Android in Action, Third Edition

Android in Action

Android in Action, Third Edition is a comprehensive tutorial for Android developers. This fast-paced book puts you in the driver's seat—you'll master the SDK, build WebKit apps using HTML 5, and even learn to extend or replace Android's built-in features by building useful and intriguing examples.

Contents

preface
acknowledgments
about this book
about the cover illustration
Part 1 What is Android? The big picture
Chapter 1 Introducing Android
The Android platform
Understanding the Android market
The layers of Android
The Intent of Android development
Four kinds of Android components
Understanding the AndroidManifest.xml file
Mapping applications to processes
Creating an Android application
Android 3.0 for tablets and smartphones
Summary
Chapter 2 Android’s development environment
Introducing the Android SDK
Exploring the development environment
Building an Android application in Eclipse
Using the Android emulator
Debugging your application
Summary
Part 2 Exercising the Android SDK
Chapter 3 User interfaces
Creating the Activity
Working with views
Using resources
Exploring the AndroidManifest file
Summary
Chapter 4 Intents and Services
Serving up RestaurantFinder with Intent
Checking the weather with a custom URI
Checking the weather with broadcast receivers
Building a background weather service
Communicating with the WeatherAlertService from other apps
Summary
Chapter 5 Storing and retrieving data
Using preferences
Using the filesystem
Persisting data to a database
Working with ContentProvider classes
Summary
Chapter 6 Networking and web services
An overview of networking
Checking the network status
Communicating with a server socket
Working with HTTP
Web services
Summary
Chapter 7 Telephony
Exploring telephony background and terms
Phone or not?
Accessing telephony information
Interacting with the phone
Working with messaging: SMS
Summary
Chapter 8 Notifications and alarms
Introducing Toast
Placing your Toast message
Making a custom Toast view
Introducing notifications
Making a custom notification view
Introducing alarms
Summary
Chapter 9 Graphics and animation
Drawing graphics in Android
Creating animations with Android’s Graphics API
Introducing OpenGL for Embedded Systems
Introducing RenderScript for Android
Summary
Chapter 10 Multimedia
Introduction to multimedia and Stagefright
Playing audio
Playing video
Capturing media
Summary
Chapter 11 Location, location, location
Simulating your location within the emulator
Using LocationManager and LocationProvider
Working with maps
Converting places and addresses with Geocoder
Summary
Part 3 Android applications
Chapter 12 Putting Android to work in a field service application
Designing a real-world Android application
Mapping out the application flow
Application source code
Source code for managing jobs
Server code
Summary
Chapter 13 Building Android applications in C
Building Android apps without the SDK
Solving the problem with dynamic linking
What time is it? The DayTime Server
Daytime Client
Summary
part 4 The maturing platform
Chapter 14 Bluetooth and sensors
Exploring Android’s Bluetooth capabilities
Interacting with the SensorManager
Building the SenseBot application
Summary
Chapter 15 Integration
Understanding the Android contact model
Getting started with LinkedIn
Managing contacts
Keeping it together
Creating a LinkedIn account
Synchronizing to the backend with SyncAdapter
Wrapping up: LinkedIn in action
Summary
Chapter 16 Android web development
What’s Android web development?
Optimizing web applications for Android
Storing data directly in the browser
Building a hybrid application
Summary
Chapter 17 AppWidgets
Introducing the AppWidget
Introducing SiteMonitor
SiteMonitor application architecture
AppWidget data handling
Implementing the AppWidgetProvider
Displaying an AppWidget with RemoteViews
Configuring an instance of the AppWidget
Updating the AppWidget
Tying it all together with AndroidManifest.xml
Summary
Chapter 18 Localization
The need for localization
Exploring locales
Strategies for localizing an application
Leveraging Android resource capabilities
Localizing in Java code
Formatting localized strings
Obstacles to localization
Summary
Chapter 19 Android Native Development Kit
Introducing the NDK
Building an application with the NDK
Building the JNI library
Building the user interface
Integrating the NDK into Eclipse
Summary
Chapter 20 Activity fragments
Fragment lifecyle
Creating fragments and fragment layouts
Background fragments
The fragment manager
Fragment transactions
Fragment back stack
The Android Compatibility Package
Summary
Chapter 21 Android 3.0 action bar
Introducing the action bar
Overview of the ActionBar classes
Action bar display options
Action items
Removing, showing, and hiding the action bar
Action bar styling
Summary
Chapter 22 Drag-and-drop
The drag-and-drop classes
Drag-and-drop operations
The shadow builder
Drag events
Starting drag operations
Listening for drag-and-drop events
Responding to drag-start operations
Handling drop operations
Summary

appendix A Installing the Android SDK
appendix B Publishing applications
index