Enterprise Android: Programming Android Database Applications for the Enterprise

Chapter 1

Developing for Android Tablets and Smartphones

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Getting your tools set up
• Testing your tools setup
• What a modern Android application looks like
• Introducing a concise application framework that works on all sizes of Android devices
• Exploring Android component lifecycles and the Android task model

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

Please note that all the code examples in this chapter are available at https://github.com/wileyenterpriseandroid/Examples.git and as a part of the book’s code download at www.wrox.com on the Download Code tab. At various points throughout the book, the authors refer to the “Examples” directory using a pseudo-variable called, “CODE”. Readers can either explicity set this value as a shell variable or can just keep in mind that the variable refers to the book example code directory.

This book is about best practices in handling data for enterprise application across the client and RESTful backend services, and this chapter gets you through the basics at a brisk pace while providing a framework, which is the starting point for the example code in this book. The advice in this chapter, especially the advice to pay attention to Android component lifecycles, will enable you to complete an Android coding project efficiently, without having to know everything about Android, and with a minimum of grief.

Many Android books were written before there were Android tablet devices, and before the APIs central to creating good ...