Unlocking Android

418 Pages·2009·13.36 MB·English

by  W. Frank Ableson

Unlocking
Frank Ableson
Charlie Collins
Robi Sen
F D W
OREWORD BY ICK ALL
M A N N I N G
Unlocking Android
Licensed to Deborah Christiansen <[e-mail]>
Licensed to Deborah Christiansen <[e-mail]>
Unlocking Android
A D ’ G
EVELOPER S UIDE
W. FRANK ABLESON
CHARLIE COLLINS
ROBI SEN
MANNING
Greenwich
(74° w. long.)
Licensed to Deborah Christiansen <[e-mail]>
To Nikki
—W.F.A.
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ISBN 978-1-933988-67-2
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – MAL – 14 13 12 11 10 09
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brief contents
P 1 W A ? — T B P .............................. 1
ART HAT IS NDROID HE IG ICTURE
1 ■ Targeting Android 3
2 ■ Development environment 32
P 2 E A SDK......................................... 57
ART XERCISING THE NDROID
3 ■ User interfaces 59
4 ■ Intents and services 97
5 ■ Storing and retrieving data 126
6 ■ Networking and web services 167
7 ■ Telephony 195
8 ■ Notifications and alarms 211
9 ■ Graphics and animation 226
10 ■ Multimedia 251
11 ■ Location, location, location 266
P 3 A ................................................... 293
ART NDROID APPLICATIONS
12 ■ Putting it all together–the Field Service Application 295
13 ■ Hacking Android 341
v
Licensed to Deborah Christiansen <[e-mail]>
Licensed to Deborah Christiansen <[e-mail]>
contents
foreword xiii
preface xv
acknowledgments xvii
about this book xx
about the cover illustration xxiv
P 1 W A ? — T B P .............. 1
ART HAT IS NDROID HE IG ICTURE
1 Targeting Android 3
1.1 Introducing Android 4
The Android platform 4 ■ In the market for an Android? 6
Licensing Android 10
1.2 Stacking up Android 11
Probing Android’s foundation 12
1.3 Booting Android development 14
Android’s good Intent-ions 14 ■ Activating Android 18
AndroidManifest.xml 25 ■ Mapping applications to processes 26
1.4 An Android application 27
1.5 Summary 30
vii
Licensed to Deborah Christiansen <[e-mail]>
viii CONTENTS
2 Development environment 32
2.1 The Android SDK 33
The application programming interface 33 ■ Core Android packages 33
Optional packages 34
2.2 Fitting the pieces together 35
Java Perspective 36 ■ DDMS Perspective 38 ■ Command-Line tools 40
2.3 Building an Android application in Eclipse 42
Android Project Wizard 43 ■ Android sample application code 43
Building the application 48
2.4 The Android Emulator 50
Skins 50 ■ Network speed 51 ■ Emulator profiles 53
2.5 Debugging 55
2.6 Summary 56
P 2 E A SDK...........................57
ART XERCISING THE NDROID
3 User interfaces 59
3.1 Creating the Activity 60
Creating an Activity class 62 ■ Exploring Activity lifecycle 67
3.2 Working with views 70
Exploring common views 71 ■ Using a ListView 73 ■ Multitasking
with Handler and Message 77 ■ Creating custom views 78
Understanding layout 80 ■ Handling focus 82 ■ Grasping events 83
3.3 Using resources 84
Supported resource types 85 ■ Referencing resources in Java 85
Defining views and layouts through XML resources 87
Externalizing values 89 ■ Providing animations 92
3.4 Understanding the AndroidManifest file 93
3.5 Summary 95
4 Intents and services 97
4.1 Working with Intent classes 98
Defining intents 99 ■ Intent resolution 102 ■ Matching a custom
URI 105 ■ Using Android-provided activities 109
4.2 Listening in with broadcast receivers 110
Overloading the Intent concept 110 ■ Creating a receiver 112
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CONTENTS ix
4.3 Building a Service 113
Dual-purpose nature of a Service 113 ■ Creating a background
task Service 114
4.4 Performing Inter-Process Communication 117
Android Interface Definition Language 117 ■ Exposing a
remote interface 120 ■ Binding to a Service 120 ■ Starting
versus binding 122 ■ Service lifecycle 123 ■ Binder and
Parcelable 124
4.5 Summary 125
5 Storing and retrieving data 126
5.1 Using preferences 127
Working with SharedPreferences 127 ■ Preference access
permissions 130
5.2 Using the filesystem 134
Creating files 134 ■ Accessing files 135 ■ Files as raw
resources 136 ■ XML file resources 137 ■ External storage via
an SD card 139
5.3 Persisting data to a database 143
Building and accessing a database 143 ■ Using the sqlite3 tool 148
5.4 Working with ContentProvider classes 149
Understanding URI representations and manipulating records 151
Creating a ContentProvider 158
5.5 Summary 165
6 Networking and web services 167
6.1 An overview of networking 169
Networking basics 169 ■ Clients and servers 171
6.2 Checking the network status 172
6.3 Communicating with a server socket 173
6.4 Working with HTTP 176
Simple HTTP and java.net 177 ■ Robust HTTP with HttpClient 179
Creating an HTTP and HTTPS helper 181
6.5 Web services 186
POX—Putting it together with HTTP and XML 187 ■ REST 189
To SOAP or not to SOAP, that is the question 193
6.6 Summary 194
Licensed to Deborah Christiansen <[e-mail]>