Advanced Android APIs Training Course

Fundamentals of Android Inter-process communications

This module covers the fundamentals of the Android Inter-process communication based on the Binder. By the end of this module, you will understand how to create bound services, how to send parcels across the process lines, and how to make asynchronious binder calls. We will illustrate the key capabilities of the Android IPC menachism on a working example app that progressively becomes more and more sophisticated. Topics covered include the following:

• Parcelables and serialization
• Binder and IPC fundamentals
• Binding a service
• AIDL and publishing an API
• Creating and binding to a remote service
• Implementing client-side service connection
• The purpose of stubs and proxies
• Passing parcelable data between processes
• Making asynchronous binder calls

Android is put together of about equal part Java and C. So, no wonder that we need an easy way to bridge between these two totally different worlds. Java offers Java Native Interface (JNI) as a framework connecting the world of Java to the native code. Android goes a step further by packaging other useful tools and libraries into a Native Development Kit, or NDK. NDK makes developing C/C++ code that works with an Android app much simpler than if one was to do it by hand. Topics covered include:

• What is in NDK?
• Why NDK?
• Java Native Interface (JNI)
• Using NDK
• NDK and JNI by Example
• NDK's Stable APIs
• Lab: NDK

Testing is an important part of any app development. There are many facets of testing, such as unit testing, performance, or functional testing. In this module, you will get an overview of various tools that Android supports for testing apps. Students will understand and be able to use JUnit both from Java and from the Android platform. They will become familiar with basic IoC coding patterns and be able to use the Mocks provided as part of the Android platform. In addition students will become proficient with other tools: TraceView, Monkey, and the Debugger. Topics covered include:

• Testing guidelines: why test and what to test
• JUnit framework: general overview of unit testing and Java's JUnit framework
• Android's unit testing framework: focus on Android JUnit extensions
• Using the exercise monkey test tool: pseudo-randomly testing the UI
• Using monkeyrunner tool: scripting functional test cases for your app
• Other testing tools and frameworks: the third-party resources

Android provides support for quite a few ways to connect your device to other devices and the cloud. In this module, we'll explore the capabilities of Android connectivity APIs. This module is a comprehensive overview of connectivity APIs. For a deep dive into a specific type of connectivity, look up a related module. For each API, we will look at an example app that illustrates its key features. Topics covered include:

• Bluetooth
• NFC
• Wifi
• Wifi Direct
• USB
• Best practices: optimizing for battery

Android provides a rich set of APIs to support various audio and video playback and recording. In this module, you will learn how to create an audio recorder and playback app, a video recorder and a camera app. Topics covered include:

• Audio playback: Playback and streaming, management of audio policies, hardware and focus.
• Audio recorder: Capturing audio and saving it on the device.
• Video playback: Playback of prerecorded video files.
• Camera: How to record video as well as take pictures in both raw and jpeg formats.

WebKit is a very important library, not only because it runs most of the world's web browsers, but also because it allows you to build Android apps using HTML and Javascript. In this module, you will learn how Android exposes WebKit functionality via WebView. You will learn about it's features as well as how to integrate web content with the rest of your app. Topics covered include:

• Using WebView in your apps
• Building Web Apps in WebView
• Using Javascript in your code and binding it to your Java code
• Handling page navigation
• Debugging Web Apps
• Best Practices for Web Apps

Location is one of the key features for a mobile device. In this module, you will learn how Android location framework works and best practices for using it. Topics covered include:

• Location service overview
• Using various location providers
• Using location listeners
• Overview of geo coding
• Overview of Google Maps external library

• Overview of Android security architecture
• Application signing
• UserIDs and file system
• Using permissions
• Declaring and enforcing permissions

• Overview of Gesture APIs
• Using gesture library
• Creating new gestures

• Overview of NFC protocol
• The tag dispatch system
• How tags are mapped to MIME types and URIs
• How tags are dispatched to apps
• Updating the Manifest file
• Filtering for NFC intents
• Creating common types of NDEF records
• Beaming NDEF messages to other devices
• Reading and writing to tags
• Using foreground dispatch system

• SIP Overview
• Updating the Manifest file
• Using SipManager
• Registering with Sip Server
• Making audio calls
• Receiving calls
• Testing your SIP app

• Wifi P2P Overview
• Using WifiP2pManage
• Discovering peers
• Connecting to peers
• Transferring data
• Creating a Wifi Direct demo app

After completing this module students will be able to create and use complex content providers. The module addresses Sqlite, file and network based providers as well as Cursors and optimization issues involved in their use in inter-process communications. The module also addresses URI desing and creating and using access permissions

• Best practices for SQLite Content Providers
• FIle base Content providers: BLOBs and JSON
• Network based Content providers and caching
• Using Cursors
• Optimizing Cursors for IPC
• URI Design

In this module developers will learn to use the Android graphics APIs to create their own custom widgets. Developers will understand Android's mulit-pass layout algorithm, background and foreground drawing, animations and Drawables. They will learn to use paint, canvas and off-screen bitmaps to create efficient and complex visual effects. The entire module is set in the context of the post-GIngerbread rendering pipeline and effective use of the GPU.

• Measurement and Layout
• Paint and Canvas
• Drawables
• Matrix transformations
• Animation
• OpenGL and the rendering pipeline

Renderscript is a multi-platform, high performance, compiled language used to develop fast portable 3D graphics for Android devices. In this module, students will be introduced to the Renderscript tool-chain and and rendering pipeline. During the lab, they will write, deploy and run several Renderscript applications.

• Renderscript, the Language
• The GPU and the rendering pipeline
• Renderscript development tools
• The Renderscript Compute interface

In this module, developers will be introduced to the Android Sensor Manager and the APIs for the devices it controls. You will learn to use each of the standard sensors, such as temperature, light, pressure, acceleration, motion, and orientation. Topics covered include:

• Introduction to the Sensor Manager
• Overview of various sensors
• Listening to sensors and processing sensor data
• Best practices for working with sensors

Device Administration API provide a framework for creating apps that can enforce certain policies on a device. These policies were designed with the enterprise requirements in mind. In this module you will learn what Device Admin API can and cannot do, as well as how to create an application that becomes an administrator on user's device. Topics covered include:

• Overview of Device Administration API
• Supported policies
• Developing a Device Administration app
• Managing and enforcing policies

This module focuses on best practices for exchanging data between Enterprise backend services and Android clients. Developers will become proficient in best practices for building client applications that efficiently communicate with RESTful services. The class focuses on scalability and addresses both SQL and no-SQL data stores. It also includes discussion of JSON schema validation and auto-generation of ContentProviders

• Android REST APIs
• Content Provider as service proxy
• Content Provider as look-aside cache
• JSON Schema and Content Provider autogeneration