Application Development with Android

Operating System

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What is Android ?

• ANDROID is one of the most widely used mobile OS these

days.

• Is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based

on the Linux kernel

• Designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such

as smartphones and tablets.

• Android is open source, meaning developers can modify

and customize the OS for each phone

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• Introduced by open handset alliance (OHA) in
Nov,2007

• The Android platform is Google Inc.'s open and free

software stack that includes an
– operating system,
– middleware and also
– key applications for use on mobile devices, including
smartphones.
NB: Android is the nick name of Andy Rubin given by
coworkers because of his love to robots.
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 Why Android ?

➢ Android powers hundreds of millions of

mobile devices in more than 190 countries
around the world.
➢ It's the largest installed base of any mobile
platform and growing fast.
➢ Every day more than 1 million new Android
devices are activated worldwide. 4
• A flexible Gradle-based build system

• A fast and feature-rich emulator

• A unified environment where you can develop for all

Android devices

• Instant Run to push changes to your running app

without building a new APK

• Code templates and GitHub integration to help you

build common app features and import sample code
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• Extensive testing tools and frameworks

• Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version

compatibility, and other problems

• C++ and NDK support

• Built-in support for Google Cloud Platform, making it

easy to integrate Google Cloud Messaging and App
Engine

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Features of Android Operating System
• General • Connectivity
– Messaging : SMS, MMS Bluetooth
– Web browser: chrome tethering
– Voice based features • Media
– Multi-touch Streaming media support
Media support: WAV, JPEG,
– Multitasking
PNG, GIF, MP3, WEBM
– Screen capture External storage: USB HDDs,
– Tv recording FAT32
– Video calling • Hardware support:
– accessibility video cameras, touchscreens,
GPS, accelerometers, gyrosco
pes, barometers,
magnetometers, 7
Categories of Android applications

There are many android applications in the market. The

top categories are:
• Entertainment
• Tools
• Communication
• Productivity
• Personalization
• Music and Audio
• Social
• Media and Video
• Travel and Local etc.
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Android Architecture

• Categorized into Five parts:-

1. Linux kernel

2. Native libraries (middleware)

3. Android Runtime

4. Application Framework

5. Applications

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1) Linux kernel
• It is the heart of android architecture that exists at the
root of android architecture.
• Linux kernel is responsible for device drivers, power
management, memory management, device
management and resource access.
2) Native Libraries
• On the top of linux kernel, their are Native
libraries such as WebKit, OpenGL, FreeType, SQLite,
Media, C runtime library (libc) etc.
• The WebKit library is responsible for browser support,
SQLite is for database, FreeType for font support,
Media for playing and recording audio and video
formats.
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3) Android Runtime
• In android runtime, there are core libraries and DVM (Dalvik
Virtual Machine) which is responsible to run android application.
DVM is like JVM but it is optimized for mobile devices. It
consumes less memory and provides fast performance.
4) Android Framework
• On the top of Native libraries and android runtime, there is
android framework. Android framework includes Android
API's such as UI (User Interface), telephony, resources, locations,
Content Providers (data) and package managers. It provides a
lot of classes and interfaces for android application
development.
5) Applications
• On the top of android framework, there are applications. All
applications such as home, contact, settings, games, browsers are
using android framework that uses android runtime and libraries.
Android runtime and native libraries are using linux kernal.
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Android Core Building Blocks/Application Components

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Activity
• An activity is a class that represents a single screen
with a user interface, in-short Activity performs
actions on the screen.
• It is like a Frame in AWT
• For example, an email application might have one
activity that shows a list of new emails, another
activity to compose an email, and another activity
for reading emails.
• An activity is implemented as a subclass
of Activity class as follows

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Intent
• Intent is used to invoke components. It is mainly
used to:
– Start the service
– Launch an activity
– Display a web page
– Display a list of contacts
– Broadcast a message
– Dial a phone call etc.

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Service

• Service is a background process that can run for a long

time.

• A service does not provide a user interface.

• For example, play music in the background while the

user is in a different application

• A service is implemented as a subclass of Service class

as follows

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Content Provider
• Content Providers are used to share data between the
applications.
• A content provider component supplies data from one
application to others on request. Such requests are
handled by the methods of the ContentResolver class.
• You can store the data in the file system, an SQLite
database, on the web, or any other persistent storage
location your application can access.
• Through the content provider, other applications can
query or even modify the data (if the content provider
allows it).
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Broadcast receivers

• A broadcast receiver is a component that responds

to system-wide broadcast announcements.
• Many broadcasts originate from the system
• for example, a broadcast announcing that the
screen has turned off, the battery is low, or a
picture was captured. Applications can also initiate
broadcasts.

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Fragment
• Fragments are like parts of activity. An activity can
display one or more fragments on the screen at the
same time.
AndroidManifest.xml
• It contains information's about activities, content
providers, permissions etc.
• It is like the web.xml file in Java EE.

Install Android
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Android Virtual Device (AVD)

Android Virtual Device (AVD)

• It is used to test the android application without
the need for mobile or tablet etc. It can be created
in different configurations to emulate different
types of real devices.
• Android Emulator is used to run, debug and test
the android application. If you don't have the real
device, it can be the best way to run, debug and
test the application.

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Android Emulator Quick-Start Guide
• Android Virtual Device (AVD)
– Eases the development process by providing an option
to test mobile applications on various virtual devices.
• So lets see how to create a new emulator to
test our application

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Create a new Emulator
• Open Android Studio and start AVD manager located
in Tools > AVD Manager

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Con’t….
• The AVD Manager will load the list of already installed
system images (if any)
• provide you an option to create new emulator
via Create Virtual Device button

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Con’t…
• Select Hardware screen. A list of device definitions will
load. Choose the preferred device from the Phone tab
and press Next.

