Android
Android Tutorial: Content Providers
A content provider is an Android component used for encapsulating data that is to be shared with other applications. How the actual data is stored, be it in a relational database or a file or a mix of both, is not important. What is important is that a content provider offers a standard way of…
Android Tutorial: Alarm Service
Android devices maintain an internal alarm service that can be used to schedule jobs. Amazingly, as you will find out in this article, the API is very easy to use, seamlessly hiding the complexity of its lower-level code. This chapter explains how to use it and presents an example. Overview One of the built-in services…
Android Tutorial: Broadcast Receivers
The Android system constantly broadcasts intents that occur during the running of the operating system and applications. In addition, applications can also broadcast user-defined intents. You can capitalize on these broadcasts by writing broadcast receivers in your application. This article explains how to create broadcast receivers. Overview A broadcast receiver, or a receiver for short,…
Android Tutorial: Services
So far in this book, everything you have learned is related to activities. It is now time to present another Android component, the service. A service has no user interface and runs in the background. It is suitable for long-running operations. This article explains how to create a service and provides an example. Overview As…
Android Tutorial: Asynchronous Tasks
This article talks about asynchronous tasks and explains how to handle them using the AsyncTask class. It also presents a photo editor application that illustrates how this class should be used. Overview The android.os.AsyncTask class is a utility class that makes it easy to handle background processes and publish progress updates on the UI thread….
Android Tutorial: Learning how to handling the Handler
One of the most interesting and useful types in the Android SDK is the Handler class. Most of the time, it is used to process messages and schedule a task to run at a future time. This article, explains what the class is good for and offers examples. Previous article: Android Tutorial: Camera API Overview The…
Android Tutorial: Sound Recorder
Android Sound Recorder The Android platform ships with a multitude of APIs, including one for recording audio and video. In this article, you learn how to use the MediaRecorder class to sample sound levels. This is the same class you used for making videos in Android Tutorial: Video Recording API The MediaRecorder Class Support for multimedia…
Android Tutorial: Video Recording API
The easiest way to provide video-making capability in your application is to use a built-in intent to activate an existing activity. However, if you need more than what the default application can provide, you need to get your hands dirty and work with the API directly. This chapter shows how to use both methods for…
Android Tutorial: Camera API
Almost all Android handsets and tablets come with one or two cameras. You can use a camera to take still pictures by starting an activity in the built-in Camera application or using the Camera API. This chapter shows how to use both approaches. Overview An Android application can call another application to use one or…
Android Tutorial: Database System
Android has its own technology for working with databases and it has nothing to do with Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), the technology Java developers use for accessing data in a relational database. In addition, Android ships with SQLite, an open-source database. This chapter shows how to work with the Android Database API and the SQLite…