Climbing Mount Android

Rajesh Vasa, 2011

Twitter: @rvasa
http://www.rvasa.com

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Mobile Eco-System

Content Providers
(Music/Video/Books)

Ad Networks App.
Distribution

Platform
Billing

Telephone Handset Cloud

Networks OEMs Infrastructure

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Android Eco-System

Content Providers
(Music/Video/Books) Google, Amazon

App.
Ad Networks ** Distribution

Google, Double Click

Platform Google Checkout
Android Billing

Google, Amazon

Telephone Handset Cloud

Networks (OEMs) Infrastructure

Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony ...

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Focus of this talk...

Content Providers
(Music/Video/Books) Google, Amazon

App.
Ad Networks ** Distribution

Google, Double Click Android Google Checkout

Platform Billing

Google, Amazon

Telephone Handset Cloud

ThisNetworks
talk will present a(OEMs)
developmentInfrastructure
perspective
Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony ...

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Talk Overview
• Devices

• What is Android?

• Development Tools

• The Android Way

• Anatomy of a Simple Android Application

• An Interactive Android Application

• Dealing with Multiple Activities

• Activity Life Cycle (the odd thing)

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Roadmap - Where are we?
• Devices

• What is Android?

• The Android Way

• Anatomy of a Simple Android Application

• An Interactive Android Application

• Dealing with Multiple Activities

• Activity Life Cycle (the odd thing)

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Android Device User Interaction

Android devices have

three key buttons
Menu

Back Home

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Vendors can add additional buttons

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There are variations in physical form

But all phones have Home, Menu, & Back Buttons

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Home Button...
• Typically, this will take you back to the Home
Screen of the phone

• Default behaviour ~ iPhone / iPad button

Home
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Back Button
• This will take you back to the previous screen

• If app. has only one screen, this will exit app.

Personal Opinion:
Back iPhone / iPad should
borrow this button

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Menu Button
• Shows a contextual menu (if one is available)

• Developers can write their own menus

• Quite handy (but, causes Usability issues)

• Low Discoverability

Menu (as open)

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Android for tablets is slightly different...

Action Bar

Where is the menu button?

Back, Home
(Buttons need not be physical in Android)
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Tablet Menu Icon Visibility is contextual
Menu

Sadly, menu position is not mandated (yuk?)

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Roadmap - Where are we?
• Devices

• What is Android?

• Development Tools

• The Android Way

• Anatomy of a Simple Android Application

• An Interactive Android Application

• Dealing with Multiple Activities

• Activity Life Cycle (the odd thing)

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What is Android?
• Android is a platform

• Operating System (with primitive API)

• Frameworks (incl. components and libraries)

Applications

Frameworks
Android
API
Operating System
(Customised Linux Kernel)

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Android
Programming languages: Java, C/C++

Image Source: http://developer.android.com

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Android is a bi-lingual platform
C/C++ Java

Image Source: http://www.tbray.org

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Most Android Code is in Java (but...)

≠
Android Java is not 100% Sun Java
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Android Java is different (in many ways)

No RMI
No Bytecode

No AWT / Swing UI

Different 2D/3D libs

Different Class Load Mechanism

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Roadmap - Where are we?
• Devices

• What is Android?

• Development Tools

• The Android Way

• Anatomy of a Simple Android Application

• An Interactive Android Application

• Dealing with Multiple Activities

• Activity Life Cycle (the odd thing)

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Development Tools
• Android SDK (Compiler and Emulator)

• Eclipse IDE + Android Plug-in

• Powerful debugger
• Visual UI Builder
• Ant (Build System)

Download from http://developer.android.com

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Eclipse IDE

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Eclipse IDE - Graphical UI Editor

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Android Emulator

Permits checking Portrait

and Landscape views

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Emulator is nice .. but phone is better
• The emulator runs the Android O/S (you can
run any version: 1.6 to 3.0)

• Emulates the phone hardware (like VM Ware)

• Emulator does not have sensors (e.g. GPS,

Gyro, Accelerometer, Cell phone etc.)

