Learning Android Application Development

Raimon Rafols Montane, Laurence Dawson

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781785286117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming in Java
• Index: Computer Science

Build Android N applications using modern techniques and libraries to get your own high-quality apps published on Google Play in no time

About This Book

• Get started with Android development, from the installation of required tools to publishing to the market
• Make your applications Android N ready—Android has evolved quite a lot since the very beginning and so has their Software Development Kit—so get up to speed
• Save time and improve the quality of your applications with widely used open source libraries and dependency management

Who This Book Is For

Want to get started with Android development? Start here.

What You Will Learn

• Get to know how to use popular open source libraries to reduce time to market and avoid re-inventing the wheel
• Automate your application's testing phase to avoid last minute crashes
• Use dependency management to properly keep dependencies and updates under control
• Efficiently show huge amounts of items in a list
• Forget about memory and speed concerns
• Publish and monetize your Android applications on Google Play
• Persist your application data so it can continue working in offline mode
• Don't let the UX break because of network issues

In Detail

The mobile app market is huge. But where do you start? And how you can deliver something that takes Google Play by storm? This guide is the perfect route into Android app development – while it's easy for new apps to sink without a trace, we'll give you the best chance of success with practical and actionable guidance that will unlock your creativity and help you put the principles of Android development into practice.

From the fundamentals and getting your project started to publishing your app to a huge market of potential customers, follow this guide to become a confident, creative and reliable mobile developer. Get to grips with new components in Android 7 such as RecyclerView, and find out how to take advantage of automated testing, and, of course, much, much more.

What are you waiting for? There's never been a better time – or a better way – to get into Android app development.

Style and approach

More than just a manual, this is an accessible route into Android development. Packed with examples that demonstrate how to put key concepts and ideas into practice, this guide isn't just about learning, it's about immediate development.

Learning Android Application Development

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Learning Android Application Development

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: August 2016

Production reference: 1190816

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78528-611-7

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Authors Raimon Ràfols Montané Laurence Dawson	Copy Editor Gladson Monteiro
Reviewers Vincent Brison Pablo Pera Karim Varela	Project Coordinator Suzanne Coutinho
Commissioning Editor Veena Pagare	Proofreader Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor Reshma Raman	Indexer Rekha Nair
Content Development Editor Zeeyan Pinheiro	Production Coordinator Aparna Bhagat
Technical Editors Vivek Pala	Cover Work Aparna Bhagat

About the Author

Raimon Ràfols Montané is a software engineer currently living in the Barcelona area. He has been working on mobile devices since the early stages, ranging from monochrome devices to the current smartphones. In all these years, he has worked in several areas: B2C/B2E/B2B apps, portals, and mobile gaming. Due to this broad experience, he has expertise in many technologies and, especially in UI, build systems, and client-server communications.

He is currently working as an engineering manager at AXA Group Solutions in Barcelona, taking care of all the engineering and development processes, mobile application quality, and leading a small R&D team. In the past, he has worked abroad for Imagination Technologies near London and for Service2Media in the Netherlands.

In his spare time, he enjoys taking part in hackathons, photography, and speaking at conferences. Raimon has won more than 40 international awards, including AngelHack Barcelona 2015, Facebook World Hack Barcelona, and he has secured second place at js1k 2016. He has been speaking about Java/Android performance and bytecode, Android custom views, and entrepreneurship in several conferences around the world.

I would like to thank my girlfriend for her support and understanding during the late night and lengthy writing weekends. Also, I would like to thank my parents and Rafa, my cousin, as without their support and encouragement, I would not be doing what I do today.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank everyone who challenged me and helped me grow in my professional career, people such as Carlos Carrasco, Alfred Ferrer, Pau Vivancos, Miquel Barceló, David Domingo, Marcel Roorda, Diego Morales, Alberto Chamorro, Teun van Run, Tom van Wietmarschen, Josep Cedó, Joanne Pupo, Jordi Valldaura, Mathieu Sivade, Chris Jakob, Tomas Kustrzynski, Bartłomiej Żarnowski, Radosław Holewa, and all those who I have forgotten to mention here.

Laurence Dawson is a software developer and an academic focused on mobile development.

He received a PhD in 2015 from Durham University, developing efficient parallel implementations of algorithms for GPUs using NVIDIA CUDA with an emphasis on metaheuristics and image processing.

Laurence currently runs his own mobile software development company and is also a guest lecturer at King's College London, teach software engineering modules.

You can follow his projects on his GitHub page at https://github.com/laurencedawson.

About the Reviewers

Vincent Brison is a veteran Android software craftsman. With 4 years of Android development experience, he successfully lead the development of reference banking applications as the lead Android developer. He specializes in application architecture around Clean Code, code quality and testing on Android, and cutting edge graphical implementations for Android. As an open source enthusiast, Vincent is sharing some of his work on GitHub (https://github.com/vincentbrison), on his personal website (https://vincentbrison.com), and in events like Droidcon.

I personally would like to thank Thomas B. for showing me the right way of crafting Android applications.

Pablo Pera is an entrepreneur and engineer who has built and launched Android apps that have reached more than 30 million users worldwide. He started his professional career at Google, right about the time Android was born, and worked for large organizations such as CERN and tech startups, where he has been leading various engineering teams.

Karim Varela is an entrepreneur and mobile enthusiast at heart. He is currently involved in a couple of mobile start-ups, Coffee Meets Bagel and Tastemates. At Coffee Meets Bagel, he leads the engineering team and he advises Tastemates and Proxloop on strategy, product, and technology. Previously, he built the Android app for the world-famous Tinder app.

He earned an MBA from the University of Florida and a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of California. He also contributed as a technical reviewer on the book Pro Android 4 and coauthored the book Instant GSON.

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