v. Introduction

Welcome to the first edition of Android Fundamentals by Tutorials, your comprehensive guide to mastering the essential elements of Android app development. In this book, you’ll journey through the intricacies of building robust and modern Android applications, gaining the skills necessary to create innovative and user-friendly experiences.

Android, born out of the relentless pursuit of innovation, has evolved into a powerhouse platform that runs billions of devices worldwide. As you delve into the pages of this book, you’ll uncover the core fundamentals of Android development through a blend of theoretical learning and hands-on exercises.

Your exploration’s foundation lies in the heart of Android Studio, the official integrated development environment (IDE) for Android app development. You’ll follow the process of setting up your development environment, navigating the tools and features of Android Studio, and laying the groundwork for your app-building journey.

But Android development is not just about code; it’s much more than that. It’s about crafting seamless and visually appealing user interfaces. Enter Jetpack Compose, a modern and intuitive UI toolkit that revolutionizes the way you design Android apps. You’ll learn how to leverage the power of declarative UI to create dynamic and responsive interfaces, keeping your users engaged and delighted.

As you ascend through the layers of app architecture, you’ll be introduced to two fundamental paradigms: the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) and the Model-View-Intent (MVI). Understanding these architectural patterns is crucial for building scalable and maintainable apps. You’ll explore best practices, design principles, and real-world examples to solidify your grasp on these essential concepts.

Of course, any good Android app requires network connectivity. You’ll walk through examples that use common third-party libraries for fetching network data over popular APIs. You’ll then take that data and display it on the screen using the now-familiar Jetpack Compose UI toolkit.

No Android app is complete without data storage, and this book equips you with the knowledge to handle it effectively. Dive into the realms of DataStore and Room Database, exploring how to manage app data with efficiency and precision. Whether it’s handling complex data structures or seamlessly persisting user preferences, you’ll emerge with the expertise to conquer the storage challenges that come your way.

Fasten your seatbelt as you embark on this thrilling expedition into the world of Android development. Whether you’re a novice looking to build your first app or an experienced developer aiming to refine your skills, Android Fundamentals by Tutorials is your trusted companion. Get ready to unlock the full potential of the Android platform and turn your app development dreams into reality. Let the adventure begin!

How to Read This Book

In this book, each chapter builds upon the previous chapter’s topic, so it’s good to read through the chapters sequentially. There are multiple app examples in this book that help guide you through the chapter topics.

The starter projects for each chapter will typically contain TODO statements, which the chapter will then go over in detail and explain what to do in those code sections. There also will be final projects available for each chapter, the results of which you can see at the end of the chapter.

This book is split into 3 main sections:

Section I: Introduction to Android Development

In this section, you’ll learn about the fundamentals of Android and Kotlin, the language that powers the platform. This section will walk you through setting up Android Studio and building your first app: Kodeco Chat. You’ll also learn about Gradle, Android’s build tool, and how to structure app projects to use some of Gradle’s powerful dependency management features.

Section II: Building a Robust Android App

Now that you have the Android development basics down, it’s time to take a deeper dive! In Section II, you’ll learn all about Android’s new UI toolkit: Jetpack Compose. As you learn about Compose, you’ll continue to iterate and build out a more UI rich Kodeco Chat application, complete with custom UI message components.

As you progress through this section, you’ll also learn about more advanced architecture patterns like MVVM and MVI and how you can organize and structure your code to use them. Good architecture allows you to scale up your project with minimal changes to your codebase.

Finally, toward the end of the section, you’ll start on a new Recipe Finder that dives into fetching data from an API and rendering that data onscreen.

Section III: Data Management

By this point, you’ve learned about Android development in Kotlin and applied that knowledge to building a couple robust applications. In Section III, you’ll go one step further, continuing on the Recipe Finder app to provide more feature improvements, like offline mode. You’ll learn about the different methods of data storage, including DataStore and RoomDB, and how you can use each in your apps.

Last but not least, you’ll learn about some advanced storage techniques like file access and securely encrypting the data you store.