Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners - Third Edition

By : John Horton
Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners - Third Edition

By: John Horton

Overview of this book

Do you want to make a career in programming but don’t know where to start? Do you have a great idea for an app but don't know how to make it a reality? Or are you worried that you’ll have to learn Java programming to become an Android developer? Look no further! This new and expanded third edition of Android Programming for Beginners will be your guide to creating Android applications from scratch. The book starts by introducing you to all the fundamental concepts of programming in an Android context, from the basics of Java to working with the Android API. You’ll learn with the help of examples that use up-to-date API classes and are created within Android Studio, the official Android development environment that helps supercharge your mobile application development process. After a crash course on the key programming concepts, you’ll explore Android programming and get to grips with creating applications with a professional-standard UI using fragments and storing user data with SQLite. This Android Java book also shows you how you can make your apps multilingual, draw on the screen with a finger, and work with graphics, sound, and animations. By the end of this Android programming book, you'll be ready to start building your own custom applications in Android and Java.
Table of Contents (30 chapters)

Fragments

Fragments will likely become a staple of almost every app you make. They are so useful, there are so many reasons to use them, and once you get used to them, they are so simple, there is almost no reason not to use them.

Fragments are reusable elements of an app just like any class, but as mentioned previously, they have special features, such as the ability to load their own view/layout as well as their very own lifecycle methods, which make them perfect for achieving the goals we discussed in the Real-world apps section and having different layouts and code for different devices (like the weather app we looked at).

Let's dig a bit deeper into fragments, one feature at a time.

Fragments have a lifecycle too

We can set up and control fragments very much like we do Activities, by overriding the appropriate lifecycle methods:

  • onCreate: In the onCreate method, we can initialize variables and do almost all the things we would typically have done in the...