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Android Application Development Cookbook

By : Boyer, Mew

4.5 (6)

Android Application Development Cookbook

4.5 (6)

By: Boyer, Mew

Overview of this book

The Android OS has the largest installation base of any operating system in the world; there has never been a better time to learn Android development to write your own applications, or to make your own contributions to the open source community! This “cookbook” will make it easy for you to jump to a topic of interest and get what you need to implement the feature in your own application. If you are new to Android and learn best by “doing,” then this book will provide many topics of interest. Starting with the basics of Android development, we move on to more advanced concepts, and we’ll guide you through common tasks developers struggle to solve. The first few chapters cover the basics including Activities, Layouts, Widgets, and the Menu. From there, we cover fragments and data storage (including SQLite), device sensors, the camera, and GPS. Then we move on more advanced topics such as graphics and animation (including OpenGL), multi-threading with AsyncTask, and Internet functionality with Volley. We’ll also demonstrate Google Maps and Google Cloud Messaging (also known as Push Notifications) using the Google API Library. Finally, we’ll take a look at several online services designed especially for Android development. Take your application big-time with full Internet web services without having to become a server admin by leveraging the power of Backend as a Service (BaaS) providers.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Activities

1. Activities

Introduction

Declaring an activity

Starting a new activity with an intent object

Switching between activities

Passing data to another activity

Returning a result from an activity

Saving an activity's state

Storing persistent activity data

Understanding the activity lifecycle

2. Layouts

2. Layouts

Introduction

Defining and inflating a layout

Using RelativeLayout

Using LinearLayout

Creating tables – TableLayout and GridLayout

Using ListView, GridView, and Adapters

Changing layout properties during runtime

Optimizing layouts with the Hierarchy Viewer

3. Views, Widgets, and Styles

3. Views, Widgets, and Styles

Introduction

Inserting a widget into a layout

Using graphics to show button state

Creating a widget at runtime

Creating a custom component

Applying a style to a View

Turning a style into a theme

Selecting theme based on the Android version

4. Menus

4. Menus

Introduction

Creating an Options menu

Modifying menus and menu items during runtime

Enabling Contextual Action Mode for a view

Using Contextual Batch Mode with a ListView

Creating a pop-up menu

5. Exploring Fragments, AppWidgets, and the System UI

5. Exploring Fragments, AppWidgets, and the System UI

Introduction

Creating and using a Fragment

Adding and removing Fragments during runtime

Passing data between Fragments

Creating a shortcut on the Home screen

Creating a Home screen widget

Adding Search to the Action Bar

Showing your app full screen

6. Working with Data

6. Working with Data

Introduction

Storing simple data

Read and write a text file to internal storage

Read and write a text file to external storage

Including resource files in your project

Creating and using an SQLite database

Access data in the background using a Loader

7. Alerts and Notifications

7. Alerts and Notifications

Introduction

Lights, Action, and Sound – getting the user's attention!

Creating a Toast using a custom layout

Displaying a message box with AlertDialog

Displaying a progress dialog

Lights, Action, and Sound Redux using Notifications

Creating a Media Player Notification

Making a Flashlight with a Heads-Up Notification

8. Using the Touchscreen and Sensors

8. Using the Touchscreen and Sensors

Introduction

Listening for click and long-press events

Recognizing tap and other common gestures

Pinch-to-zoom with multi-touch gestures

Swipe-to-Refresh

Listing available sensors – an introduction to the Android Sensor Framework

Reading sensor data – using the Android Sensor Framework events

Reading device orientation

9. Graphics and Animation

9. Graphics and Animation

Introduction

Scaling down large images to avoid Out of Memory exceptions

A transition animation – defining scenes and applying a transition

Creating a Compass using sensor data and RotateAnimation

Creating a slideshow with ViewPager

Creating a Card Flip Animation with Fragments

Creating a Zoom Animation with a Custom Transition

10. A First Look at OpenGL ES

10. A First Look at OpenGL ES

Introduction

Set up the OpenGL ES environment

Drawing shapes on GLSurfaceView

Applying Projection and Camera View while drawing

Moving the triangle with rotation

Rotating the triangle with user input

11. Multimedia

11. Multimedia

Introduction

Playing sound effects with SoundPool

Playing audio with MediaPlayer

Responding to hardware media controls in your app

Taking a photo with the default camera app

Taking a picture using the (old) Camera API

Taking a picture using the Camera2 (the new) API

12. Telephony, Networks, and the Web

12. Telephony, Networks, and the Web

Introduction

How to make a phone call

Monitoring phone call events

How to send SMS (text) messages

Receiving SMS messages

Displaying a web page in your application

Checking online status and connection type

Getting started with Volley for Internet requests

Canceling a Volley request

Using Volley to request a JSON response

Using Volley to request an image

Using Volley's NetworkImageView and ImageLoader

13. Getting Location and Using Geofencing

13. Getting Location and Using Geofencing

Introduction

How to get the last location

Resolving problems reported with the GoogleApiClient OnConnectionFailedListener

How to receive location updates

Create and monitor a Geofence

14. Getting your app ready for the Play Store

14. Getting your app ready for the Play Store

Introduction

The new Android 6.0 Run-Time permission model

How to schedule an alarm

Receive notification of device boot

Using the AsyncTask for background work

Adding speech recognition to your app

Push Notification using GCM

How to add Google sign-in to your app

15. The Backend as a Service Options

15. The Backend as a Service Options

Introduction

App42

Backendless

Buddy

Firebase

Kinvey

Index

Index

Customer Reviews

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Playing audio with MediaPlayer

MediaPlayer is probably one of the most important classes for adding multimedia capability to your applications. It supports the following media sources:

Project resources
Local files
External resources (such as URLs, including streaming)

MediaPlayer supports the following popular audio files:

3GPP (.3gp)
3GPP (.3gp)
FLAC (.flac)
MP3 (.mp3)
MIDI Type 0 and 1 (.mid, .xmf, and .mxmf)
Ogg (.ogg)
WAVE (.wav)

And these popular file types:

3GPP (.3gp)
Matroska (.mkv)
WebM (.webm)
MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4a)

See the Supported Media Formats link for a complete list, including network protocols.

This recipe will demonstrate how to set up MediaPlayer in your app to play a sound included with your project. (For a complete review of the full capability offered by MediaPlayer, see the Developer Docs link at the end of this recipe.)

Getting ready

Create a new project in Android Studio and call it: MediaPlayer. Use the default Phone & Tablet options and select Empty Activity when prompted for Activity...

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