Android Studio Cookbook

Design, test, and debug your apps using Android Studio

Android Studio Cookbook
About This Book

• See what Material design is about and how to apply it your apps
• Explore the possibilities to develop apps that works on any type of device
• A step-by-step practical guide that will help you build improved applications, change their look, and debug them

Who This Book Is For
This book is for developers that are already familiar with programming concepts and have already started creating apps for the Android platform, for example, by using the Eclipse IDE. It is for developers who intend to use Android Studio as their primary IDE or want to use Android Studio more efficiently.

What You Will Learn

• Develop Android Studio applications using Genymotion
• Apply the concepts of Material design to your applications
• Use memory monitoring tools to tweak performance
• Build applications for Android Wearable
• Capture images, video, or audio within your Android app
• Use content providers to display data
• Build apps with a cloud-based backend
• Create media-related apps that will run on phones, phablets, tablets, and TVs

In Detail
This book starts with an introduction of Android Studio and why you should use this IDE rather than Eclipse. Moving ahead, it teaches you to build a simple app that requires no backend setup but uses Google Cloud or Parse instead. After that, you will learn how to create an Android app that can send and receive text and images using Google Cloud or Parse as a backend. It explains the concepts of Material design and how to apply them to an Android app. Also, it shows you how to build an app that runs on an Android wear device.

Later, it explains how to build an app that takes advantage of the latest Android SDK while still supporting older Android versions. It also demonstrates how the performance of an app can be improved and how memory management tools that come with the Android Studio IDE can help you achieve this.

By the end of the book, you will be able to develop high quality apps with a minimum amount of effort using the Android Studio IDE.

Style and approach
This is a practical guide full of challenges and many real-world examples that demonstrate interesting development concepts. Besides smartphones and tablets, it also covers Android wearable devices and Android TV. Although strongly recommended, it is not necessary to own any Android device yourself.

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Virtual SD card on Android

Since Android Honeycomb, Google changed the way to manage internal memory on Android devices. Before Honeycomb, every user had one separate partition on his device called userdata (/data), where he could install applications and where all user settings were stored (home screens, applications data, contacts, and all the rest you loose after doing so called "full wipe" on your device). Apart of userdata partition, all Android devices had microSD card slot to save pictures, movies, backups etc.. Now it looks completely different, but lets start from the beginning. There are several approaches to this subject, Ill present here all those I am aware of.

• userdata partition + microSD card

This is the mentioned above pre-Honeycomb approach. There is userdata partition, where you can install all your applications and you also have a possibility to insert microSD card. Nothing more to explain. Only devices running Android Gingerbread and older versions have such configuration, so its getting less and less popular.

• userdata partition + virtual SD card on userdata partition

This is the new approach presented for the first time in Honeycomb. Instead of having /data partition together with expandable microSD card slot of any capacity, Google decided for something different. Instead, /data partition became very large (16/32/64 GB) and inside you can find /data/media folder that contains all the files you can see as your SD card content. How does it work? Without too much technical explanations, there is so called fuse tool which emulates media folder inside userdata partition as a separate storage device. As a result, after connecting smartphone to the PC you can browse the content of /data/media location, so if it was a microSD card. The biggest downside of such approach is a high risk of loosing all your virtual SD card content in case of any serious /data partition failure. Also, such partition cant be formatted with mkfs.ext4 without loosing content of virtual SD card, because you cant format device partition just partially. You can use e2fsck tool to check for potential errors, but sometimes partition format is the only way out. How does "full wipe" work then? Well, its a little bit complicated. First of all, you cant format mounted (in use) partition. You need to unmount it first. Once unmounted userdata partition, you cant flash any ZIP file from inside recovery, because ZIPs files are stored on virtual SD card (/data/media) and remember that userdata partition is currently unmounted, because we want to format it. There is a workaround for it - you can run mkfs.ext4 from inside /cache partition or you can use command prompt. Now, what if you need to remove the whole content of your userdata partition, but you want to keep virtual SD card content at the same time? There is a workaround for this as well, but instead of formatting entire partition, you need to remove all files excluding /data/media location. Example:

#!/tmp/bash
# Remove content of /data partition excluding data/media files
cd /data
FILES=(*)
for i in *; do
if [ "$i" != "media" ]
then rm -R "$i"
fi
done

This way you can sort of wipe userdata, but it doesnt format the partition, so you cant fix broken file-system with it.  Why this point is the longest one? Because it took me quite a few words to explain the relation between virtual SD card and media folder on userdata partition (/data/media). So basically, what you read here applies to every configuration with virtual SD card emulated on userdata partition.

