Android Studio 2.3 Development Essentials – Android 7 Edition

Fully updated for Android Studio 2.3 and Android 7, 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 7 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 Layout Editor 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.

The key new features of Android Studio and Android 7 are also covered in detail including the new Layout Editor, the ConstraintLayout and ConstraintSet classes, constraint chains, direct reply notifications, Firebase remote notifications and multi-window support.

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. Using and Configuring the Android Studio AVD Emulator
Chapter 7. Testing Android Studio Apps on a Physical Android Device
Chapter 8. The Basics of the Android Studio Code Editor
Chapter 9. An Overview of the Android Architecture
Chapter 10. The Anatomy of an Android Application
Chapter 11. Understanding Android Application and Activity Lifecycles
Chapter 12. Handling Android Activity State Changes
Chapter 13. Android Activity State Changes by Example
Chapter 14. Saving and Restoring the State of an Android Activity
Chapter 15. Understanding Android Views, View Groups and Layouts
Chapter 16. A Guide to the Android Studio Layout Editor Tool
Chapter 17. A Guide to the Android ConstraintLayout
Chapter 18. A Guide to using ConstraintLayout in Android Studio
Chapter 19. Working with ConstraintLayout Chains and Ratios in Android Studio
Chapter 20. An Android Studio Layout Editor ConstraintLayout Tutorial
Chapter 21. Manual XML Layout Design in Android Studio
Chapter 22. Managing Constraints using Constraint Sets
Chapter 23. An Android ConstraintSet Tutorial
Chapter 24. An Overview and Example of Android Event Handling
Chapter 25. A Guide to using Instant Run in Android Studio
Chapter 26. Android Touch and Multi-touch Event Handling
Chapter 27. Detecting Common Gestures using the Android Gesture Detector Class
Chapter 28. Implementing Custom Gesture and Pinch Recognition on Android
Chapter 29. An Introduction to Android Fragments
Chapter 30. Using Fragments in Android Studio – An Example
Chapter 31. Creating and Managing Overflow Menus on Android
Chapter 32. Animating User Interfaces with the Android Transitions Framework
Chapter 33. An Android Transition Tutorial using beginDelayedTransition
Chapter 34. Implementing Android Scene Transitions – A Tutorial
Chapter 35. Working with the Floating Action Button and Snackbar
Chapter 36. Creating a Tabbed Interface using the TabLayout Component
Chapter 37. Working with the RecyclerView and CardView Widgets
Chapter 38. An Android RecyclerView and CardView Tutorial
Chapter 39. Working with the AppBar and Collapsing Toolbar Layouts
Chapter 40. Implementing an Android Navigation Drawer
Chapter 41. An Android Studio Master/Detail Flow Tutorial
Chapter 42. An Overview of Android Intents
Chapter 43. Android Explicit Intents – A Worked Example
Chapter 44. Android Implicit Intents – A Worked Example
Chapter 45. Android Broadcast Intents and Broadcast Receivers
Chapter 46. A Basic Overview of Threads and Thread Handlers
Chapter 47. An Overview of Android Started and Bound Services
Chapter 48. Implementing an Android Started Service – A Worked Example
Chapter 49. Android Local Bound Services – A Worked Example
Chapter 50. Android Remote Bound Services – A Worked Example
Chapter 51. An Android 7 Notifications Tutorial
Chapter 52. An Android 7 Direct Reply Notification Tutorial
Chapter 53. Integrating Firebase Support into an Android Studio Project
Chapter 54. An Android 7 Firebase Remote Notification Tutorial
Chapter 55. An Introduction to Android 7 Multi-Window Support
Chapter 56. An Android Studio Multi-Window Split-Screen and Freeform Tutorial
Chapter 57. An Overview of Android SQLite Databases
Chapter 58. An Android TableLayout and TableRow Tutorial
Chapter 59. An Android SQLite Database Tutorial
Chapter 60. Understanding Android Content Providers
Chapter 61. Implementing an Android Content Provider in Android Studio
Chapter 62. Accessing Cloud Storage using the Android Storage Access Framework
Chapter 63. An Android Storage Access Framework Example
Chapter 64. Implementing Video Playback on Android using the VideoView and MediaController Classes
Chapter 65. Video Recording and Image Capture on Android using Camera Intents
Chapter 66. Making Runtime Permission Requests in Android
Chapter 67. Android Audio Recording and Playback using MediaPlayer and MediaRecorder
Chapter 68. Working with the Google Maps Android API in Android Studio
Chapter 69. Printing with the Android Printing Framework
Chapter 70. An Android HTML and Web Content Printing Example
Chapter 71. A Guide to Android Custom Document Printing
Chapter 72. An Android Fingerprint Authentication Tutorial
Chapter 73. Handling Different Android Devices and Displays
Chapter 74. Signing and Preparing an Android Application for Release
Chapter 75. Integrating Google Play In-app Billing into an Android Application
Chapter 76. An Overview of Gradle in Android Studio
Chapter 77. An Android Studio Gradle Build Variants Example