Expert Android Programming Master skills to build enterprise grade Android applications Prajyot Mainkar BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI Expert Android Programming Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: September 2017 Production reference: 1270917 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-78646-895-6 www.packtpub.com Credits Author Copy Editor Prajyot Mainkar Dhanya Baburaj Reviewer Project Coordinator Nanik Tolaram Ritika Manoj Commissioning Editor Proofreader Smeet Thakkar Safis Editing Acquisition Editor Indexer Shweta Pant Rekha Nair Content Development Editor Graphics Aditi Gour Jason Monteiro Technical Editor Production Coordinator Ralph Rosario Shantanu Zagade About the Author Prajyot Mainkar is the Founder-Director of Androcid, a mobile app development company based out of Goa, India. He is an android developer with experience of working on Android development since Android's Froyo edition. Prajyot is also the chairman of Goa Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s IT committee. Androcid was one of the winners of Goa CM's Startup Award for the year 2017. Prajyot is one of the few Intel Innovators in the country and has been a speaker at more than 300 Android developer conferences across the globe, some of the prominent ones being Droidcon Greece and Android Developer Days In Turkey. Prajyot has always been passionate about teaching and was instrumental in building the Android ecosystem in India during the early stage of Android penetration in India by forming one of the premier Android communities in India--The Goa Android User's Group under the Google Developer community. He is passionate about teaching Android development and has been one of the drivers of introducing Android as curriculum at the Goa University, which became one of the earliest Indian-based universities to have the curriculum for Android development. Recently, Prajyot was awarded as the young entrepreneur of the year by Business Goa and one of the leading portals in India marked him as one of the top techies in India. He has been a mentor to more than 100 companies, and he is part of India’s one of the leading start up incubation centers--Startup Village--as a tech mentor of mobile development. Popularly known as Android Man of Goa, Prajyot is a professional technology blogger and a columnist on several portals and print media specially focusing on Smartphone trends. He considers exploring new places as one of his passions and loves watching tennis. He loves to play chess and tennis. Specialties:Android Developer,Android Consultancy,Android Programming, Mobile Startups, and Mobile app Development. Firstly, I would like to thank my parents, Mr. Prakash V Mainkar and Mrs. Shital P. Mainkar for inspiring me to write this book. Their constant motivation and support has always been the key in this book journey. I would also like to thank the Androcid Team (Mr. Laximan Chodankar and Mr. Vishal Vernekar) for always being there to support me, and without whom this book would quite possibly not have happened. The team brings out the best in you, and this book is just one such result. I would also like to thank all the mentors and teachers who have been part of my life. Their teachings have always been the key DNA for what I am today. About the Reviewer Nanik Tolaram works as senior Android platform engineer for BlocksGlobal in Australia, where he is responsible for developing Screener (screener.digital) and Lumin (mylumin.org). He is passionate about Android and is very active within both the local and international Android developer community--from talks and teaching, to writing articles for ODROID open source magazine (magazine.odroid.com). In his spare time, he loves tinkering with electronics and studying human psychology and behavior. He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his lovely wife and two beautiful boys. www.PacktPub.com For support files and downloads related to your book, please visit www.PacktPub.com. Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at [email protected] for more details. 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Table of Contents Preface 1 Chapter 1: Understanding the Gradle System 7 Stepping into the Gradle world 7 Adding Gradle to your app 13 Adding a new Gradle library 14 Adding a Gradle identifier 14 Adding as a module 16 Summary 19 Chapter 2: Exploring Android Studio Developer Tools 20 APK Analyzer 20 Reducing the APK file size with APK Analyzer 21 Understanding basic battery drain 22 Batterystats and Battery Historian 24 Memory Monitor 29 Wondering what the various causes of memory increase are? 30 Logcat 31 Summary 32 Chapter 3: Leap into the Android Support Library 33 The Android Support Library 33 v4 Support Library 37 v7 Support Library 38 Multidex Support library 40 v8 Support Library 40 v13 Support Library 40 Annotations Support Library 41 Design Support Library 41 Custom Tabs Support Library 41 Summary 41 Chapter 4: Google Play Services 42 The architecture 42 Google Maps 52 Summary 55