Expert Android Programming: Master skills to build enterprise grade Android applications

397 Pages·2017·21.983 MB·English

by  Prajyot Mainkar

Expert Android Programming
Master skills to build enterprise grade Android applications
Prajyot Mainkar
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Expert Android Programming
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First published: September 2017
Production reference: 1270917
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Credits
Author Copy Editor
Prajyot Mainkar Dhanya Baburaj
Reviewer Project Coordinator
Nanik Tolaram Ritika Manoj
Commissioning Editor Proofreader
Smeet Thakkar Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor Indexer
Shweta Pant Rekha Nair
Content Development Editor Graphics
Aditi Gour Jason Monteiro
Technical Editor Production Coordinator
Ralph Rosario Shantanu Zagade
About the Author
Prajyot Mainkar is the Founder-Director of Androcid, a mobile app development company
based out of Goa, India. He is an android developer with experience of working on Android
development since Android's Froyo edition. Prajyot is also the chairman of Goa Chamber of
Commerce & Industry’s IT committee. Androcid was one of the winners of Goa CM's
Startup Award for the year 2017.
Prajyot is one of the few Intel Innovators in the country and has been a speaker at more
than 300 Android developer conferences across the globe, some of the prominent ones being
Droidcon Greece and Android Developer Days In Turkey.
Prajyot has always been passionate about teaching and was instrumental in building the
Android ecosystem in India during the early stage of Android penetration in India by
forming one of the premier Android communities in India--The Goa Android User's Group
under the Google Developer community. He is passionate about teaching Android
development and has been one of the drivers of introducing Android as curriculum at the
Goa University, which became one of the earliest Indian-based universities to have the
curriculum for Android development.
Recently, Prajyot was awarded as the young entrepreneur of the year by Business Goa and
one of the leading portals in India marked him as one of the top techies in India. He has
been a mentor to more than 100 companies, and he is part of India’s one of the leading start
up incubation centers--Startup Village--as a tech mentor of mobile development.
Popularly known as Android Man of Goa, Prajyot is a professional technology blogger and a
columnist on several portals and print media specially focusing on Smartphone trends.
He considers exploring new places as one of his passions and loves watching tennis. He
loves to play chess and tennis.
Specialties:Android Developer,Android Consultancy,Android Programming,
Mobile Startups, and Mobile app Development.
Firstly, I would like to thank my parents, Mr. Prakash V Mainkar and Mrs. Shital P.
Mainkar for inspiring me to write this book. Their constant motivation and support has
always been the key in this book journey. I would also like to thank the Androcid Team
(Mr. Laximan Chodankar and Mr. Vishal Vernekar) for always being there to support me,
and without whom this book would quite possibly not have happened. The team brings out
the best in you, and this book is just one such result.
I would also like to thank all the mentors and teachers who have been part of my life. Their
teachings have always been the key DNA for what I am today.
About the Reviewer
Nanik Tolaram works as senior Android platform engineer for BlocksGlobal in Australia,
where he is responsible for developing Screener (screener.digital) and Lumin
(mylumin.org). He is passionate about Android and is very active within both the local and
international Android developer community--from talks and teaching, to writing articles for
ODROID open source magazine (magazine.odroid.com). In his spare time, he loves
tinkering with electronics and studying human psychology and behavior. He lives in
Sydney, Australia, with his lovely wife and two beautiful boys.
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Table of Contents
Preface
1
Chapter 1: Understanding the Gradle System
7
Stepping into the Gradle world 7
Adding Gradle to your app 13
Adding a new Gradle library 14
Adding a Gradle identifier 14
Adding as a module 16
Summary 19
Chapter 2: Exploring Android Studio Developer Tools
20
APK Analyzer 20
Reducing the APK file size with APK Analyzer 21
Understanding basic battery drain 22
Batterystats and Battery Historian 24
Memory Monitor 29
Wondering what the various causes of memory increase are? 30
Logcat 31
Summary 32
Chapter 3: Leap into the Android Support Library
33
The Android Support Library 33
v4 Support Library 37
v7 Support Library 38
Multidex Support library 40
v8 Support Library 40
v13 Support Library 40
Annotations Support Library 41
Design Support Library 41
Custom Tabs Support Library 41
Summary 41
Chapter 4: Google Play Services
42
The architecture 42
Google Maps 52
Summary 55