Practical Android Projects - Jordon, Greyling - Apress (2011).pdf - TUTORIALE - Android_NEW

Building cool scripts, apps, and games

for Android Smartphones

Practical

Android Projects

Lucas Jordan | Pieter Greyling

For your convenience Apress has placed some of the front

matter material after the index. Please use the Bookmarks

and Contents at a Glance links to access them.

Contents at a Glance

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Contents .......................................................................................................... v

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About the Authors ........................................................................................... x

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About the Technical Reviewer........................................................................ xi

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Acknowledgments ......................................................................................... xii

Preface ......................................................................................................... xiii

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Chapter 1: Android Fundamentals................................................................... 1

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Chapter 2: Development Tools in Practice .................................................... 49

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Chapter 3: Roll Your Own Android Scripting Environment .......................... 105

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Chapter 4: Embedding Lua in Android Applications .................................... 155

Chapter 5: Introducing SL4A: The Scripting Layer for Android ................. 193

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Chapter 6: Creating a GUI with HTML/JavaScript and AIR .......................... 221

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Chapter 7: Using REST with Facebook and Twitter ..................................... 251

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Chapter 8: Using the Google App Engine with Android................................ 275

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Chapter 9: Game Development: Graphics .................................................... 311

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Chapter 10: Game Development: Animation ................................................ 341

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Chapter 11: App Inventor ............................................................................ 361

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Index ............................................................................................................ 387

Chapter

Android Fundamentals

The Android platform is a very exciting yet relatively new player in today’s mobile device

market. Beyond rating very highly in the number of cool features per device, Android-

enabled smartphones are currently enjoying the highest percentage sales growth rate in

the mobile industry.

According to Gartner Research, 1 worldwide sales of Android-based smartphones to end

users have jumped from the number 6 spot in 2009 to number 4 by the end of the first

quarter of 2010. This level of growth is expected to continue. In fact, Gartner has

predicted that Android will become the number 2 worldwide mobile operating system in

2010 and will challenge Symbian for the number 1 position by 2014. 2

We want to share with you some of the enthusiasm we have for this truly remarkable

development platform. Throughout the course of this book, we will attempt to do this by

showing the wide range of opportunities available at your fingertips when you choose to

develop Android applications.

Perhaps you are reading this book in order to gain more background understanding of

the Android platform. Perhaps you plan to roll up your sleeves and join us in running and

playing with the projects in the emulator or your own device. We want to get you up and

running quickly and provide you with sufficient understanding of the Android platform

and Android Development Kit (ADK) development environment to have success with

your goals.

With those goals in mind, this chapter aims to be as practical an introduction to Android

development as possible. It also strives to cover a broad spectrum of required

conceptual and theoretical background material in a concise and to-the-point manner.

We will start with a short description of the Android platform and then jump straight into

coverage of the installation of the Android SDK and supporting development tools. To

fully round out our SDK setup study, we embark on a step-by-step test drive that

1 From Gartner press release: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013

2 From the Gartner press release: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1434613

CHAPTER 1: Android Fundamentals

involves generating a bare-bones Android project and getting the resulting skeleton

Android application up and running in the Android emulator.

The next order of business will be a tour of the Android platform architecture. Here we

will describe the Android platform stack; Android component architecture; and Dalvik,

the Android runtime. With this knowledge in hand, we then cover working with the Java

IDEs Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition; plus spend some time

learning how to equip them with Android programming capabilities via plugins.

This means we have a lot of ground to cover, so let's get started.

What Is Android?

In a nutshell, Android is an operating system targeted at mobile hardware such as

phones and other constrained computing devices such as netbooks and tablet

computers.

The concept and platform was the brainchild of Android Inc., a small startup company

from Palo Alto, California, that was acquired by Google in 2005. Its stated goal was to

create a small, stable, flexible, and easily upgraded operating system for handsets that

would be highly attractive for device manufacturers and telephony carriers.

Android platform releases 1.x through 2.x are aimed primarily at smartphone devices,

whereas it is reported that Android release 3.x will be the first operating platform

specifically designed with high-end support for tablet computers.

The Android platform was originally unveiled in November 2007. The unveiling coincided

with the announcement of the formation of the Open Handset Alliance, a group of

companies that share the goal of promoting open standards for mobile device platforms

such as Android.

In October 2008, Android was released under the Apache 2.0 open-source license. 3 This

and the flexible component-based design of the platform present innovative and cost-

effective opportunities for manufacturers and software developers alike. We aim to

showcase some of these distinguishing platform capabilities during the course of this

book.

Installing the Android SDK

We will start by installing the core Android SDK and tools. Our aim is to get the Android

emulator with our own simple application up and running on an Android Virtual Device

(AVD) as soon as possible. The experience gained will then serve as a basis for further

discussion.

3 http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html

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