Set Up Your Environment

Before you start this class, be sure you have your development environment set up. You need to:

1.      Download Android Studio.

2.      Download the latest SDK tools and platforms using the SDK Manager.

Install Android studio

Setting up Android Studio takes just a few clicks.

While the Android Studio download completes, verify which version of the JDK you have: open a command line and typejavac -version. If the JDK is not available or the version is lower than 1.8, download the Java SE Development Kit 8.

To install Android Studio on Windows, proceed as follows:

1.      Launch the .exe file you downloaded.

2.      Follow the setup wizard to install Android Studio and any necessary SDK tools.

On some Windows systems, the launcher script does not find where the JDK is installed. If you encounter this problem, you need to set an environment variable indicating the correct location.

Select Start menu > Computer > System Properties > Advanced System Properties. Then open Advanced tab > Environment Variables and add a new system variable JAVA_HOME that points to your JDK folder, for example C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_77.

Android Architecture

Android operating system is a stack of software components which is roughly divided into five sections and four main layers as shown below in the architecture diagram.

Linux kernel

 At the bottom of the layers is Linux - Linux 2.6 with approximately 115 patches. This provides basic system functionality like process management, memory management, device management like camera, keypad, display etc. Also, the kernel handles all the things that Linux is really good at such as networking and a vast array of device drivers, which take the pain out of interfacing to peripheral hardware.

Libraries

On top of Linux kernel there is a set of libraries including open-source Web browser engine WebKit, well known library libc, SQLite database which is a useful repository for storage and sharing of application data, libraries to play and record audio and video, SSL libraries responsible for Internet security etc.

Android Runtime

This is the third section of the architecture and available on the second layer from the bottom. This section provides a key component called Dalvik Virtual Machine which is a kind of Java Virtual Machine specially designed and optimized for Android. The Dalvik VM makes use of Linux core features like memory management and multi-threading, which is intrinsic in the Java language. The  Dalvik VM enables every Android application to run in its own process, with its own instance of the  Dalvik virtual machine. The Android runtime also provides a set of core libraries which enable Android application developers to write Android applications using standard Java programming language.

Application Framework

The Application Framework layer provides many higher-level services to applications in the form of Java classes. Application developers are allowed to make use of these services in their applications.

 Applications

You will find all the Android application at the top layer. You will write your application to be installed on this layer only. Examples of such applications are Contacts Books, Browser, Games etc.

Application Components

Application components are the essential building blocks of an Android application. These components are loosely coupled by the application manifest file AndroidManifest.xml that describes each component of the application and how they interact. There are following four main components that can be used within an Android application:

Activities

An activity represents a single screen with a user interface. For example, an email application might have one activity that shows a list of new emails, another activity to compose an email, and another activity for reading emails. If an application has more than one activity, then one of them should be marked as the activity that is presented when the application is launched. An activity is implemented as a subclass of Activity class as follows:

public class MainActivity extends Activity {   

}

Services

 A service is a component that runs in the background to perform long-running operations. For example, a service might play music in the background while the user is in a different application, or it might fetch data over the network without blocking user interaction with an activity. A service is implemented as a subclass of Service class as follows:

public class MyService extends Service {

Broadcast Receivers

 Broadcast Receivers simply respond to broadcast messages from other applications or from the system. For example, applications can also initiate broadcasts to let other applications know that some data has been downloaded to the device and is available for them to use, so this is broadcast receiver who will intercept this communication and will initiate appropriate action. A broadcast receiver is implemented as a subclass of BroadcastReceiver class and each message is broadcasted as an Intent object.

public class MyReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {

}

Content Providers

A content provider component supplies data from one application to others on request. Such requests are handled by the methods of the ContentResolver class. The data may be stored in the file system, the database or somewhere else entirely. A content provider is implemented as a subclass of ContentProvider class and must implement a standard set of APIs that enable other applications to perform transactions.