Asynchronous Android

Harness the power of multi-core mobile processors to build responsive Android applications

Overview

• Learn how to use Android’s high-level concurrency constructs to keep your applications smooth and responsive
• Leverage the full power of multi-core mobile CPUs to get more work done in less time
• From quick calculations to scheduled downloads, each chapter explains the available mechanisms of asynchronous programming in detail

In Detail

With more than a million apps available from Google Play, it is more important than ever to build apps that stand out from the crowd. To be successful, apps must react quickly to user input, deliver results in a flash, and sync data in the background. The key to this is understanding the right way to implement asynchronous operations that work with the platform, instead of against it. Asynchronous Android is a practical book that guides you through the concurrency constructs provided by the Android platform, illustrating the applications, benefits, and pitfalls of each.

Learn to use AsyncTask correctly to perform operations in the background, keeping user-interfaces running smoothly while avoiding treacherous memory leaks. Discover Handler, HandlerThread and Looper, the related and fundamental building blocks of asynchronous programming in Android. Escape from the constraints of the Activity lifecycle to load and cache data efficiently across your entire application with the Loader framework. Keep your data fresh with scheduled tasks, and understand how Services let your application continue to run in the background, even when the user is busy with something else.

Asynchronous Android will help you to build well-behaved apps with smooth, responsive user-interfaces that delight users with speedy results and data that’s always fresh, and keep the system happy and the battery charged by playing by the rules.

What you will learn from this book

• Understand Android’s process model and its implications on your applications
• Exercise multithreading to build well-behaved Android applications that work with the platform
• Apply and control concurrency to deliver results quickly and keep your applications responsive to user input
• Discover Android-specific constructs that make asynchronous programming easy and efficient
• Learn how to apply Android’s concurrency constructs to build smooth and responsive applications

Approach

Asynchronous Android is a step-by-step guide that builds a complete picture of the concurrency constructs available on the Android platform.

Who this book is written for

This book is for Android developers who want to learn about the advanced concepts of Android programming. No prior knowledge of concurrency and asynchronous programming is required. This book is also targeted towards Java experts who are new to Android.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Building Responsive Android Applications
Chapter 2: Staying Responsive with AsyncTask
Chapter 3: Distributing Work with Handler and HandlerThread
Chapter 4: Asynchronous IO with Loader
Chapter 5: Queuing Work with IntentService
Chapter 6: Long-running Tasks with Service
Chapter 7: Scheduling Work with AlarmManager