Lauren Darcey - Android Wireless Application Development Volume II: Advanced Topics

Volume II: Advanced Topics

Third Edition

Lauren Darcey
Shane Conder

Upper Saddle River, NJ Boston Indianapolis San Francisco
New York Toronto Montreal London Munich Paris Madrid
Cape Town Sydney Tokyo Singapore Mexico City

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and the publisher was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters or in all capitals.

The authors and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book, but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein.

The publisher offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases or special sales, which may include electronic versions and/or custom covers and content particular to your business, training goals, marketing focus, and branding interests. For more information, please contact:

U.S. Corporate and Government Sales
(800) 382-3419

For sales outside the United States, please contact:

International Sales

Visit us on the Web: informit.com/aw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file.

Copyright 2012 Lauren Darcey and Shane Conder

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. To obtain permission to use material from this work, please submit a written request to Pearson Education, Inc., Permissions Department, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458, or you may fax your request to (201) 236-3290.

Android is a trademark of Google, Inc. Pearson Education does not assert any right to the use of the Android trademark, and neither Google nor any other third party having any claim in the Android trademark have sponsored or are affiliated with the creation and development of this book.

Some figures that appear in this book have been reproduced from or are modifications based on work created and shared by the Android Open Source Project and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/).

ISBN-13: 978-0-321-81384-8
ISBN-10: 0-321-81384-7

Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at R.R. Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
First printing, July 2012

Editor-in-Chief
Mark Taub

Acquisitions Editor
Laura Lewin

Development Editor
Songlin Qiu

Managing Editor
Kristy Hart

Project Editor
Betsy Harris

Copy Editor
Deadline-Driven Publishing

Indexer
Lisa Stumpf

Proofreader
Paula Lowell

Technical Reviewers
Tony Hillerson
Douglas Jones
Ray Rischpater

Publishing Coordinator
Olivia Basegio

Multimedia Developer
Dan Scherf

Book Designer
Gary Adair

Senior Compositor
Gloria Schurick

This book is dedicated to ESC.

This book would never have been written without the guidance and encouragement we received from a number of supportive individuals, including our editorial team, coworkers, friends, and family. Wed like to thank the Android developer community, Google, and the Open Handset Alliance for their vision and expertise. Throughout this project, our editorial team at Pearson Education (Addison-Wesley) always had the right mix of professionalism and encouragement. Thanks especially to Trina MacDonald and Laura Lewin, Olivia Basegio, Songlin Qiu, and our crack team of technical reviewers: Doug Jones, Ray Rischpater, and Tony Hillerson, (as well as Dan Galpin, Tony Hillerson, Ronan Schwarz, Charles Stearns, Mike Wallace, and Mark Gjoel, who reviewed previous editions and incarnations of this book). Dan Galpin also graciously provided the clever Android graphics used for tips, notes, and warnings. Amy Badger must be commended for her wonderful waterfall illustration, and we also thank Hans Bodlaender for letting us use the nifty chess font he developed as a hobby project.

Lauren Darcey is responsible for the technical leadership and direction of a small software company specializing in mobile technologies, including Android, Apple iOS, Blackberry, Palm Pre, BREW, J2ME, and consulting services. With more than two decades of experience in professional software production, Lauren is a recognized authority in application architecture and the development of commercial-grade mobile applications. Lauren received a B.S. in computer science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

She spends her free time traveling the world with her geeky mobile-minded husband and daughter. She is an avid nature photographer. Her work has been published in books and newspapers around the world. In South Africa, she dove with 4-meter-long great white sharks and got stuck between a herd of rampaging hippopotami and an irritated bull elephant. Shes been attacked by monkeys in Japan, gotten stuck in a ravine with two hungry lions in Kenya, gotten thirsty in Egypt, narrowly avoided a coup dtat in Thailand, geocached her way through the Swiss Alps, drank her way through the beer halls of Germany, slept in the crumbling castles of Europe, and had her tongue stuck to an iceberg in Iceland (while being watched by a herd of suspicious wild reindeer).

Shane Conder has extensive development experience and has focused his attention on mobile and embedded development for the past decade. He has designed and developed many commercial applications for Android, iOS, BREW, Blackberry, J2ME, Palm, and Windows Mobilesome of which have been installed on millions of phones worldwide. Shane has written extensively about the mobile industry and evaluated mobile development platforms on his tech blogs. He is well-known within the blogosphere. Shane received a B.S. in computer science from the University of California.

A self-admitted gadget freak, Shane always has the latest smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. He can often be found fiddling with the latest technologies, such as cloud services and mobile platforms, and other exciting, state-of-the-art technologies that activate the creative part of his brain. He is a very hands-on geek dad. He also enjoys traveling the world with his geeky wife, even if she did make him dive with 4-meter-long great white sharks and almost got him eaten by a lion in Kenya. He admits that he has to take at least two phones with him when backpackingeven though there is no coverageand that he snickered and whipped out his Android phone to take a picture when Laurie got her tongue stuck to that iceberg in Iceland, and that he is catching on that he should be writing his own bio.

The authors have also published several other Android books, including Android Wireless Application Development