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Android Application Development with Maven
Android Application Development with Maven

Android Application Development with Maven: Learn how to use and configure Maven to support all phases of the development of an Android application

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Android Application Development with Maven

Chapter 2. Starting the Development Phase

In the previous chapter, we saw how to install a complete work area to develop an Android application, using Maven as the build and project management tool. In this chapter we will see how to take advantage of Maven during the development phase.

Reminders about Android projects

Before diving deeper into the subject, let's review some concepts and rules related to Android.

At first glance, an Android project looks like any other Java project. Yet, some differences are fundamental.

An Android project is made of sources (Java, XML, and property files) and code that is generated by the system. All of these are compiled into bytecode and compressed as an Android PacKage (APK) file. Some Android projects also can produce AAR files but we will have the chance to learn more about this in a following chapter.

Let's open the Android project we have created in the previous chapter, using an artifact. As seen, the hierarchy of folders and files is as following:

  • assets/: This will be reviewed later.
  • res/: This is a set of resources.
    • res/drawable-*pi/*.png: Due to the strong fractionation of Android system, and the high variety of devices, resources such as pictures, fonts, and so on have to be taken into account while releasing. Unless...

Creating an AVD

Before running any application, you have to create an Android Virtual Device (AVD), a kind of software emulator for Android device. Alternatively, you can run directly on a physical device (phone, tablet, and watch), which is actually faster. However, creating AVD instances allows you to test your application in a variety of configurations (OS version, screen size, memory, and so on) which is almost impossible to do with real devices. You can perform this operation via the Graphical User Interface (GUI), or in command line. Both produce the same result.

With the GUI

To run the AVD Manager in windows, you need to execute the AVD Manager.exe file located in the $ANDROID_HOME root; Linux users need to navigate to their SDK's tools/ directory and execute:

$ android avd

When you see the dialog—the list probably contains no emulators – click on New to add a new AVD. Fill out the fields relating to the device you want to emulate, as shown in the following screenshot...

Develop and Build

Now that we have learned how to manage emulators and we have understood the typical Maven project structure and the basic configuration settings found in pom.xml file, we are ready to start developing our simple application. Remember that this book's purpose is not to teach how to code in Android SDK, but to explain how you can effectively use maven to speed up the development process. We will explain the required Maven commands but we will not focus on a particular IDE. Each IDE has its own way of creating Maven command executions and it's out of the scope of this book. You can experiment with your favorite IDE but in any case, if you want to master Android Maven development you should be able to at least run all Maven commands from a terminal window, like that discussed in the following sections and throughout this whole book.

Cleaning

Our first step is to clean the project from any generated source code or other artifacts. Typically, the Maven clean goal is...

Architecture principles

Now that we are able to build and deploy on an AVD, let's resume the development phase itself.

Standalone application

In "simple cases", the Android application has no contact with any other tier. The application is self-dependent. Therefore, the principles of architecture common to any other standalone application apply.

The application has to be divided based on functional criteria, for instance: domain or model, Data Access Object (DAO), service, and view. In Android terminology, views are activities. A graph of direct dependencies is shown in the following image:

Standalone application

In other terms, the view may have direct access to the services, but not to the DAO layer. Yet, any layer is aware of the model.

This best practice allows developing many applications built on common basic blocks, with a frontend and a behavior being totally different.

The management of external dependencies is regular: dependencies are defined mainly by the triplet groupId, artifactId, and...

Summary

Thus, in this second chapter, we learned or revised concepts related to Android SDK and tools. We reviewed how to create AVDs in the GUI and in the command line. We saw how to start/stop an emulator from Maven, and how to clean, build, deploy, and undeploy an APK onto an emulator. Finally, we described best practices in the architecture of Android projects managed by Maven.

In the next chapter, we will begin exploring unit testing.

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Description

Android Application Development with Maven is intended for Android developers or devops engineers who want to use Maven to effectively develop quality Android applications. It would be helpful, but not necessary, if you have some previous experience with Maven.

What you will learn

  • Integrate Maven with your favorite Android IDE
  • Install and configure Maven with your local development environment
  • Create the proper Maven structure for both standalone Android applications or applications that are part of a bigger project
  • Run unit tests using popular frameworks such as Robolectric and collect coverage information using Maven plugins
  • Configure a variety of different tools such as Robotium, Spoon, and Selendroid to run integration tests
  • Handle dependencies and different versions of the same application
  • Manage and automate the release process of your application inside/outside Google Play
  • Discover new tools such as Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA/Android Studio, and NetBeans, which perfectly integrate with Maven and boost your productivity
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Length: 192 pages
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Table of Contents

8 Chapters
1. Beginning with the Basics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Starting the Development Phase Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Unit Testing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Integration Testing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Android Flavors Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Release Life Cycle and Continuous Integration Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Other Tools and Plugins Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

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Luca Morettoni Jun 26, 2015
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Java and Maven are strongly coupled, if you have worked for medium (or big) Java projects you will have used Maven!Maven has an huge number of plugins that help you on all process of application release, from testing to final packaging, the only price you need to pay is the configuration file that need to be written in XML (yes, I don't like XML).Recently Google moved the Android app building system to Gradle, that is a great tool: it can use the Maven repositories and the migration is not complicated, but the problem is that you need to migrate and learn a new system!This book is a perfect reference if you need to develope an Android application and you want (or you need) use Maven! Is full of real examples, and the authors drives you to create a pom file for a real application, giving you hints about useful plugins and configuration! Personally I didn't like so much the chapter about the IDE integration, looks like it was written much quickly compared to the other sections of the book.If you need to read (or learn) about Maven and Android project this book is for you!
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