Learn Android Programming – For Beginners To Pro

Android is the most popular open source operating system for mobile devices like Smartphone and Tablet. This OS is based on Linux kernel which is currently developed by Google. At Google I/O 2014, it was revealed that more than one billion per month people actively uses Android. As of July 2015, Statista revealed Google play is the largest mobile App store which has over 1.6 million Apps and billions of application gets downloaded every year. Android programming is based on Java programming language so if you have basic understanding on Java programming then it will be a fun to learn Android application development.

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Prerequisite For Android Programming:

Before you begin Android programming below are the prerequisite needed:

JAVA:

Android programming is mostly done in JAVA language. So before you begin Android programming you must be comfortable with JAVA and OOPS concepts. If you are new to Android we recommend you to check out our JAVA for Android developer section where we have shared in-depth tutorial on JAVA.

XML:

Once you are done with JAVA the next thing you need is basic knowledge of XML for designing UI of Android App. Even though Android Studio has drag and drop for designing UI but still you will need to learn XML if you want your UI is highly user interactive. You can check out Design Android User Interface section to learn it.

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Android Programming Tutorials:

Below are the list of Android programming topics. Follow the link to read full tutorial:

Topics (Follow the link to read tutorial)	Description
Activity Lifecycle	Learn about Android Activity lifecycle like created, started, resumed, paused, stopped or destroyed.
Intent	Learn how Intent is used for communicating between the components of an Application and from one app to another
Shared Preference	Learn how primitive data is saved on Android device based on key-value pair
JSON Parsing	JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. It is structured, light weight, human readable and easy to parse. It’s a best alternative to XML when our android app needs to interchange data from server.
Toast & Custom Toast	In Android, Toast is used to display information for a period of time. It contains a message to be displayed quickly and disappears after specified period of time.
Internal Storage	In this tutorial we are going to learn about internal storage of data/files in Android App using example or you can say the primary memory of your phone.
External Storage	In this tutorial we gonna study about storage of data/files in android external storage or you can say the secondary memory/SD card of your phone.
Sqlite	SQLite is a Structure query base database, open source, light weight, no network access and standalone database. Android has built in SQLite database implementation.
AsyncTask	In Android, AsyncTask (Asynchronous Task) allows us to run the instruction in the background and then synchronize again with our main thread.
Splash Screen	Splash Screen is most commonly the first startup screen which appears when App is opened.
Volley	Volley is a HTTP library developed by Google and was first introduced during Google I/O 2013. This library is used to transmit data over the network.
Retrofit	Retrofit is a simple network library that used for network transactions. By using this library we can seamlessly capture JSON response from web service/web API.

 Android Material Design Tutorials With Examples

Android UI, Layout & Material Design Tutorial, With Examples

Creating an Android Virtual Device (AVD) in Android Studio

Android Material Design Tutorials With Examples

Material Design is a design language created for Google Android’s new OS which was announced in Summer 2014.  Since then it has become popular in designing and developing Android Apps. As per Google this language is based on paper and ink.

Android provides the following elements for you to build material design apps:

• A new theme
• New widgets for complex views
• New APIs for custom shadows and animations

Here our in-depth tutorial will teach how to design beautiful and user friendly Application using Android Material Design. All our tutorial will have practical example and step by step explanation of each topic.

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Prequisites For Leaning Android Material Design:

JAVA For Android Developer:

JAVA is a programming language which is most commonly used in Android App Development. Before you start learning Material Design you will need to learn Object Oriented Java. Check out our JAVA for Android Developer section to learn it.

Android UI Basics:

You will also need to be familiar with Android UI basics.

Android Studio:

Android Studio is the official IDE (integrated development environment) for developing Android Apps by Google. It is available for free download on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Check out our Android Studio guide to get started with it.

