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Showing posts from October, 2013

The basics of building an Android Application

The first thing that is important to understand as a developer is what really happens behind the scene when a user taps on an app icon. How does a developer gain access to the entry point of the application. For this post I will focus on the flow only. If you need to understand how to create your app then follow the simple instructions in this tutorial -  Building your first App . Identify MAIN activity When an app launches, the Android OS first looks into AndroidManifest.xml file to identify the MAIN activity. It looks for an activity tag containing intent-filter with name android.intent.action.MAIN. Start the APP Once the MAIN activity class is known, it then creates a new instance and calls onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) method. This method is the entry point to the application. Show the APP This is typically done by specifying the elements that a developer wants to display in a  layout file  stored inside res/layout subdirectory. Android makes it easy to refer to this fi

Android - Where to Start?

I am getting started with Android development. I hope to share my understanding of how to build apps and how things work in Android as I learn more. This is my first post about getting started. If you are looking for a starting point, you can easily get started by following Android online tutorials  or pickup one of the Android books such as Hello Android  , The busy coder's guide or The big nerd ranch guide . Next, to setup your development environment follow the instructions to install the Android Development Toolkit . The toolkit has a built-in emulator and so it is not necessary to buy an Android device, at least, at this time. You can get started by running your applications in the emulator.