Android Cookbook

Jump in and build working Android apps with the help of over 200 tested recipes contributed by more than three dozen developers.

Want to get started building applications for Android, the world’s hottest, fast-growing mobile platform? Already building Android applications and want to get better at it? This book brings together all the expert guidance—and code—you’ll need! Completely up-to-date to reflect the newest and most widely used Android SDKs, The Android Developer’s Cookbook is the essential resource for developers building apps for any Android device, from phones to tablets. Proven, modular recipes take you from the absolute basics to advanced location-based services, security techniques, and performance optimization. You’ll learn how to write apps from scratch, ensure interoperability, choose the best solutions for common problems, and avoid development pitfalls. Coverage includes: Implementing threads, services, receivers, and other background tasks Providing user alerts Organizing user interface layouts and views Managing user-initiated events such as touches and gestures Recording and playing audio and video Using hardware APIs available on Android devices Interacting with other devices via SMS, web browsing, and social networking Storing data efficiently with SQLite and its alternatives Accessing location data via GPS Using location-related services such as the Google Maps API Building faster applications with native code Providing backup and restore with the Android Backup Manager Testing and debugging apps throughout the development cycle Turn to The Android Developer’s Cookbook for proven, expert answers—and the code you need to implement them. It’s all you need to jumpstart any Android project, and create high-value, feature-rich apps that sell!

Jump in and build working Android apps with the help of more than 230 tested recipes. The second edition of this acclaimed cookbook includes recipes for working with user interfaces, multitouch gestures, location awareness, web services, and specific device features such as the phone, camera, and accelerometer. You also get useful info on packaging your app for the Google Play Market. Ideal for developers familiar with Java, Android basics, and the Java SE API, this book features recipes contributed by more than three dozen Android developers. Each recipe provides a clear solution and sample code you can use in your project right away. Among numerous topics, this cookbook helps you: Get started with the tooling you need for developing and testing Android apps Create layouts with Android’s UI controls, graphical services, and pop-up mechanisms Build location-aware services on Google Maps and OpenStreetMap Control aspects of Android’s music, video, and other multimedia capabilities Work with accelerometers and other Android sensors Use various gaming and animation frameworks Store and retrieve persistent data in files and embedded databases Access RESTful web services with JSON and other formats Test and troubleshoot individual components and your entire application

Over 90 recipes to build exciting Android applications with Flash, Flex, and AIR.

Over 80 hands-on recipes to unleash full potential for Xamarin in development and monetization of feature-packed, real-world Android apps About This Book Create a number of Android applications using the Xamarin Android platform Extensively integrate your Android devices with other Android devices to enhance your app creation experience A comprehensive guide packed with real-world scenarios and pro-level practices and techniques to help you build successful Android apps Who This Book Is For If you are a Xamarin developer who wants to create complete Android applications with Xamarin, then this book is ideal for you. No prior knowledge of Android development is needed, however a basic knowledge of C# and .NET would be useful. What You Will Learn Install and use Xamarin.Android with Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio Design an app's user interface for multiple device configurations Store and protect data in databases, files, and on the cloud Utilize lists and collections to present data to the user Communicate across the network using NFC or Bluetooth Perform tasks in the background and update the user with notifications Capture and play multimedia, such as video and audio, with the camera Implement In-App Billing and Expansion Files and deploy to the store In Detail Xamarin is used by developers to write native iOS, Android, and Windows apps with native user interfaces and share code across multiple platforms not just on mobile devices, but on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Developing apps with Xamarin.Android allows you to use and re-use your code and your skills on different platforms, making you more productive in any development. Although it's not a write-once-run-anywhere framework, Xamarin provides native platform integration and optimizations. There is no middleware; Xamarin.Android talks directly to the system, taking your C# and F# code directly to the low levels. This book will provide you with the necessary knowledge and skills to be part of the mobile development era using C#. Covering a wide range of recipes such as creating a simple application and using device features effectively, it will be your companion to the complete application development cycle. Starting with installing the necessary tools, you will be guided on everything you need to develop an application ready to be deployed. You will learn the best practices for interacting with the device hardware, such as GPS, NFC, and Bluetooth. Furthermore, you will be able to manage multimedia resources such as photos and videos captured with the device camera, and so much more! By the end of this book, you will be able to create Android apps as a result of learning and implementing pro-level practices, techniques, and solutions. This book will ascertain a seamless and successful app building experience. Style and approach This book employs a step-by-step approach to Android app creation, explained in a conversational and easy-to-follow style. A wide range of examples are listed to ensure a complete understanding of how to deploy competent apps on the Android market.

An easy-to-follow guide, full of hands-on examples of and real-world applications. Each recipe is explained and placed in context. If you want to learn how to create NFC-enabled Android applications, this is the book for you. Perhaps you already know a bit about Android application developments but have never used NFC, or perhaps you know a little about NFC android development but want some more advanced features and examples. In either case, this book will get you up and running quickly. You are expected to have Android programming knowledge.

Android continues to be one of the leading mobile OS and development platforms driving today's mobile innovations and the apps ecosystem. Android appears complex, but offers a variety of organized development kits to those coming into Android with differing programming language skill sets. Android Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach guides you step-by-step through a wide range of useful topics using complete and real-world working code examples. In this book, you'll start off with a recap of Android architecture and app fundamentals, and then get down to business and build an app with Google’s Android SDK at the command line and Eclipse. Next, you'll learn how to accomplish practical tasks pertaining to the user interface, communications with the cloud, device hardware, data persistence, communications between applications, and interacting with Android itself. Finally, you'll learn how to leverage various libraries and Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A) to help you perform tasks more quickly, how to use the Android NDK to boost app performance, and how to design apps for performance, responsiveness, seamlessness, and more. Instead of abstract descriptions of complex concepts, in Android Recipes, you'll find live code examples. When you start a new project, you can consider copying and pasting the code and configuration files from this book, then modifying them for your own customization needs. This can save you a great deal of work over creating a project from scratch!

A must-have collection of ready-to-use Android recipes! The popularity of Google Android devices is seemingly unstoppable and the Android 4 release offers, for the first time, a single OS solution for building both phone and tablet applications. With that exciting information in mind, veteran author Wei-Meng Lee presents you with 100 unique recipes that you can apply today in order to discover solutions to some of the most commonly encountered problems that exist in Android programming. Covering the scope of multiple Android releases up through Android 4, this reference features a task description, followed by the solution(s) available, and a standalone project file that illustrates the use of the recipe. Formatting each recipe to be standalone, Wei-Meng Lee allows you to jump into the relevant recipe to find a solution to specific challenges. Identifies and describes a programming task, provides a step-by-step solution, and presents a full-code solution ready for download Covers multiple Android releases Addresses such topics as user interfaces, telephony and messaging, networking, Google maps, location-based services, persisting data, leveraging hardware features, and more Android Application Development Cookbook is your solution to discovering...solutions!