#Android Workshop for Beginners

Thanks for signing up for the Android Workshop for Beginners workshop!

This page is heads-up what the workshop is all about and to lay out the prerequisites to setup your Android development environment.

What you will learn in this workshop

Lesson 1 Android Studio and Android projects

• Importing Android Gradle projects in Android Studio
• Navigating through a typical Android Studio (Gradle) Project structure
• Building and running Android apps on your own device or Android Virtual Device (AVD).
• Basic understanding of resources and resource qualifiers

Lesson 2 Activities and Views

• Working with Activities, and get basic understanding of the Activity Life Cycle
• Learn about common Views or widgets and how to add them to an Activity
• Learn how to interact with these views in your code.
• Learn how to listen to a click event.

Lesson 3 Intents, Tasks and the Activity Back Stack

• Basic understanding of tasks and the activity back stack
• Move from one Activity to another with explicit and implicit Intents

Lesson 4 ListViews and Adapters

• Basic understanding of ListViews and Adapters
• Working with the ArrayAdapter
• Creating String Array resources
• Extending the BaseAdapter to create a custom adapter
• Creating more complex layouts for the list items

Lesson 5 Creating a simple image viewer app

• Basic understanding of Fragments
• Basic understanding of ViewPagers and the FragmentPagerAdapter
• Playing (animal ;-) sounds with the MediaPlayer

What you won't learn in this workshop

• The Java language and syntax
• Basic Object Oriented (OO) programming
• Basic event driven programming
• Working with Services, Broadcast Receivers, Databases, etc.

Setting up your workshop development environment

This workshop is aimed at the intermediate Java or OO programmer who wants to start with native Android development. As a prerequisite we ask you to setup a working Android development environment. Please check if you have already installed (if not download and install) the following software on your computer:

• (Optional) A Git client or command line tool to clone the workshop repository. Sourcetree is a pretty cool Git GUI client. If you don't want the hassle of working with Git you can get (or download) a zip-file with the repository contents on the day of the workshop.
• A Java Software Development Kit (JDK), version 7 is recommended. We advise against using JDK 8 for this workshop. For one since it's not supported :-P On a Mac you need a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 6 to be able to run Android Studio. Note: A Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is not enough to do Android development, you need that Java SDK!
• The Android Studio bundle, which includes:
  • The Android Studio IDE, which is based on the community edition of IntelliJ IDEA.
  • All the Android SDK Tools to design, test, debug, and profile your app.
  • The latest Android platform to compile your app.
  • The latest Android system image to run your app in the emulator

• After you have installed Android Studio you might need to update to the latest version. Click on “Android Studio” on a Mac or in the “File” menu on Windows and Linux and select “Check for Updates…”. We will use version 1.1.0 of Android Studio for this workshop.
• Fire up Android Studio and check that you have the latest Tools, Android platform and Extras installed. You can access the SDK manager by clicking on the SDK Manager Icon in the toolbar. Your configuration should look something like this

You only need the latest versions of the Tools, Platform-tools and Build-tools

Select the packages that are selected in the screenshot. If you don't have an Android device install one of the Intel Atom images so you can create an emulator later on. If you have enough hard disk space simply click the checkbox before the Android 5.1.1 (API 22) folder to select and download everything.

Simply install everything in the Extras section for the workshop. FYI The Google USB Driver is only compatible with Windows machines. So install that if you run Android Studio on windows and want to connect your dev phone via a USB cable.

• If you have selected all the packages above click the “Install Packages” button and sit tight.
• Preferably we would like you to connect your phone to your computer and run and test the samples on a real device. If you don't own an Android device you can install an Android emulator, also known as an Android Virtual Device (AVD). Install at least one Android Virtual Device (AVD) running Lollipop for this workshop. All the capabilities of the AVD Manager are accessible directly from the Android Studio interface. Click the AVD Manager Icon in the toolbar to open it and create new AVDs. Note: If you connect your Android device to a Windows machine make sure you have installed the correct device driver for your Android device. If you have ever successfully connected your Android device to your PC you probably already have it.

##Connecting your device to Android Studio

USB Debugging

If you want to run apps on your device the first thing you need to do is enable USB debugging on the device itself (by starting the Settings app on your device and selecting Developer Options | USB Debugging). If you don't see the developer options item in your settings menu and you are running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or higher you can enable them by clicking on the Settings | About Phone | Build item a couple of times to enable them. If you run an older Android version the USB Debugging checkbox might reside in the Applications section of your settings.

Unknown Sources

You must also allow installation of apps from sources other than the Play Store by checking Unknown Sources in the security settings (on most phones). Now it’s simply a matter of plugging in your phone and running the Android application by clicking the run button in Android Studio

If you've installed all the necessary development kits described above you are all set for the workshop!

Go to lesson 1