Book Image

Android Studio 4.2 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By : Neil Smyth
Book Image

Android Studio 4.2 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By: Neil Smyth

Overview of this book

Android Studio is an Integrated Development Environment that is based on the JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA. It provides developers with a unique platform to design and develop Android apps using various developer tools. The new Android Studio 4.2 has an upgraded IntelliJ platform and a variety of new features designed to improve the productivity of Android app developers. Fully updated for Android Studio 4.2, the objective of this book is to help you master the skills necessary to develop Android applications using Kotlin as the programming language. This book begins by outlining the steps necessary to set up an Android development and testing environment and introduces programming in Kotlin, addressing data types, flow control, functions, lambdas, and object-oriented programming. It includes an overview of Android Studio, covering areas such as tool windows, the code editor, and the Layout Editor tool. An introduction to Android architecture is followed by an in-depth explanation of the design of Android applications and user interfaces using the Android Studio environment. Early chapters detail Android Architecture components like view models, lifecycle management, Room database access, the Database Inspector, app navigation, live data, and data binding. Advanced topics such as intents are also covered, as are touch screen handling, gesture recognition, and the recording and playback of audio. You will also explore printing, transitions, cloud-based file storage, and foldable device support. Detailed descriptions of material design concepts are provided, including the use of floating action buttons, Snackbars, tabbed interfaces, card views, navigation drawers, and collapsing toolbars. Some key features of Android Studio 4.2 and Android discussed in-depth include the Layout Editor, the ConstraintLayout and ConstraintSet classes, MotionLayout Editor, view binding, constraint chains, barriers, and direct reply notifications. Later chapters cover advanced features of Android Studio such as App links, Dynamic Delivery, the Android Studio Profiler, Gradle build configuration, and submitting apps to the Google Play Developer Console.
Table of Contents (94 chapters)
94
Index

89. An Android Biometric Authentication Tutorial

Touch sensors are now built into many Android devices to identify the user and provide access to both the device and application functionality such as in-app payment options using fingerprint recognition. Fingerprint recognition is, of course, just one of a number of different authentication methods including passwords, PIN numbers and, more recently, facial recognition.

Although only a few Android devices currently on the market provide facial recognition, it is likely that this will become more common in the near future. In recognition of this, Google has begun to transition away from what was a fingerprint-centric approach to adding authentication to apps to a less specific approach that is referred to as biometric authentication. In the initial release of Android 8, these biometric features only cover fingerprint authentication but this will change in future releases and updates of the Android operating system and SDK.

This...