How to Create Your Own Android Library and Publish it in GitHub?

Last Updated : 04 Jun, 2024

Android libraries are tools for developers, that offers reusable code components and functionalities to streamline app development. Creating and publishing your own Android library on GitHub allows you to share your code with the wider developer community, contribute to open-source projects, and establish your expertise. In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of creating and publishing your own Android library on GitHub.

Steps to Create an Android Library

Step 1: Open Android Studio and Create a New Project

To create a new project in Android Studio please refer to How to Create/Start a New Project in Android Studio. Name your application as BlinkEffectExample and make sure to select Kotlin as the programming language as I’m going to use Kotlin for the source code, but you can follow the same process of creating & publishing the android library for Java as well.

Step 2: Now Create a new Module in your project

Go to file > New > New Module. Select Android Library from the options and click on Next.

Select a module type

Name Your Library as BlinkLibrary and click Finish.

Create a new module

Your module BlinkLibrary gets created.

BlinkLibrary is added to the structure

Step 3: Now, it’s time to add code to our library. For this go to your module BlinkLibrary > Java > your package name(like com.learn.blinklibrary) Right-click go to New > Kotlin/class file.

Create a new file in your module and name it as BlinkEffect make sure to choose Object from the below options.

create a new file

Step 4: Modify BlinkEffect.kt as follows

Kotlin

import android.animation.ArgbEvaluator
import android.animation.ObjectAnimator
import android.graphics.Color
import android.view.View
import android.view.animation.Animation

object BlinkEffect {

    fun blink(view: View) {
        // adding the color to be shown
        val animator: ObjectAnimator = ObjectAnimator.ofInt(
            view, "backgroundColor", Color.YELLOW,
            Color.RED, Color.GREEN
        )
        // duration of one color
        animator.duration = 500;
        animator.setEvaluator(ArgbEvaluator())
        // color will be shown in reverse manner
        animator.repeatCount = Animation.REVERSE
        // Repeat up to infinite time
        animator.repeatCount = Animation.INFINITE
        animator.start()
    }
}

We are taking view as a parameter to the blink() function so that the blink effect can be added to that particular view. Now our library is completed. It’s time to publish it, so for this create a new repository on your GitHub and push the project to it (if not please create your Github). We will use JitPack to publish our library as it makes the process a lot easier in order to publish a library.

Publishing the Android Library in GitHub

Step 1: Create a new GitHub repository.

create a repository – BlinkEffect-library

Copy the repository’s https address.

copy the repo’s address

Step 2: Push your code

Make sure git is installed in your system. If Git and GitHub are already set up in the android studio then follow the following steps to push your code.

Go to VCS (option from menu ) > select Enable version control enable
A dialogue box opens, select Git and click the OK button.

You will observe that color of all filename changes to a red color as shown in the below image.

Now, change the file tree structure (left panel) from android to project as shown below.

Right-click the above project name BlinkEffectExample then go to Git > Add. You will observe the color of all filename changes to green color. Now open the terminal of your android studio (find the terminal at bottom of the android studio). Do the following to add, commit and push the code.

-> git add .
-> git commit -m "blink library added"

-> git remote add origin " Paste Your-Repository-Address"
-> git push origin master
-> Give your GitHub id name & password

Your project got pushed to the repository!

You can also follow another method to push your code (when git and GitHub is not set in the android studio). Open the system’s terminal and make sure that your current directory is in “BlinkEffectExample”(folder name of your project) and perform the following commands :

-> git init
-> git add
-> git commit -m "blink library added"

Now add your remote origin by performing

-> git remote add origin “Paste Your-Repository-Address”
-> git remote -v
-> git push origin master

Your application code got pushed to the repository.

Step 3: In your repository, go to tag and select release

click on the tag and choose release

Click on create a new release.

Now add the release version and a brief introduction about your library.

publish release

Click on publish release. Open a new tab and go to jitpack.io. Insert your repository address (in my case it’s Anju1415/BlinkEffect-library) and click on LOOKUP. Your releases will be listed.

Now click on Get it.

Your Android Library is now published and is ready to use.

Using the Android Library in Your Android App

Step 1: Now you can use this android library in any of your projects. Open any project or create a new one (Here I’m creating a new project to use this library). In your project’s build.gradle (project : applicationName) add the following line

allprojects{

…

maven { url ‘https://jitpack.io’ }

…

}

and in your app’s build.gradle (module : applicationName.app) add the dependency.

dependencies {

….

implementation ‘com.github.Anju1415:BlinkEffect-library:0.1.0’

…

}

And now you can use the library in your activity.

Step 2: Working with the activity_main.xml file

Navigate to the app > res > layout > activity_main.xml and add the below code to that file. Below is the code for the activity_main.xml file.

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout 
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".MainActivity">

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/buttonView"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="GeeksForGeeks"
        android:textAllCaps="false"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent" />

</androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>

Step 3: Working with the MainActivity.kt file

Go to the MainActivity.kt file and refer to the following code. Below is the code for the MainActivity.kt file. Comments are added inside the code to understand the code in more detail.

Kotlin

import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity
import android.os.Bundle
import android.widget.Button
import com.learn.blinklibrary.BlinkEffect

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    private lateinit var btn : Button

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)

        btn = findViewById(R.id.buttonView)
        btn.setOnClickListener {
              // use of blink-library
            BlinkEffect.blink(btn) 
        }
    }
}