Android: Application Development and Design Patterns

Learn to build the Android news reader UI from a hello world baseline to a home and details page, with views, adapters, intents, and a web view.

Learn to create a blank Android hello world app, understand the activity lifecycle basics, and set up package name, minimum SDK, and layout before running on an emulator.

Explore the home page card UI built with a card view, linear layout, a percentage relative layout for a 16:9 image view, and text views for title, time, and description.

Develop a news article card in Android Studio using a full-width card view, a vertical layout, a 16:9 image in a percent relative layout, and title, time, and content views.

Represent each news article as an object and display them with an array adapter in a recycler view, enabling scrolling and navigation to the details page.

Create a news article class with private fields for title, details, image URL, time, and article URL, plus a static news store to hold and access articles.

Implement an array adapter for a recycler view to display news articles on the home page, using a view holder pattern and glide for image loading.

Implement a recycler view to display multiple news articles on the home page using an array adapter. Set a linear layout manager and connect the adapter to the recycler view.

Create a news details page that loads articles in a web view, shows a progress bar during load, handles errors with a toast, and updates the title from the article.

Learn to implement event handling and navigation in Android by responding to card clicks with on click listeners and passing data between activities using intents and extras.

Implement on click listener and intent extras to navigate from the home page to the news details activity using a static launch method and the article index.

Enable Android N multi window by marking activities as resizable and setting layout bounds. Ensure target SDK 24 or higher and test on Android 7.0 to view split screen.

Explore API and networking basics, then implement the app's networking layer using Retrofit to parse JSON responses from the News API, handling endpoints and threading.

Master the basics of APIs, REST, endpoints, and JSON, then learn to fetch news articles with News API using Retrofit and Glide for Android networking.

Explore the news API's endpoints for sources and articles, register for an API key, and learn how to request articles with source and sort by parameters, plus response formats.

Parse the news api response by generating pojo classes from json schema for the articles list, using jackson or moshi for parsing and retrofit for networking.

Implement parsing of the news API response by generating POJO classes from a JSON schema to POJO tool. Import them into Android Studio and wire JSON parsing with Retrofit.

Explore Android networking challenges and how retrofit simplifies API calls by modeling endpoints as annotated interface methods, handling threading, queuing, and JSON parsing with pluggable converters.

Implement retrofit by defining a News Service interface with get articles, API key, source, and sort by parameters, and wiring it to the base URL using a converter factory. Build a singleton News API to access the service and call endpoints via retrofit.

Test the news API powered by retrofit by making calls asynchronously, handling onResponse and onFailure callbacks, and debugging with breakpoints to verify responses.

Connect the API response to the UI by updating adapters to use article, storing articles for details, and formatting dates for readability in the web view.

Explore analytics and crash reporting to understand user behavior, retention, and acquisition, and leverage tools like Firebase Analytics and heat maps to improve app quality and business decisions.

Implement Firebase analytics and crash reporting in your Android app, log custom events with bundles (such as card clicked), and view insights on the Firebase dashboard.

Add an attribution link with a snack bar inside a coordinator layout, including a visit action that opens news api.org via an implicit intent.

Explore testing in Android by applying isolation and integration principles, using unit, integration, end-to-end tests, and test driven development. Adopt patterns like model-view-presenter or model-view-viewmodel for maintainable, scalable apps.

Test unit testing in Android using JUnit-based frameworks like Robolectric and Mockito to validate core business logic without external dependencies, demonstrated with a date formatting method and null handling.

Learn to unit test Android apps with PowerMock, enabling static method testing and mocking external dependencies like Firebase crash reporting, and handle parse exceptions.

Explore instrumentation and UI testing on Android with Espresso, run tests on a device or emulator, and use Android Test Recorder to create and verify simple text change scenarios.

Implement espresso based instrumentation tests with the espresso test recorder to end-to-end test the app, including recycler view. Verify web view loading and include test assertions in Android test directory.

Prepare an Android app for the Play Store by creating a license agreement, app icon, and cryptographic signing key, configuring release signing and ProGuard obfuscation, and generating a signed APK.

Publish an android app to the google play store by signing up for a publisher account, paying $25, uploading the apk to production, and finalizing the store listing with screenshots.

Explore Android best practices for architecture patterns like MVP and MVVM and material design guidelines. Learn testing strategies, release workflows, localization, metrics, and essential libraries to build reliable, scalable apps.

Review the Android project by recapping fundamentals, UI design, tools like Retrofit and RecyclerView, testing with JUnit and Espresso, publishing to the Play Store, analytics, and future enhancements.

Explore the Android support library for backward compatibility and common UI components, then implement a bread factory pattern using UML diagrams to create object representations of bread types.

Connect real and virtual devices to test apps, monitor runtime behavior with the debug monitor, and use logcat and emulator tools to optimize for multiple form factors.

Explore the abstract factory pattern, where a factory generator creates factories to produce bread, fillings, and drinks, enabling flexible, reusable structures and minimal changes to client code.

Select primary colors from a single material palette (shades 500 and 700) and choose an accent color for contrast, then use alpha-based text transparency for primary and secondary text.

Learn to manage screen densities in android by using density independent pixels and designated image resources in drawable-hdpi and drawable-xhdpi, scaling images for memory efficiency.

Explore how to implement a material design card view in Android, apply the factory pattern to generate card contents, and optimize layout properties for images, text, and actions.

Develop a sandwich builder using the builder pattern to assemble bread and filling components, enabling optional features and keeping client code unchanged.

Replace the old action bar with a customizable app bar (toolbar) in Android apps, applying material design themes, styles, and icons while configuring menus and navigation.

Build and customize a navigation drawer using drawer layout and navigation view, configure header and menu, add fragments, and explore left-hand defaults, right-handed options, and material ratio guidelines.

Explore the singleton pattern, create a single globally accessible user instance across an Android app, and compare it to static classes in a two-step Android Studio setup with test code.