Barbara Hohensee
Table of Contents
Preamble
About Android Studio
Installation and Configuration
SDK Manager
AVD's
Starting a new Android Project
Overview IDE
Project Structur
Gradle Build System
Projekt Configuration
Creating Layouts
Activities
Build & Run
Debugging
Testing
Preparing the App for the Android Market
Importing Projects
Google Cloud Endpoints
Google Play Service/ Maps
Product Flavors - Build Types - Build Variants
Game development with AndEngine
Developing for Google TV
Android Code Templates
Links
Impressum
Preamble
This book will help you to familiar yourself with the new IDE for Android development called Android Studio. Who should read this book? Because Android Studio is based on IntelliJ, the book will be interesting for everybody who hasn't worked with IntelliJ yet.
There are a lots of screenshots to make it as easy as possible. So even a beginner in Android development gets a chance to understand how Android Studio works. This book will help you to accomplish the most common tasks.
What this book covers:
• Installation of Android Studio
• Creating a new Android App Project with Google's ActionBar
• Android SDK Manager
• AVD's
• Overview IDE and Editor
• The new project structure of an Android app project
• Overview Gradle Build System
• Local installation of Gradle
• Local installation of Maven
• Building an .aar library
• Creating a local Maven repository
• Using the .aar library
• Version Control (VCS)
• Working with Activities and Layouts
• Build and run the app
• Debugging
• Testing: Creating and running Test projects
• Preparing the app for the Android Market
• Import of an Android Project
o Android Studio
o Eclipse
o GitHub
• Google Cloud Endpoints
• Google Play Service SDK, Google Maps v2
• Product Flavors - Build Types - Build Variants
• Game development
o libGDX setup to develop, run and deploy Desktop an Android games
o AndEngine setup and example project
Google unveiled at the developer conference, the new development environment for android app development. The new IDE based on IntelliJ will soon replace Eclipse. At the same time there will be change for the build system too. Ant as the build system has been replaced in Android Studio to Gradle.
One of the core pieces of Android Studio is the powerful code editor with built in features like "Smart Editing", to provide for more readable code or the "Advanced code refactoring". Another highlight of Android Studio is of course the new build system based on Gradle. Gradle allows the developer to apply different configurations of the same code, to produce different versions of the same application code. This is useful, among other things, if you want
to give out a free and a paid version of an app.
Generally Gradle improves the reusability of code and integration on a build server. Like Eclipse has Android Studio a graphical and a text user interface for designing the app layout_Both the design mode and the text mode of the editor have improved. The editor is now showing a live preview of the layout for different resolutions, Android versions and countryspecific characteristics.
Android studio got some new services and integrated which makes it easier to handle translation or to connect with Google Cloud Messaging (CGM) that allows to sending messages to the app and receiving messages from apps on cloud servers.
Google develops Android Studio in collaboration with JetBrains, based on the community version of IntelliJ. JetBrains InelliJ Java IDE has support for Android app development for 2 years. In the current version of IntelliJ 12 the innovations that have emerged from the collaboration with Google are not yet integrated. They will be integrated in version 13, release date December 2013. The new version will continue to have the support for Java, Android,
Adobe Gaming SDK Groovy, Scala.
The Android studio, however, will be limited to Android app development. Google has still no official release date for the Android studio out.