• userdata partition + virtual SD card on a separate partition

This approach is not very popular, and its a shame because it seems to be much more practical rather than the previous one. Instead of emulating SD card from userdata partition, there is a separate, large partition with vFAT file-system. That means you can format your userdata partition anytime you want without loosing content of your virtual SD card, or from inside custom ROM, because userdata can be freely unmounted. The only device Ive seen so far with this approach was HTC One X.

• userdata partition + virtual SD card on userdata partition + microSD card

This seems to be the most desirable solution for many Android users. It works similar to approach described in the second point, so everything I wrote about /data/media is valid here as well. However, every user have the ability to insert extra microSD card inside his device, so he can easily backup virtual SD card to microSD card or format userdata partition without loosing all pictures etc. (if previously stored on microSD card). This is the most common configuration for Samsung devices. But having removable microSD card is not only an advantage. First of all, any kind of microSD card (even SDHC) will be always slower than internal eMMC memory. It depends on many factors like card speed (class 2, 4, 6, 8 or even 10), on-board controller, I/O scheduler and more. Secondly, microSD card damage risk is higher then damage risk of internal eMMC memory. Out of question is the benefit to expand the memory with 64 GB microSD card, but its definitely the minority of power users, who are buying large capacity cards. For the vast majority of users, internal memory with 32 GB capacity is more then enough to store their favorite music or pictures.

• userdata partition + virtual SD card on a separate partition + microSD card

This approach is theoretically possible, but personally Ive never seen device with such combination. For me, this is the best combination. You have possibility to use external microSD card and virtual SD card is not a part of userdata partition, but it has its own, separate vFat partition. Such configuration gives you control over all your data and possibility to manage it however you want.

Do you have any questions or want to share some opinion? Please leave a comment below! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) down this post!

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Android Studio Game Development Concepts and Design

Android Studio Game Development: Concepts and Design

This one of a kind short book walks any Android developer through the process of creating mobile games using the new Android Studio IDE. Android Studio offers a myriad of tools for developers such as enhanced intellisense and device emulation. This book provides a quick and easy to read format; introduces the reader to these key tools and gives them the knowledge they need to develop games in Android Studio.

What You’ll Learn

• How to create projects in Android Studio
• How to use the SDK manager to keep your Android SDK current
• How to commit and get projects to and from Git hub
• How to use OpenGL ES to load images
• How to react to player input
• How to debug your games using Android Studio

Audience

This book is for those who may be new to game development who have some experience with Android Studio IDE and Android.  To learn about Android Studio, check out Learn Android Studio IDE by Gerber and Craig (Apress).

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Xamarin Studio for Android Programming A C Cookbook

Over 50 hands-on recipes to help you get grips with Xamarin Studio and C# programming to develop market-ready Android applications

Xamarin Studio for Android Programming: A C# Cookbook
About This Book

• Create Android applications with C# and Xamarin
• Reuse your Android application to develop iOS and Windows Phone applications
• Leverage the easy-to-succeed recipes to exploit the latest Android releases and develop new applications

Who This Book Is For
If you have already developed an Android applications with Java and you now intend to use C# and Xamarin Studios capabilities, or if you have never taken the dive into mobiles, then this book is for you. It would be helpful to have some C# experience so you follow the recipes in this book, though knowledge of Android is not required.

What You Will Learn

• Build a GUI for your Android applications
• Explore Android activities and understand configuration changes
• Manage multiscreens, icons, and multimedia in your applications
• Start and bind Android services and create notifications
• Create beautiful applications using the camera and animations
• Effectively couple your phones hardware with applications
• Integrate advertisements and select the right advertisement providers for your applications

In Detail
Multiplatform applications have taken the development world by storm. This has revolutionized the selection of the right tools for the efficient development and deployment of applications. Xamarin studio is emerging as the preferred choice among .NET/C# developers. It enables them to design cross-platform applications using their favorite language and IDE. Xamarin studio is supported by the Mac OS and Windows platforms, and you can develop your own applications for iOS, Windows, or Android with its help.

This book takes you through all the stages of application development, right from getting started with Xamarin and developing a GUI to putting up your application on the store. The recipes will help you in acquiring sufficient knowledge to go about creating applications.

Starting with introducing Xamarin studio, its underlying technologies, and the Android ecosystem, the book goes on to cover the graphical aspects of creating Android applications. Moving on, you will learn more about data management with Android services. This is followed by techniques on how to interact with the Android OS and the phones hardware, before finally concluding with mobile advertisements and Google Play. By the end of this book, you will have discovered all the specialties related to developing Android application with Xamarin Studio.

Style and approach
This book is organized around hands-on and practical recipes that focus on the development of Android applications using C# and Xamarin. Each recipe is easy to follow to help you progress efficiently through the book.

