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Thursday, August 18, 2011

Starting With Android – Tutorial 1

We will be presenting series of tutorial which will help you to start with android.

Setup environment for Development
> Android provide its own SDK for development, it's totally java based, if you are good in Core java than you are good to start with Android Development

> First of all you need to set up an IDE(Integrated Development environment) for development, all tutorial we will be sharing are build using Eclipse IDE with Android Plugin installed.

> Setup steps are very well demonstrated on android platform
    http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html

Terms to understand before we begin

 ADT -> Android Development Tools

 AVD -> Android Virtual Device - This is an emulator which you can configure as a model of actual device.

Understanding Basic Structure of Android Application.



Below listed are basic folders which you will be using while developing android application. Name of folder itself will tell you little about what that folder will going to contain.

Let's start with them one by one and see if what you thought is right or otherwise.

1)res -> This folder contains all the resources which will be used inside applications. There are different folders for different type of resources

a) drawable -> This will contain all the images which you will be using in your application.

b) layout -> This folder will contain xml files. These xml files actually define the layout of   different screens of our application. Android provides a facility to define your screen  design in xml.  We will discuss these files in our later tutorials in more details

 c) values -> This folder contains different files for different type of key value pairs, which you will be using in your application. These files help in moving various type of constants from java code to configurable xml files. These have various advantages also such as ii8n, re-usability and maintenance of constants  and many more to explore.
Values can be of type:
String
Dimensions
Colors etc.
     d) raw -> This folder will contain files other than images such as music files, video files and other supported files.

 2) src  -> This folder contain all your java code

 3) lib -> This folder contain all external api jars which you want to use in your applications

 4) gen -> This is also java folder which is automatically generated by android. It will create a R.java file which will have  mapping for all files under /res folder. You can read more about R file from
                     http://developer.android.com/reference/android/R.html

 5) AndroidManifest.xml  -> This is configurable file for android application, this files contains configurations such as
       a) Minimum SDK application will be running on
       b) Different Uses Permission Application required
       c) Starting Screen of application
       d) And many more to explore

I hope this tutorial will help you in starting with android. We will soon be releasing other tutorials of these series.

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1 comment:

  1. Helps a lot to start with andriod programming and a good startup too...

    ReplyDelete