Ian F. Darwin - Android Cookbook

, takes you through the steps of setting up the Android development environment and building several simple applications of the well-known Hello, World type pioneered by Brian Kernighan.

, covers some of the differences in mobile computing that will hit developers coming from desktop and enterprise software environments, and talks about how mobile design (in particular, Android design) differs from those other environments.

Testing is often an afterthought for some developers, so we discuss this early on, in . Not so that youll skip it, but so that youll read and heed. We talk about unit testing individual components as well as testing out your entire application in a well-controlled way.

Android provides a variety of mechanisms for communicating within an application and across applications. In we discuss intents and broadcast receivers, services, AsyncTasks, and handlers.

Another communication mechanism is about allowing controlled access to data that is usually in an SQL database. In , we show you how to make an application that can be used by other applications through something as simple but ubiquitous (in Android) as the URL.

, covers a range of topics related to graphics, including use of the graphical drawing and compositing facilities in Android as well as using desktop tools to develop graphical images, textures, icons, and so on that will be incorporated into your finished application.

Every mobile app needs a GUI, so , covers the main ins and outs of GUI development for Android. Examples are given both in XML and, in a few cases, in Java-coded GUI development.

, covers all the pop-up mechanismsmenus, dialogs, and toastsand one that doesnt pop up but is also for interaction outside your applications window, Androids notification mechanism.

, focuses on one of the most important GUI components in Android, the ListView.

Android is rich in multimedia capabilities. , shows how to use the most important of these.

, shows how to save data into files, databases, and so on. And how to retrieve it later, of course.

Android started out as an operating system for mobile telephones. , shows how to control and react to the telephone device that is in most mobile devices nowadays.

Mobile devices are, for the most part, always-on and always-connected. This has a major impact on how people use them and think about them..

The now-ubiquitous Global Positioning System has also had a major impact on how mobile applications work. , discusses how to find your location, how to get map data from Google and OpenStreetMap, and how applications can be location-aware in ways that are just now being explored.

, talks about the sensors built into most Android devices and how to use them.

, talks about the low-energy very-local area networking that Bluetooth enables, going beyond connecting your Bluetooth headset to your phone.

Android devices are perhaps unique in how much control they give the developer. Some of these angles are explored in . Since Android is Linux-based, a few of the recipes in this chapter deal with traditional Unix/Linux commands and facilities.

In , we explore the use of other programming languages to write all or part of your Android application. Examples include C, Perl, Python, Lisp, and other languages.