constraint chains and barriers, direct reply notifications and foldable device support.

Chapters also cover advanced features of Android Studio such as App Links, Dynamic Delivery, the Android Studio Profiler and Gradle build configuration.

Assuming you already have some programming experience, are ready to download Android Studio and the Android SDK, have access to a Windows, Mac or Linux system and ideas for some apps to develop, you are ready to get started.