• Itevents
however offers ways to simulate these

• make a phone call to it

So, I can send an SMS to the emulator or

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Emulators Vs Simulator
• iOS offers a simulator

• Android has gone down the emulator path

• Trade-offs (pros and cons),

• Simulators start-up faster, good enough

• Emulators allow checking against rel. 1.6 of

the O/S easily + closer to phone hardware

• Emulators and Simulators cannot mimic real

CPU speed, disk speed, network speed etc.
(yet!)

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If your Java is rusty

Free e-Book: http://www.mindview.net/Books/TIJ/

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Roadmap - Where are we?
• Devices

• What is Android?

• Development Tools

•The Android Way

• Anatomy of a Simple Android Application

• An Interactive Android Application

• Dealing with Multiple Activities

• Activity Life Cycle (the odd thing)

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The Android Way

Convention

Configuration

Development is organised around a few conventions

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Android Project Structure (convention)
•Source code (src)
•Generated code (gen)
•Resources (res)
•Images (drawable)
•Layout of app (layout)
•Constants/Strings (values)

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Needs Resources @Multiple Resolutions
Convention

High

Low

Medium

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Roadmap - Where are we?
• Devices

• What is Android?

• Development Tools

• The Android Way

• Anatomy of a Simple Android Application

• An Interactive Android Application

• Dealing with Multiple Screens (Activities)

• Activity Life Cycle (interesting design choice)

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A Simple Android App.

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What is involved?
• Place UI controls (Text and Image)

• Layout the controls

• Centre text
• Make text large font
• Display Image to take up all space

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Each Screen is an Activity
• Android app. is made up of Activities

Activity

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 Views are Android’s Key UI Building Block
• We need two views on the Activity

TextView

ImageView

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 Views are Placed inside a View Group
• Different types of pre-defined layouts

• Linear, Relative, Table, Frame etc..

View Group

a.k.a Layout

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Android App. - Building Blocks

Activity Layout Views

(View Group)

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Separation of Concerns in Android

Presentation Functionality

Layout Definition Activity Class

(main.xml)
Event Handling, I/O ...

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UI (Layout) Definition
• Layout definition is generally in an XML file

• Hand coded or Visual Editor

• Can be also be done in Java Code (yuk!)
Layout Definition XML File

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Android Offers a number of UI Controls
• Offers all standard controls and lot more...

Progress
These are
a small
subset of
available
controls
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View Groups and Layouts
• Android offers the following View Groups,

• Linear Layout (Horizontal or Vertical)

• Absolute Layout (You set X, Y for each View)

• Table Layout (Rows and Columns)

• Relative Layout ( )
Position relative to other Views

• Frame Layout (Show only one view at a time)

• Scroll View (Permits scrolling of the screen)

•View Groups can be nested

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Generated Code, Layout & Resources
• How did Australia image get into the App.?

• How did we set the text to “Australia”?

• Conventions
• Layout Defined in /layout/main.xml
• Resources Placed in /res/drawable-*
• String values defined in/values/strings.xml

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Resources

Resources in “res”

Convention
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Resources are given a unique ID

A unique reference id
to resources is
generated by the
Android SDK tools

Convention
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Resources and Generated IDs

Generated Code

static final int australia=0x7f020000;

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A Reference to Layout also Generated

All References are Integers

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Identifiers are used to access resources
This is the Activity Class

Reference to the layout

(Android Runtime will Render this Layout)
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Layout is Referred to from Java Code
Activity Activity Class (Java)

View Group
(Layout)

Layout Definition
(main.xml)

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Who writes the Activity code?

This block of code is created by IDE/SDK

when we create new Android project
You can also write you own

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Activity Creation

Method called (by Application Launcher)

when App is first launched

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Activity Creation - Layout Rendering

Method call will pass the reference to the layout

that needs to be rendered on the screen
(“Rendering” is a two-pass process: measure and draw)
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What is the “root” Activity?
• How does Android know which Activity to
create first?

