Book Image

Android Design Patterns and Best Practice

By : Kyle Mew
Book Image

Android Design Patterns and Best Practice

By: Kyle Mew

Overview of this book

Are you an Android developer with some experience under your belt? Are you wondering how the experts create efficient and good-looking apps? Then your wait will end with this book! We will teach you about different Android development patterns that will enable you to write clean code and make your app stand out from the crowd. The book starts by introducing the Android development environment and exploring the support libraries. You will gradually explore the different design and layout patterns and get to know the best practices of how to use them together. Then you’ll then develop an application that will help you grasp activities, services, and broadcasts and their roles in Android development. Moving on, you will add user-detecting classes and APIs such as gesture detection, touch screen listeners, and sensors to your app. You will also learn to adapt your app to run on tablets and other devices and platforms, including Android Wear, auto, and TV. Finally, you will see how to connect your app to social media and explore deployment patterns as well as the best publishing and monetizing practices. The book will start by introducing the Android development environment and exploring the support libraries. You will gradually explore the different Design and layout patterns and learn the best practices on how to use them together. You will then develop an application that will help you grasp Activities, Services and Broadcasts and their roles in Android development. Moving on, you will add user detecting classes and APIs such as at gesture detection, touch screen listeners and sensors to our app. You will also learn to adapt your app to run on tablets and other devices and platforms, including Android Wear, Auto, and TV. Finally, you will learn to connect your app to social media and explore deployment patterns and best publishing and monetizing practices.

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Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Android Design Patterns and Best Practice
Android Design Patterns and Best Practice
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Customer Feedback
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Design Patterns
Design Patterns
How this book works
What we will build
Targeting platform versions
The support library
The factory pattern
Running and testing an app
The abstract factory pattern
Summary
2
Creational Patterns
Creational Patterns
Applying themes
Customizing color and text
Adding image resources
Creating a card view
Applying a builder pattern
Summary
3
Material Patterns
Material Patterns
The app-bar
The navigation drawer
The singleton pattern
Summary
4
Layout Patterns
Layout Patterns
Linear layouts
Relative layouts
Screen rotation
Large screen layouts
The strategy pattern
Summary
5
Structural Patterns
Structural Patterns
Generating lists
List item layouts
Connecting data
Translating string resources
The adapter pattern
The bridge pattern
The facade pattern
The criteria pattern
Summary
6
Activating Patterns
Activating Patterns
Collapsing toolbars
Applying a data factory pattern
Positioning item layouts
Using the factory with the RecyclerView
Adding dividers
Configuring the floating action button
The dialog builder
Adding swipe and dismiss actions
Constructing layout builders
Summary
7
Combining Patterns
Combining Patterns
Outlining specifications
The prototype pattern
The decorator design pattern
A sandwich builder pattern
Selecting patterns
Adding a decorator
Summary
8
Composing Patterns
Composing Patterns
The composite pattern
A Layout composer
Storage options
Storing user preferences
Summary
9
Observing Patterns
Observing Patterns
The Observer pattern
Notifications
Services
Summary
10
Behavioral Patterns
Behavioral Patterns
The template pattern
The visitor pattern
The state pattern
Summary
11
Wearable Patterns
Wearable Patterns
Android TV
Android Wear
Android Auto
Summary
12
Social Patterns
Social Patterns
Adding web pages
Connecting with Facebook
Content builders
Integrating Twitter
Summary
13
Distribution Patterns
Distribution Patterns
Extending platform scope
Publishing apps
Promoting and monetizing apps
Summary

Adding image resources

One of the most interesting challenges that Android offers is the vast number of screen densities and sizes that we have to cater for. This is particularly true when it comes displaying bitmap images, where there are two competing issues that need to be resolved:

  • Low resolution images display very poorly when stretched to fit on large or high resolution screens

  • High quality images use up far more memory than is needed when displayed on smaller, low density screens.

Screen sizes aside, the problem of differing screen densities is mostly solved with the use of density-independent pixels (dp).

Managing screen densities

Dps are an abstract unit of measurement based on a screen displaying 160 dpi. This means that a widget with a width of 320 dp will always be 2'' wide regardless of screen density. When it comes to the actual physical dimensions of a screen, this can be managed with a variety of layout types, libraries, and properties such as weight and gravity, but for now we...

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