Learning Android Apps Development The Eclipse Way

This blog is an introduction to building a complete Android app. The chapter includes creating a new app project, exploring the components of an Android app, setting up the emulator to run and test apps, and building a variation of the traditional mobile application.

Starting a New Project

Eclipse is a powerful, open source, integrated development environment (IDE) that facilitates the creation of desktop, mobile, and web applications. Eclipse is a highly versatile and adaptable tool. Many types of applications and programming languages can be used by adding different “plug-ins.” For example, plug-ins are available for a very large number of programming languages as diverse as COBOL, PHP, Java, Ruby, and C++, to name a few. Additionally, plug-ins provide the capability to develop for different platforms, such as Android, Blackberry, and Windows. Many of the tools in the Eclipse IDE will be explained through the act of developing an Android app.

Android is a mobile operating system designed for smartphones and tablets. The operating system is very powerful, enabling access to a diverse set of hardware resources on a smartphone or tablet. Android is provided by Google and is continually updated, improved, and extended. This makes the development of apps for Android smartphones and tablets both exciting and challenging. As with Eclipse, the many features of the Android environment are best explained through the act of developing an app.

Setting Up the Workspace

Eclipse uses the concept of a workspace for organizing projects. Because Eclipse can be used to develop many types of applications, this is very useful. A workspace, in reality, is just a folder on some drive on your computer. The folder contains the application’s code and resources, code libraries used by the application, and metadata that is used to keep track of environment information for the workspace.

To begin, run Eclipse. The Workspace Launcher dialog window opens, asking which workspace you want to use. The default workspace is displayed in the dialog window’s text box. Most IDEs are designed with the idea that developers are going to be working on the same machine each time they work on a project. This can cause problems in the education environment where students do not have the ability to work on the same machine and/or store their work on the machine they are currently working on. If you are using your own machine, you can skip to the next section; your workspace was created when you installed Eclipse and is ready to go. However, if you are working in an environment where you cannot use the same machine each time, you need to set up a workspace on either a flash drive or on a network drive. Determine which of these options is best for your situation and perform the following steps:

• Create a folder in your selected location named workspace
• Go back to the Workspace Launcher and browse to your new folder
• Click Open Preferences on the dialog window and browse to the sdk folder. This is usually located in the .android folder
• Click OK to close the dialog window. Your workspace is now ready to begin Android development

While working on such projects, you have to think beyond your imagination. Work above your expertise. Then only you can achieve success in Android apps development projects. There are many ways to learn about the subject. One of them is to follow blogs where you will find discussions have been made on some projects as well. I will try to add some of my past projects in my next blog if possible. Till then happy learning. Time to go mobile!