MC4204 MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
1.2 INFRASTRUCTURE AND MANAGING RESOURCES
ANDROID: AN OPEN PLATFORM FOR MOBILE DEVELOPMENT
More recently, Android has expanded beyond a pure mobile phone platform
toprovide a development platform for an increasingly wide range of hardware, including
tablets and televisions.
Put simply, Android is an ecosystem made up of a combination of three components:
a. A free, open-source operating system for embedded devices
b. An open-source development platform for creating applications
c. Devices
More specifically, Android is made up of several necessary and dependent parts,including
the following:
A Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) and Compatibility Test Suite
(CTS)
that describe the capabilitiesrequired for a device to support the software stack.
A linux operating system kernel that provides a low-level interface with the
hardware, memory management, and process control, all optimized for mobile and
embedded devices.
Open source libraries for application development, including SQLite, WebKit,
OpenGL, and a media manager.
A runtime used to execute and host Android applications, including the Dalvik Virtual
Machine (DVM) and the core libraries that provide Android- specific functionality. The run
time is designed to be small and efficient for use on mobile devices.
A user interface framework used toho stand launch applications.
A set of core installed applications.
A SDK (software development kit) used to create applications including the
relatedtools, plugins and documentation.
WHAT DOES ANDROID RUN ON?
The first Android mobile handset, theT-MobileG1, was released
in the United States in October 2008.
Android is created to support variety of platform and applications.
WHY DEVELOP FOR ANDROID?
Android represents a clean break, a mobile framework based on thereality
of modern mobile devices designed by developers, for developers.
MC4204 MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
The barrier to entry for new Android developers is minimal:
➢ No certification is required to become an Android developer.
➢ Google Play provides free, up-front purchase, and in-app billing
options for distribution and monetization of your applications.
➢ There is no approval process for application distribution.
• Developers have total control over their brand
WHAT ANDROID HAS THAT OTHER PLATFORMS DON’THAVE
• Google Maps applications
• Background services and applications
• Shared data and inter-process communication
• All application are created equal
• Wi-Fi Direct and Android Beam
INTRODUCING THE DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK
• Android applications normally are written using Java as the programming
language but executed by means of a custom VM called Dalvik, rather than
a traditional JavaVM.
• Each Android application runs in a separate process with in its own Dalvik
instance, relinquishing all responsibility for memory and process management
to the Android runtime, which stops and kills processes as necessary to manage
resources.
WHAT COMES IN THE BOX
• TheAndroidAPIs — The core of the SDK is the Android API libraries that
MC4204 MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
provide developer access to the Android stack. These are the same libraries that
Google uses to create native Android applications.
• Development tools — The SDK includes several development tools that let
youcompile and debug your applications so that you can turn Android source code
into executable applications.
• The Android Virtual Device Manager and emulator—The Android
emulator is a fully interactive mobile device emulator featuring several
alternative skins. The emulator runs within an Android Virtual Device
(AVD)that simulates a device hardware configuration.
• Fulldocumentation
• Samplecode
• Onlinesupport.
UNDERSTANDING THE ANDROID SOFTWARE STACK
TheAndroid software stack is,put simply,a Linux kernel and a collectionof C/
C++libraries exposed through an application framework that provides service for,
andmanagement of, the runtime and applications.
• Linuxkernel
Coreservices(includinghardwaredrivers,processandmemorymanagement,securit
y
,network,andpo wermanagement) are handled by a Linux2.6 kernel.
The kernel also provides an abstraction layer between the hardwareand
the remainder of the stack.
Libraries—Running on top of the kernel, Android includes various C/C++
corelibraries such as libc and SSL.
• Androidruntime—The runtime is what makes an Android phone an
Android phone rather than a mobile Linux implementation. Including the
core libraries and the DalvikVM, the Android runtime is the engine
that powers your
applications and, along with the libraries, forms the basis for the
application framework.
• Corelibraries—Although most Android application development is written
using the Java language, Dalvik is not a JavaVM. The core Android
libraries provide most of the functionality available in the core Java
libraries, as well as the Android- specific libraries.
• DalvikVM—Dalvik is a register-based Virtual Machine that‘s been optimized
to ensure that a device can run multiple instances efficiently. It relies
onthe Linux kernel for threading and low-level memory management.
MC4204 MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
• Application framework — The application framework provides the classes
used to create Android applications. It also provides a generic abstraction
for hardware access and manages the user interface and application
resources.
• Applicationlayer—All applications, both native and third-party, are built on
the application layer by means of the same API libraries. The application layer
runs with in the Android runtime, using the classes and services made available
from the application framework.
ApplicationLayer
ApplicationFramework
Libraries Android Run Time
MC4204 MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
Linux Kernel
The Dalvik Virtual Machine
• The Dalvik Virtual Machine (DVM) is an android virtual machine
optimized for mobile devices. It optimizes the virtual machine
for memory, battery life and performance.
• Dalvik is a name of a town in Iceland. The Dalvik VM was written by
Dan Bornstein.
• The Dex compiler converts the class files into the .dex file that
run on the Dalvik VM. Multiple class files are converted into one
dex file.
• Let's see the compiling and packaging process from the source file:
Android Application Architecture
• Android‘s architecture encourages component reuse, enabling you to publish
and share Activities, Services, and data with other applications, with access
managed by the security restrictions.
Activity Manager and Fragment Manager
➢ Views—Used to construct the user interfaces for your Activities and Fragments.
➢ Notification Manager—provides a consistent and non intrusive
mechanism for signaling your users.
➢ Content Providers—Lets your applications share data.
➢ Resource Manager—Enables non-code resources, such as strings and
graphics, to be externalized.
➢ Intents—Provides a mechanism for transferring data between applications
MC4204 MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
and their components.
MANAGING RESOURCES
A mobile device is a specialized piece of hardware. It has several different types
of resources that may require special monitoring and management activities that
require scalable yet uniform designs. Android resources are basically files or
external data supporting our app‘s operation. These files can be images, strings,
colours, styles, etc.
KINDS OF RESOURCES FOR ANDROID APP DEVELOPMENT
1. Animation Resources
• Their purpose is to set default animations.
• They are stored in the res/drawable/ folder under the R.drawable identifier.
They support bitmap files (.png, .jpg or .gif), PNG files in Nine-patch
(.9.png) format and XML files with graphics descriptors.
2. Colour State List Resources
• For determining a component’s colour depending on its state.
• Stored in res/color/ and accessed through R.color.
3. Drawable Resources
• For defining bitmap or XML graphics. They are stored in the
res/drawable/ folder under the R.drawable identifier.
4. Layout Resources
• For defining an app’s interfaces. They contain XML files
and are stored in res/layout/ under ID R.layout.
5. Menu resources
• For defining the contents of an app’s menus. They are stored in
res/menu/ and accessed through R.menu.
6. String Resources
• They contain XML files with data embedded in strings
or in string arrays
(including the string‘s format and style).
• They can be sorted into strings.xml, colors.xml, dimens.xml, styles.xml or
arrays.xml and are stored in res/values/ and include R.string, R.array, and
R.plurals.
7. Style Resources
• They define a number of attributes that can be applied to a view
or an activity. Also used for defining an app’s style and design.
MC4204 MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
They are stored in res/values and accessed through R.style.
8. Other types:
• We‘ll be defining values as being Boolean, integer, dimensions, colours and
other arrangements.
• They are stored in res/values/ but each of them is accessed through
unique R subclasses (such as R.bool, R.integer, R.dimen, etc.).
