Here is information from the slides from my presentation on Android that I gave at the Chicago Java Users Group on March 15, 2011. I think a lot of it is still valid.
The first slide was just the title.
2. The Clint Eastwood Slide
- The Good: Gives Java a shot in the ARM (**rimshot**) and the iPhone some competition
- The Bad: Fragmentation, 2 current releases, some people’s Reality Distortion Field is thicker than Kool Aid
- The Ugly: Potential legal issues, huge API (1504 classes in SDK), kind of clunky (575 of those are nested classes, and you will make some inner classes)
3. Android & Java
- It does not run Java, but you develop apps with Java
- Your Java bytecode gets translated into bytecode the Dalvik Virtual Machine can run
- Oracle’s Lawsuit: Big Mistake?
4. Anatomy of an App
- You get an Activity class
- /gen with R.java (created for you)
- /res/drawable
- /res/layout/main.xml (maps UI for the main Activity, usually made with a designer, other Activity classes get XML files as well)
- /res/values/strings.xml (gives ID’s and aliases for some variables)
- AndroidManifest.xml (what binds it all together)
5. Components
- Activities
- Services
- Content Providers
- Broadcast Receivers
- Intents
- Views
6. Activity
- Class android.app.Activity
- Each Activity represents a screen for the user
- An app can have multiple Activities, and must have a main Activity
- You must override the onCreate method
7. Services
- Class android.app.Service
- “A Service is an application component representing either an application’s desire to perform a longer-running operation while not interacting with the user or to supply functionality for other applications to use.”
- Kind of what it sounds like: Runs in the background
8. ContentProvider
- Class android.content.ContentProvider
- Used to send data between apps
- Data can be in files, RDBMS, or on a server
- Class uses URIs to send data
- Similar to REST
9. Broadcast Receiver
- Class android.content.BroadcastReceiver
- Used to receive messages sent via Intents
10. Intents
- Class android.content.Intent
- A class that other classes use to send messages to each other
- Not to be confused with android.os.Message
- Used by Activity classes, Services and BroadcastReceivers
- Asynchronous, loosely-coupled
11. Intents II
- Can be explicit (you specify what should respond to your Intent)
- Or implicit (the system decides how to handle it)
Then I showed screenshots of the SDK installation and went through building a quick app.
At one point I said that there needs to be a translator between Android and English. Each screen is handled by a class that extends “Activity” (why can’t they call it screen?) and instead of sending messages to each other or making requests, you send an Intent.
Image from Aurora Consurgens, a 15th century manuscript housed at Central Library of Zurich. Image from e-Codices. This image is assumed to be allowed under Fair Use.