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Android NDK Game Development Cookbook

Android NDK Game Development Cookbook
For C++ developers, this is the book that can swiftly propel you into the potentially profitable world of Android games. The 70+ step-by-step recipes using Android NDK will give you the wide-ranging knowledge you need.

Overview

• Tips and tricks for developing and debugging mobile games on your desktop
• Enhance your applications by writing multithreaded code for audio playback, network access, and asynchronous resource loading
• Enhance your game development skills by using modern OpenGL ES and develop applications without using an IDE
• Features two ready-to-run Android games

In Detail

Android NDK is used for multimedia applications which require direct access to a systems resources. Android NDK is also the key for portability, which in turn provides a reasonably comfortable development and debugging process using familiar tools such as GCC and Clang toolchains. If your wish to build Android games using this amazing framework, then this book is a must-have.

This book provides you with a number of clear step-by-step recipes which will help you to start developing mobile games with Android NDK and boost your productivity debugging them on your computer. This book will also provide you with new ways of working as well as some useful tips and tricks that will demonstrably increase your development speed and efficiency.

This book will take you through a number of easy-to-follow recipes that will help you to take advantage of the Android NDK as well as some popular C++ libraries. It presents Android application development in C++ and shows you how to create a complete gaming application.

You will learn how to write portable multithreaded C++ code, use HTTP networking, play audio files, use OpenGL ES, to render high-quality text, and how to recognize user gestures on multi-touch devices. If you want to leverage your C++ skills in mobile development and add performance to your Android applications, then this is the book for you.

What you will learn from this book

• Port popular C++ libraries to Android
• Write portable multithreaded code
• Play audio with OpenAL
• Implement gesture recognition
• Render text with FreeType
• Use OpenGL ES to port and abstract APIs from the game code to develop games on a desktop PC
• Debug mobile applications on your desktop
• Access Flickr and Picasa web services from C++
• Extract resources from APK archives
• Develop Android applications without an IDE

Approach

A systematic guide consisting of over 70 recipes which focus on helping you build portable mobile games and aims to enhance your game development skills with clear instructions.

Who this book is written for

If you are a C++ developer who wants to jump into the world of Android game development and who wants to use the power of existing C++ libraries in your existing Android Java applications, then this book is for you. You need to have basic knowledge of C or C++ including pointer manipulation, multithreading, and object-oriented programming concepts as well as some experience developing applications without using an IDE.

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Replace ActionBar with android support v7 widget Toolbar

A Toolbar is a generalization of action bars for use within application layouts. While an action bar is traditionally part of an Activitys opaque window decor controlled by the framework, a Toolbar may be placed at any arbitrary level of nesting within a view hierarchy. An application may choose to designate a Toolbar as the action bar for an Activity using the setSupportActionBar() method.

This example show how to replace ActionBar with android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar.

- Create a new project with Minimum SDK of API 16, select template of Empty Activity.

- Edit res/values/styles.xml to use style of "Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar".

<resources>

 <!-- Base application theme. -->
 <style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">
 <!-- Customize your theme here. -->
 <item name="colorPrimary">@color/colorPrimary</item>
 <item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/colorPrimaryDark</item>
 <item name="colorAccent">@color/colorAccent</item>
 </style>

</resources>

- Add <android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar> to /res/layout/activity_main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout 
 
 android_layout_width="match_parent"
 android_layout_height="match_parent"
 android_paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
 android_paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
 android_paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
 android_paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
 tools_context="com.blogspot.android_er.androidtoolbar.MainActivity">

 <android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
 android_id="@+id/toolbar"
 android_layout_width="match_parent"
 android_layout_height="56dp"
 android_background="#FFA000"/>
 <TextView
 android_layout_width="wrap_content"
 android_layout_height="wrap_content"
 android_text="Hello World!" />
</RelativeLayout>

- Edit MainActivity.java to call setSupportActionBar(toolbar) method.

package com.blogspot.android_er.androidtoolbar;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

 @Override
 protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
 super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
 setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
 Toolbar toolbar = (Toolbar)findViewById(R.id.toolbar);
 setSupportActionBar(toolbar);
 }
}

- To make the Toolbar fill the width of the layout, edit /res/values/dimens.xml to set both "activity_horizontal_margin" and "activity_vertical_margin" to 0dp.

<resources>
 <!-- Default screen margins, per the Android Design guidelines. -->
 <dimen name="activity_horizontal_margin">0dp</dimen>
 <dimen name="activity_vertical_margin">0dp</dimen>
</resources>

This video show how-to in Android Studio, and how it shown on Android Emulator of API 16 and 23.


More:
- Set title, subtitle and logo of Toolbar
- Add OptionsMenu to Toolbar
- Set image on Toolbar
- Implement checkable items in OptionsMenu of Toolbar

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