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Android Material Design Tutorials:

Below are the list of Material design topics. Follow the link to read full tutorial:

Topics (Follow the link to read tutorial)	Description
TextInputLayout / Floating Labels in EditText	TextInputLayout is a new element introduced in Design Support library to display the floating label in EditText.
TabLayout	TabLayout provides horizontal layout to display tabs on the screen. We can display more screens in a single screen using tabs.
NavigationDrawer	Navigation drawer is a side menu that helps us to organise the navigation inside our app. It is a uniform way to access different pages and information inside our app.
PercentRelativeLayout	PercentRelativeLayout in Android is a subclass of RelativeLayout that supports percentage based margin and dimensions for Views(Button, TextView or any other view).
Toolbar	In Android Toolbar is similar to an ActionBar(now called as App Bars). It is a Viewgroup that can be placed at anywhere in the Layout. We can easily replace an ActionBar with Toolbar.
PercentFrameLayout	In Android PercentFrameLayout is a subclass of FrameLayout that supports percentage based margin and dimensions for Views(Button, TextView or any other view).
RecyclerView As ListView	The RecyclerView is more flexible, powerful and a major enhancement over ListView.
RecyclerView As GridView	The RecyclerView is more flexible, powerful and a major enhancement over GridView.
RecyclerView As StaggeredGrid	It is used to show the items in staggered Grid (varying size)
CardView	In Android, CardView is another main element that can represent the information in a card manner with a drop shadow called elevation and corner radius which looks consistent across the platform.
Pull To Refresh / SwipeRefreshLayout	In Android App Pull To Refresh aka SwipeRefreshLayout is used whenever we need to refresh the content’s of a view via a vertical swipe gesture.
ViewPager	ViewPager in Android is a class that allows the user to flip left and right through pages of data. This class provides the functionality to flip pages in app.
Animation	The Animations Framework allows us to create visually attractive animations and transitions in our apps.

Android Studio Tutorial For Beginners

Android UI, Layout & Material Design Tutorial, With Examples

PHP 7 Comparison Operator

Android UI, Layout & Material Design Tutorial, With Examples

All user interface elements in an Android app are built using View and ViewGroup objects. A View is an object that draws something on the screen that the user can interact with. A ViewGroup is an object that holds other View (and ViewGroup ) objects in order to define the layout of the interface. Android UI designing can be done either in XML or programmatically in application. But the Android UI designer mostly prefer XML for defining UI because it separate the presentation from the code and makes easier to visualize, manage, edit and debug the App.

Here our in depth tutorial will teach you Android UI designing step by step starting with XML basic, layout, widgets and attributes with examples. Following it you will learn different UI Design techniques, patterns & principles and finally we will show you lots of examples where we will discuss designing of different Apps from scratch to finish.

 

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Prerequisites For Designing Android User Interface:

Android Studio And SDK:

Android Studio is the official IDE for developing Android App created by Google. It has a very simple layout editor which support drag and drop for designing UI where one can drag layout, widgets, text fields etc. and drop it on the Virtual mobile screen to design Android UI. It also has the properties option where one can easily fill attribute like color, text etc to give attractive and pretty look to UI. The Studio also has Text option where one can see the XML code of the UI and edit it.

If you are new to it then check our Android Studio guide

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Android Designing Tutorial:

New to Android UI? Begin from here.

Basics of XML In Android

Layout in Android:

Layout – Layout are used to define the actual User interface of application. It holds all the elements (i.e. views) or the tools that we want to use in application. For example, ImageView, Button,TextView and other UI elements.

Types Of Layout And Few Important ViewGroup In Android

1. Linear Layout
2. Relative Layout
3. Table Layout
4. FrameLayout
5. Absolute Layout

6. ConstraintLayout

7. WebView

8. ListView
9. GridView
10. Recycler View

Also Read: Nested Layout in Android

Adapter In Android:

Adapter – Adapter acts as a bridge between UI component and data source that helps us to fill data in UI component. It holds the data and send the data to an Adapter view then view can takes the data from the adapter view and shows the data on different views like as ListView, GridView, Spinner etc.