Answer: Application Manifest File

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Application Manifest File
Application Icon Reference

Activity Name Category

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Application Manifest File

Category indicates that it can be launched

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Application Manifest File

Main action indicates that it is the starting point

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Layouts and String Information
• How did we set the text to “Australia”

String constant

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Using Graphical Resources
• How did the Australia image get into layout?

Layout can refer to resources

@drawable is a special tag
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What is it with the @ tag?
• Constant Resources in Android can be
referred using the “@” tag in XML layout

• Example: @drawable, @string ...

@drawable/australia

@drawable/bots

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@ Tag and Multiple Screen Resolutions
• Dealing with multiple screen resolutions

@drawable/icon

Android Runtime decides best resource to use based on

hardware capabilities
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Significance of hdpi/ldpi/mdpi

Different resolution images

High-Res, 240 dpi screen

Low-Res, 120 dpi screen

Med-Res, 160 dpi screen

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Roadmap - Where are we?
• Devices

• What is Android?

• Development Tools

• The Android Way

• Anatomy of a Simple Android Application

• An Interactive Android Application

• Dealing with Multiple Screens (Activities)

• Life Cycle & interesting design choices

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Building an App with Simple Interaction
• Temperature Conversion (C -> F)

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Views

TextView

EditText
Button

TextView

4 Views (UI components) using a Linear Layout

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Linear Layout (View Group)

main.xml
(Layout)

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View Identifiers
• We need a way to identify components that
we created in the layout

• E.g. To read input data from the field

@+id TAG creates new identifiers

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UI Interaction Handling Pattern
• Component.setOn......Listener ( handler )

• E.g. button.setOnClickListener
• Handler is an anonymous inner class

• On...Listener handler = new On....Listener() {}

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UI Interaction Handling Pattern
The View identifiers
are defined in XML

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Roadmap - Where are we?
• Devices

• What is Android?

• Development Tools

• The Android Way

• Anatomy of a Simple Android Application

• An Interactive Android Application

• Dealing with Multiple Screens (Activities)

• Life Cycle & interesting design choices

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Wiring up Multiple Activities
Contact List Activity Contact Details

Select

Back

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Activities are Stacked in Android
• All current activities are placed on a Stack
• Newly started activities come into foreground

Foreground/Active

Contact Details
Back button will
Background/
pop top most starts
Paused
activity from stack Contact List

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Activities are like mini-processes
• Android activities have their own life cycle

• Asynchronous Messaging
Communication between Activities is done by

message
Contact List Contact Details

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Async. messaging called “Intents”
intent
Contact List Contact Details

Activities communicate with each other via Intents

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Async. messaging called “Intents”

Activity-X Photo Viewer

view photo
intent

You can send a general purpose message (intent), all

applications capable of handling that Intent will respond

Framework prescribes conventions for common intents

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Roadmap - Where are we?
• Devices

• What is Android?

• Development Tools

• The Android Way

• Anatomy of a Simple Android Application

• An Interactive Android Application

• Dealing with Multiple Screens (Activities)

•Life Cycle (& interesting design choices)

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Android Activities are Managed by O/S

Application
Activities have a
parent application

Activity-A

Activity-B

Activity-C
Activity has Life Cycle
Application is NOT managed
directly by the O/S
Life Cycle is Managed by Android Framework
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 Android Activity Life Cycle

Activity is re-started when

orientation changes

Developers have to save

and retrieve state if
orientation changes

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Security -- Android Devices

has
User UID (User ID)
also has determines

Android File System Access

Application Permissions

The UID is generated at install time based on

the signature and package name

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A Short Plug!!!

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Mobile Development @ Swinburne
• HIT8328 - Software Development for
Mobile Devices
• Android focused
• HIT8329 - Creating Data Driven Mobile
Applications
We Offer
• iOS focused Options to Study
• Portfolio Based Assessments Just One Subject
• We do not just cover API -- there is a strong
conceptual foundation (prepare you to learn)

Teaching material will be available openly shortly

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Mobile Development @ Swinburne
• HIT8328 - Software Development for
Mobile Devices

•Applications
HIT8329 - Creating Data Driven Mobile

Teaching material will be available

under an open license shortly

Follow @rvasa or @swinfict for update

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