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)

Using variables

That's enough theory. Let's see how we would use our variables and types. Remember that each primitive type needs a specific amount of real device memory. This is one of the reasons why the compiler needs to know what type a variable will be.

Variable declaration

We must first declare a variable and its type before we try to do anything with it. To declare a variable of type int with the name unreadMessages, we would type the following:

int unreadMessages;

That's it—simply state the type (in this case, int), then leave a space and type the name you want to use for this variable. Note also that the ; semicolon at the end of the line will tell the compiler that we are done with this line and that what follows, if anything, is not part of the variable declaration.

Similarly, for almost all the other variable types, the declaration would occur in the same way. Here are some examples. The variable names in the examples are arbitrary....