Android Studio Development Essentials – Android 6 Edition

Fully updated for Android 6, the goal of this book is to teach the skills necessary to develop Android based applications using the Android Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and the Android 6 Software Development Kit (SDK).

Beginning with the basics, this book provides an outline of the steps necessary to set up an Android development and testing environment. An overview of Android Studio is included covering areas such as tool windows, the code editor and the Designer tool. An introduction to the architecture of Android is followed by an in-depth look at the design of Android applications and user interfaces using the Android Studio environment. More advanced topics such as database management, content providers and intents are also covered, as are touch screen handling, gesture recognition, camera access and the playback and recording of both video and audio. This edition of the book also covers printing, transitions and cloud-based file storage.

The concepts of material design are also covered in detail, including the use of floating action buttons, Snackbars, tabbed interfaces, card views, navigation drawers and collapsing toolbars.

In addition to covering general Android development techniques, the book also includes Google Play specific topics such as implementing maps using the Google Maps Android API, in-app billing and submitting apps to the Google Play Developer Console.

Chapters also cover advanced features of Android Studio such as Gradle build configuration and the implementation of build variants to target multiple Android device types from a single project code base.

Assuming you already have some Java programming experience, are ready to download Android Studio and the Android SDK, have access to a Windows, Mac or Linux system and ideas for some apps to develop, you are ready to get started.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1.Introduction
Chapter 2.Setting up an Android Studio Development Environment
Chapter 3.Creating an Example Android App in Android Studio
Chapter 4.A Tour of the Android Studio User Interface
Chapter 5.Creating an Android Virtual Device (AVD) in Android Studio
Chapter 6.Testing Android Studio Apps on a Physical Android Device
Chapter 7.The Basics of the Android Studio Code Editor
Chapter 8.An Overview of the Android Architecture
Chapter 9.The Anatomy of an Android Application
Chapter 10.Understanding Android Application and Activity Lifecycles
Chapter 11.Handling Android Activity State Changes
Chapter 12.Android Activity State Changes by Example
Chapter 13.Saving and Restoring the State of an Android Activity
Chapter 14.Understanding Android Views, View Groups and Layouts
Chapter 15. A Guide to the Android Studio Designer Tool
Chapter 16.Designing a User Interface using the Android Studio Designer Tool
Chapter 17.Creating an Android User Interface in Java Code
Chapter 18.Using the Android GridLayout Manager in Android Studio Designer
Chapter 19.Working with the Android GridLayout using XML Layout Resources
Chapter 20.An Overview and Example of Android Event Handling
Chapter 21.Android Touch and Multi-touch Event Handling
Chapter 22.Detecting Common Gestures using the Android Gesture Detector Class
Chapter 23.Implementing Custom Gesture and Pinch Recognition on Android
Chapter 24.An Introduction to Android Fragments
Chapter 25.Using Fragments in Android Studio – An Example
Chapter 26.Creating and Managing Overflow Menus on Android
Chapter 27.Animating User Interfaces with the Android Transitions Framework
Chapter 28.An Android Transition Tutorial using beginDelayedTransition
Chapter 29.Implementing Android Scene Transitions – A Tutorial
Chapter 30.Working with the Floating Action Button and Snackbar
Chapter 31.Creating a Tabbed Interface using the TabLayout Component
Chapter 32.Working with the RecyclerView and CardView Widgets
Chapter 33.An Android RecyclerView and CardView Tutorial
Chapter 34.Working with the AppBar and Collapsing Toolbar Layouts
Chapter 35.Implementing an Android Navigation Drawer
Chapter 36. An Android Studio Master/Detail Flow Tutorial
Chapter 37.An Overview of Android Intents
Chapter 38.Android Explicit Intents – A Worked Example
Chapter 39.Android Implicit Intents – A Worked Example
Chapter 40.Android Broadcast Intents and Broadcast Receivers
Chapter 41.A Basic Overview of Android Threads and Thread Handlers
Chapter 42.An Overview of Android Started and Bound Services
Chapter 43.Implementing an Android Started Service – A Worked Example
Chapter 44.Android Local Bound Services – A Worked Example
Chapter 45.Android Remote Bound Services – A Worked Example
Chapter 46.An Overview of Android SQLite Databases
Chapter 47.An Android TableLayout and TableRow Tutorial
Chapter 48.An Android SQLite Database Tutorial
Chapter 49.Understanding Android Content Providers
Chapter 50.Implementing an Android Content Provider in Android Studio
Chapter 51.Accessing Cloud Storage using the Android Storage Access Framework
Chapter 52.An Android Storage Access Framework Example
Chapter 53.Implementing Video Playback on Android using the VideoView and MediaController Classes
Chapter 54.Video Recording and Image Capture on Android using Camera Intents
Chapter 55.Making Runtime Permission Requests in Android 6.0
Chapter 56.Android Audio Recording and Playback using MediaPlayer and MediaRecorder
Chapter 57.Working with the Google Maps Android API in Android Studio
Chapter 58.Printing with the Android Printing Framework
Chapter 59.An Android HTML and Web Content Printing Example
Chapter 60.A Guide to Android Custom Document Printing
Chapter 61.Handling Different Android Devices and Displays
Chapter 62.Signing and Preparing an Android Application for Release
Chapter 63. Integrating Google Play In-app Billing into an Android Application
Chapter 64. An Overview of Gradle in Android Studio
Chapter 65. An Android Studio Gradle Build Variants Example