Mobile Application Development

Eamonn de Leastar & John Fitzgerald. Creative Commons License
Donation-01

Here we proceed to explore in detail the creating of a simple activity class + the associated layout. This process will seem quite complex on first contact - but as we proceed through the labs over the next few sessions the deep structure should start to emerge.

Donation-02

Introduce a second screen to display the list of donations made by the user. In addition, enable our app its first "Model" objects, which will be used to store the individual donations made by the user.

Donation-03

We continue the implementation of Donation to including the welcome, sign up and login. Support these views with a User model, and validate the users on log in. Continue to build on your Donation repository.

Donation-03-Solutions

A total of 5 exercises were set at the end of the earlier lab - Donation-03.

MyRent-00 (Baseline)

We start a new application in this lab, which will be succeeded by numerous version over the next few topics. In the first lab the focus is on explaining the essential 'plumbing' of the app, and introducing the first Interface based listener you may have encountered.

MyRent-01 (Widgets)

In this version of MyRent, we introduce a range of UI Widgets to evolve the UX into something more useful. These widgets will be 'active', meaning that the host Activity will be intercepting and responding to events the user may generate when interacting with the application.

MyRent-02 (Listview)

Our current version of MyRent (V01) only permits a single Residence to be entered. In this lab we seek to manage a list of residences. To do this we need to extend the model by including a new class - 'Portfolio' - to manage all our residences. We will also need a new Activity - ResidenceListActivity - to display the full portfolio of residences.

Event-Handling

This is a short lab whose aim is to provide a detailed explanation of event handling via a simple standalone non-android application

MyRent-03 (Action Bar & Dialogs)

In a significant update to the app, we introduce navigation within the app using an Action Bar. This will allow us to create new residences, or navigate to existing ones. Additionally, we will explore a simple date picker dialog to allow the user to select a registration date for the residence.

MyRent-04 (FileIO)

Introduce into MyRent a serialization mechanism to save | restore the residence list to and from a file. The app will load the contents of this file on launch and update the file if residence data is updated.

MyRent-05 (Up Button)

We continue to evolve navigation support in the app, providing an 'up' button in the action bar to allow navigation from the ResidenceActivity to the ResidenceListActivity.

Lambda Expressions

Java 8, initially released in March 2014, is a major upgrade providing many new features one of which we examine here, namely lambda expressions. We consider situations where such expressions may be used to provide a less verbose alternatitive to anonymous classes.

Event-Handling-Solution

This is a solution to the event handling lab.

MyRent-06 (Contact & Email)

Activities within an application can reach out to activities in other applications to perform specific tasks. In this lab we introduce two new features - selecting a contact from the phone's contact lists, and sending an email to the selected user. Both of these features require the use of 'implicit' intents.

MyRent-06a (Permissions)

Supplementary MyRent lab to demonstrate how to request permissions at run time. We restrict ourselves to the single permission READ_CONTACTS. We consider two scenarios: activity-fragment and viewpager-fragment.

MyRent-07 (Fragments)

An Activity may comprise one or more fragments, each of which represents a portion of a user interface. Multiple fragments can be combined in a single actiity to build a multi-pane screen. In this lab our purpose in introducing fragments is to later facilitat the inclusion of a horizontal swipe feature to the ResidenceActivity class.

Two Pane

In the previous lab we gained experience in using single-pane screens, a pane containing only a single fragment. Here we develop a simple application to demonstate how two fragments may be successively rendered on a single pane in portrait mode. We provide the same feature in landscape mode but additionaly allow the simultaneous rendering of an additional fragment. This is sometimes referred to as the master-detail pattern.

MyRent-08 (Deletion)

We introduce a facility to select and delete a subset of residences in the list view. The selected items need not be contiguous. The Android MultiChoiceModeListener interface is key to the implementation of this feature.

MyRent-09 (ViewPager)

Here we incorporate a new feature to support horizontal 'swipe' interaction. This allows a user to page through the entire residence list, beginning from within any details view, in either direction. In providing this feature, we make of the Android ViewPager layout manager PageAdapter abstract class.

MyRent-10 (Settings)

Settings allow a user to modify application features and behaviour. In this lab we demonstrate the use of settings to input a username, password pair, the size of the list of residences to download from the cloud and the frequency at which this list is automatically refreshed by a service or services. Services will be the subject of a future lab.

MyRent-11 (Maps - Google)

Introduce a Google Map including necessary supporting resources such as Google Play Services Library and a personal API key. Additionally, support a landscape layout, validation of geolocation input, immediate mirroring any changes in this input in the view title and support for smaller small factor devices.

MyRent-11a (Maps - MapBox)

In a previous lab our MyRent app consumed a GoogleMap API. Here we provide an alternative mapping system provided by MapBox. This is based on the open source OpenStreetMap project. This approach has the advantage of providing greater flexibility, not requiring keys and, importantly, resulting in a significantly smaller release build.

MyRentSQLite (SQLite)

Working with a subset of the MyRent app, we develop a module to persist data using SQLite, use the Android Debug Bridge (adb) commandline tool to view the database content and as an exercise replace the file system in MyRent with an SQLite implementation.

MyRent-12 (SQLite)

In the MyRent series of labs we have used file storage as a means of data persistence. In an earlier lab we introduced an SQLite database to an app based on a subset of MyRent.Here we replace the file system in MyRent with an SQLite database. Later we shall open up this database to other applications using Android's ContentProvider.

MyRentSQLite (ContentProvider)

In the MyRent series of labs we first used file storage as a means of data persistence. We then replaced this with a database. Here we shall open up this database to other applications using Android's ContentProvider.

MyRent (Play Service)

Here we implement an API. It comprises a set of routes (the end points), controllers for these routes together with the means of translating Java objects to and from the Json format.

MyRent (JUnit Test)

Explore the Unit test features of Play by writing some tests to verify the current behavior of the Residence model class for the MyRent app. Develop a test app to consume MyRent service API, progressively implementing a range of functionality in writing to and reading from the service database.

MyRent-13 (Client)

In a previous lab we introduced an SQLite database. This allows us to retain a local copy of the data. Here we integrate the Retrofit REST client to facilitate manipulation of server-based data. The local and remote data are kept in sync. Testing is performed against localhost and Heroku deployed databases.

MyRent-14 (Services)

We avail of two Android classes, BroadcastReceiver and IntentService, to asynchronously refresh local data obtained by querying a cloud-based service. The BroadcastReceiver receives intents sent by a Context method, sendBroadcast. The IntentService handles asynchronous requests. Our approach is to initialize an alarm in the BroadcastReceiver to exercise the IntentService at interverals configurable from the settings. When the alarm fires, the local data is asynchronously refreshed.

MyRent-15 (Camera)

Make use of the device camera to take and serialize a photo, display it as thumbnail and create a simple single-photo gallery.

App Signing & Crypto

Cryptography supports the millions of daily secure internet transactions, for example, in the use of HTTPS, SSH, secure email, secure messaging and eCommerce.

MyRent-16 (Mongo)

Allow the database to auto-generate the primary key (id). On creating a residence in the remote database, echo back the new record to inform the client of the id value. We demonstrate using a Play service, a JUnit test app and the MyRent Android client.