Different types of Adapter in Android:

1. BaseAdapter
2. SimpleAdapter
3. Custom SimpleAdapter
4. ArrayAdapter

Important Android UI Tutorials

List of all  Android UI tutorials

Also Read:

1. UI for Multiple Screens.

2. Responsive UI with ConstraintLayout.

3. Adding App Bar.

4. Showing pop up messages.

5. Creating custom layout.

6. Creating Backward-Compatible User Interface.

7. Implementing Accessibility.

8. Managing the System User Interface.

9. Creating Apps with Material Design.

Topics (Follow the link to read tutorial)	Description
ListView	It helps in displaying the data in the form of a scrollable list.
GridView	It display items in two dimensional scrolling grid (rows and columns), the grid items are not necessarily predetermined but they are automatically inserted to the layout using a ListAdapter.
ScrollView And Horizontal ScrollView	It is used to scroll the items in vertical direction and Horizontal ScrollView scroll the items in horizontal direction
Spinner	Spinner provides a quick way to select one value from a set of values. Android spinners are nothing but the drop down-list seen in other programming languages.
Custom Spinner	When we want to display a spinner item with image, text etc
TextView	It display text to the user
EditText	It provide an input or text field where user can enter something like his name details, phone number etc
Button	It is a push button which can be clicked, or pressed by the user to perform an action
ImageView	It is used to display an image file in application
ImageButton	It is used to display a normal button with a custom image in a button
CheckBox	It is a type of two state button either unchecked or checked in Android.
Switch	It is off/on button which indicate the current state of Switch. It is commonly used in selecting on/off in Sound, Bluetooth, WiFi etc.
RadioButton And RadioGroup	In Android, RadioButton are mainly used together in a RadioGroup. In RadioGroup checking the one radiobutton out of several radio button added in it will automatically unchecked all the others.
RatingBar	It is used to get the rating from the app user.
WebView	It is a view which is used to display the web pages in application.
AutoCompleteTextView	It is a view i.e similar to EditText, except that it displays a list of completion suggestions automatically while the user is typing.
MultiAutoCompleteTextView	MultiAutoCompleteTextView is similar to AutoCompleteTextView except that it can hold multiple string words value at single time
ProgressBar	It is used to display the status of work being done like analyzing status of work or downloading a file etc.
Timepicker	It is a widget used for selecting the time of the day in either AM/PM mode or 24 hours mode
DatePicker	It is a widget used to select a date by day, month and year
Calendar View	It is used for displaying Calendar and selecting dates
AnalogClock, DigitalClock And TextClock	AnalogClock is a two handed clock one for hour indicator and the other for minute indicator and DigitalClock & TextClock both looks like your normal digital watch on hand which displays the hours minutes and seconds in digital format
SeekBar	It is an extension of ProgressBar that adds a draggable thumb, a user can touch the thumb and drag left or right to set the value for current progress
ExpandableListView	It is a View that shows items in a vertically scrolling two level list
Chronometer	It implements a simple timer
ZoomControls	It display simple set of controls that is used for zooming and provides callback to register for events
CheckedTextView	It is an extension of normal TextView that supports the checkable interface and displays it
VideoView	It is used to display a video file
TabHost	It is a Container for tabbed window view. Whenever we need to enter or display a lot of information in one activity. A simple and effective method is to use tabs in your interface form which is done using TabHost in Android.
SearchView	It provide search user interface where users can enter a search query and then submit a request to search provider
SlidingDrawer	It is used to hide the content out of the screen and allows the user to drag a handle to bring the content on screen
TextSwitcher	It is used to animate a label(i.e. text) on screen
ViewSwitcher	It is used for switching between views which can hold only two child views for switching
ViewFlipper	ViewSwitcher can hold only two child views but ViewFlipper can holds two or more child views and show one at a time
ViewStub	It is a zero sized invisible View that can be used to lazily inflate layout resource at runtime
Gallery	It is a view used to show items in a center locked, horizontally scrolling list and user will select a view and then user selected view will be shown in the center of the Horizontal list
CountDownTimer	CountDownTimer in Android is used to set a countdown based on interval set by you and it will stop when the time has come in future.
Alert Dialog	Alert Dialog in an android UI prompts a small window to make decision on mobile screen. Sometimes before making a decision it is required to give an alert to the user without moving to next activity.
ProgressDialog	Android Progress Dialog is a UI which shows the progress of a task like you want user to wait until the previous lined up task is completed and for that purpose you can use progress dialog.
HTML in Android	In Android, many times while designing an application we might be in a situation where we would like to use HTML content and display in our App screen. It may be to display some static content like help, support, FAQ and others pages.