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Con’t…
• Then you get list of available system images
• To be able to create an emulator, the system image
must be downloaded locally.
• Press Download to obtain the image

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Con’t…
• Once the system image is successfully downloaded and
unzipped, press Finish.

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Con’t…
• The System Image screen will appear again with the
downloaded system image. Select the system image
and press Next.

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Con’t…
• The final configuration screen will load. When all
settings are set and ready press Finish.

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Con’t…
• The newly created Android Virtual Device is now
listed in the AVD Manager.
• Select the system image and press the green arrow to
the right to manually start the emulator.

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Android DDMS Quick-Start Guide
• The Dalvik Debug Monitor Server (DDMS) is a
debugging tool provided with the Android Software
Development Kit (SDK).
• Developers use DDMS to provide a window into the
emulator or the actual device for debugging purposes
as well as file and process management.
• It’s a blend of several tools: a task manager, a profiler,
a file explorer, an emulator console, and a logging
console.
• If you use the Android IDE, the DDMS tool is tightly
integrated with your development environment as a
perspective.
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Android Debug Bridge Quick-Start Guide
• Android Debug Bridge, is a command-line utility
included with Google's Android SDK.
• can control your device over USB from a computer,
copy files back and forth, install and uninstall apps,
run shell commands, and more
• Android Debug Bridge (adb) is a versatile command-
line tool that lets you communicate with a device.
• It is a client-server program that includes three
components:
• Client
• Daemon
• Server
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Con’t…
– A client, which sends commands. The client runs on
your development machine.
– A daemon (adbd), which runs commands on a
device. The daemon runs as a background process
on each device.
– A server, which manages communication between
the client and the daemon. The server runs as a
background process on your development machine
• Android Studio does not contain ADB, you
need Android SDK for it (it is installed on first run
of Android Studio 0.9.x and newer).
• ADB is located in sdk\platform-tools .
• It's possible to add to PATH in Windows and use Terminal
inside Android Studio only by command:
adb shell and after use get root shell.
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Enable adb debugging on your device
• Enable USB debugging in the device system settings,
under Developer options.
• On Android 4.2 and higher, the Developer options
screen is hidden by default. To make it visible, go to
Settings > About phone and tap Build number seven
times.
• You can now connect your device with USB.
• You can verify that your device is connected by
executing adb devices from the android_sdk/platform-
tools/ directory.
• If connected, you'll see the device name listed as a
"device."
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Android Studio IDE Tips and Tricks

• Magic security check : to follow the standard IDE

recommendations while coding!
• Quick feature search: Ctrl+Shift+A
• Reveal usage: Alt+F7[to know where a certain
variable is used, Press Escape when you’re done]
• Keep the log on application crash
• Code without distractions: View → Appearance →
Enter Distraction Free Mode, in which the editor will
go full screen
• Auto indent stuff: Pasted code from somewhere Simply
press Ctrl+Alt+I
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Con’t…

• Follow a consistent code style:

– Preferences → Code Style → Java and create your own style
that the IDE can enforce.
• Get better with Git
• Count the methods:
– Android Methods Count
• Convert strings to resources:
– Alt+Enter, and simply enter a resource name to finish the
process!

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Activating Components
• A unique aspect of the Android system design is
that any application can start another application’s
component.
• Three of the four component types—activities,
services, and broadcast receivers—are activated by
an asynchronous message called an intent.

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Project Structure

• Each project in Android Studio contains one or more

modules with source code files and resource files.
– Android app modules
– Library modules
– Google App Engine modules
• By default, Android Studio displays your project files
in the Android project view.

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Con’t…

• All the build files are visible at the top level

under Gradle Scripts and each app module contains
the following folders:
– manifests: Contains the AndroidManifest.xml file.
– java: Contains the Java source code files, including
JUnit test code.
– res: Contains all non-code resources, such as XML
layouts, UI strings, and bitmap images.

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The Manifest File
• Your application must declare all its components in
this file, which must be at the root of the
application project directory.
• The manifest does a number of things in addition
to declaring the application's components, such as:
– Identify any user permissions the application requires
– Declare the minimum API Level required by the
application
– Declare hardware and software features used or
required by the application
– API libraries the application needs to be linked against

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 Declaring Components
• The primary task of the manifest is to inform the system
about the application's components. For example, a
manifest file can declare an activity as follows:

• Activities, services, and content providers that you include

in your source but do not declare in the manifest are not
visible to the system and, consequently, can never run.
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Con’t
• Android Projects
– An application project is the main type of project and the
contents are eventually built into an .apk file that you install
on a device.
• Test Projects
– These projects contain code to test your application projects
and are built into applications that run on a device.
• Library Projects
– These projects contain shareable Android source code and
resources that you can reference in Android projects.
– Library projects cannot be installed onto a device, however,
they are pulled into the .apk file at build time.

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res
• Contains application resources, such as
– drawable files,
– layout files, and string values

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Security
• The Android operating system is a multi-user Linux
system in which each application is a different user.
• Each process has its own virtual machine (VM), so
an application's code runs in isolation from other
applications.
• An application can request permission to access
device data such as the user's contacts, SMS
messages, the mountable storage (SD card),
camera, Bluetooth, and more.
• All application permissions must be granted by the
user at install time.
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Build Process

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Android Versions

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Thank You

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