Creating an Android Virtual Device (AVD) in Android Studio

An Android Virtual Device (AVD) is a configuration that defines the characteristics of an Android phone, tablet, Android Wear, or Android TV device that you want to simulate in the Android Emulator. Before debugging and testing android application, you should create an android virtual device ( AVD ) to start a simulator. You can specify special configurations for your avd, and then start it for debugging and executing applications.

To create a new AVD, do one of the following:

• Select Tools > Android > AVD Manager.
• Click AVD Manager in the toolbar.

Both will Open the AVD Manager shown in figure below:

OR

Android Virtual Device Manager will be opened. After that Click on Create Virtual Device.

Now choose the Category, phone size and choose the pixels according to your requirement. After this click on Next button.

After that choose the SDK Version and Click on Next button. If you have various SDK Versions like Kitkat, Lolipop ,Marshmallow,Nougat and Oreo etc in your SDK then you can select one of them. Here we choose Nougat SDK Version. Click on the next.

After that Enter the AVD Name in Android Virtual Device and Click on Finish button. Here you can do customization to AVD which you are creating as per your requirement.

Click Finish and new AVD is created. To start it, click the green triangle button in AVD list Actions column. To edit it’s settings, click the green pencil button.

AVD will start in Emulator. Now you can run your App in this AVD.

I hope you find this blog post very helpful while creating AVD in Android Studio. Let me know in a comment if you have any questions regarding Android Studio. I will reply you ASAP.

 

 

 

 

Create/Start New Project In Android Studio

Objective:

The main objective of this tutorial is how to create a new project in Android Studio. And this tutorial is for those who are new to Android Studio.

To create a new project perform the following steps:

Step 1: Start and configure the project:

Firstly, open the Android Studio. You will see “Welcome to Android Studio” on your computer screen. After that you click on “Start a new Android Studio project”.

If you do have a project opened, click File > New > New Project.

After that you will see “Create Android Project” on your computer screen. Here enter the “Application name” , the “Company Domain” ( Company domain is used to uniquely identify the App. So two App with same Application name will have different company domain. e.g. I used here “sanikamal.ruatech.com”)and the project location in the text box and then Click Next button. If you want to use C++ and/or Kotlin code in your project, check the corresponding checkboxes to set up your project accordingly. You can always add C++ code and add Kotlin code later.

Step 2: Select form factors and API level:

After that you will see “Target Android Devices” on your computer screen and select the form factors your app will be run on. Select “Phone and Tablet” field and enter the “Minimum SDK” in the text box and then Click Next button. When you select Minimum SDK, Android studio will give you some active android devices percentage that will support your android application. Otherwise, you can also click on “Help me choose” button for more information about android platform versions.

Step 3: Add an activity:

This screen suggests you “Add an Activity to Mobile” first. If you don’t want to add any activity at starting, you can select Add no activity option. We selected Empty Activity.

If you have selected Phone and Tablet in option in the last screen then it will display the only phone related suggestions.

For example, select Google Maps Activity for google map project, Login Activity for User Login project etc.

Step 4: Configure your activity:

Here, you can customize your selected activity. You can change your Activity name from here. Enter the “Activity Name” in the text box and enter the “Layout Name” in the text box and then Click Finish button.

Activity Name – Name of JAVA file for programming

Layout Name – Name of XML file for designing UI

Android Studio now sets up your project and opens the IDE.

I hope you find this blog post very helpful while creating Android Project in Android Studio. Let me know in a comment if you have any questions regarding Android Studio. I will reply you ASAP.