ANDROID

OVERVIEW
Marko Gargenta marakana.com

About Marko Gargenta

Developer of Android Bootcamp for Marakana. Instructor for 1,000s of developers on Android at Qualcomm, Cisco, Motorola, DoD and other great orgs. Author of Learning Android published by OReilly. Speaker at OSCON (3x), ACM, IEEE, SDC, AnDevCon. Co-Founder of SFAndroid.org Co-Chair of Android Open conference: AndroidOpen.com

Agenda
Android Then & Now Android versions The Stack Opera<ng System Features Hello World! Main Building Blocks Architec<ng an App Android UI Debugging & Logging Android Security Summary

ANDROID THEN & NOW

History and Possible Future

2005 2007 2008-2010 2011 Future? Google buys Android, Inc. Work on Dalvik starts Open Handset Alliance announced Early SoOware Development Kit Android becomes the dominant mobile plaTorm Games, Tablets, TVs Beyond phones

Vision for Android

Our goal is not just a single device. Our vision is a mobile platform that runs on many many different devices. Eric Schmidt

PlaTorm Versions
Version Android 1.0 Android 1.1 Android 1.5 Android 1.6 Android 2.0 Android 2.01 Android 2.1 Android 2.2 Android 2.3 Android 2.3.3 Android 3.x Android 4.0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11, 12, 13 14 API Level Android Android Cupcake Donut clair clair clair FroYo Gingerbread Gingerbread Honeycomb Ice Cream Sandwich Nickname

Version Distribu<on

Source: Android.com

Historical Distribu<on

Source: Android.com

Add-Ons

SenseUI

TouchWiz

MotoBlur

With Google

Devices that have with Google add-on feature a set of Googles proprietary applications, such as Maps, Gmail, Gtalk, and many others. OEMs and carriers typically enter into a licensing agreement with Google in order to distribute Google version of Android.

ANDROID STACK

The Stack
Applications
Home Contacts Phone Browser Other

Application Framework
Activity Manager Package Manager Window Manager Telephony Manager Resource Manager Content Providers Location Manager View System Notiication Manager

Libraries
Surface Manager OpenGL
Media Framework

SQLite

Android Runtime
Core Libs

FreeType

WebKit Dalvik VM

SGL

SSL

libc

Display Driver Keypad Driver

Camera Driver WiFi Driver

Linux Kernel

Flash Driver Audio Driver

Binder Driver Power Mgmt

Linux Kernel
Android Stack

Android runs on Linux.

Home Contacts

Applications
Phone Browser Other

Linux provides: Hardware abstraction layer Memory management Process management Networking Users never see Linux sub system The adb shell command opens Linux shell

Application Framework
Activity Manager Package Manager Window Manager Telephony Manager Resource Manager Content Providers Location Manager View System Notiication Manager

Libraries
Surface Manager OpenGL
Media Framework

SQLite

Android Runtime
Core Libs

FreeType

WebKit Dalvik VM

SGL

SSL

libc

Display Driver Keypad Driver

Camera Driver WiFi Driver

Linux Kernel

Flash Driver Audio Driver

Binder Driver Power Mgmt

Na<ve Libraries
Pieces borrowed from other open source projects:
Bionic, a super fast and small license-friendly libc library optimized for Android WebKit library for fast HTML rendering OpenGL for graphics Media codecs offer support for major audio/video codecs SQLite database Much more
Applications
Home Contacts Phone Browser Other

Application Framework
Activity Manager Package Manager Window Manager Telephony Manager Resource Manager Content Providers Location Manager View System Notiication Manager

Libraries
Surface Manager OpenGL
Media Framework

SQLite

Android Runtime
Core Libs

FreeType

WebKit Dalvik VM

SGL

SSL

libc

Display Driver Keypad Driver

Camera Driver WiFi Driver

Linux Kernel

Flash Driver Audio Driver

Binder Driver Power Mgmt

Dalvik
Dalvik VM is Android implementation of Java VM Dalvik is optimized for mobile devices: Battery consumption CPU capabilities Key Dalvik differences: Register-based versus stack-based VM Dalvik runs .dex files More efficient and compact implementation Different set of Java libraries than JDK

Applica<on Framework
Applications

The rich set of system services wrapped in an intuitive Java API. This ecosystem that developers can easily tap into is what makes writing apps for Android easy. Location, web, telephony, WiFi, Bluetooth, notifications, media, camera, just to name a few.

Home

Contacts

Phone

Browser

Other

Application Framework
Activity Manager Package Manager Window Manager Telephony Manager Resource Manager Content Providers Location Manager View System Notiication Manager

Libraries
Surface Manager OpenGL
Media Framework

SQLite

Android Runtime
Core Libs

FreeType

WebKit Dalvik VM

SGL

SSL

libc

Display Driver Keypad Driver

Camera Driver WiFi Driver

Linux Kernel

Flash Driver Audio Driver

Binder Driver Power Mgmt

Applica<ons

Dalvik Executable + Resources = APK Must be signed (but debug key is okay for development) Many markets with different policies

App Distribu<on
One of the markets Side loading Internal app directory

Markets
Google Android Market Amazon Android Market Other emerging markets

Side Loading

Internal App Directory

OPERATING SYSTEM FEATURES

Mul<media
AudioPlayer lets you simply specify the audio resource and play it. VideoView is a View that you can drop anywhere in your activity, point to a video file and play it. XML: <VideoView android:id="@+id/video" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_gravity="center /> Java: player = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.video); player.setVideoPath("/sdcard/samplevideo.3gp"); player.start();

Supported Media Formats

Audio AAC LC/LTP, HE-AACv1 (AAC+), HE- AACv2, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, MP3, MIDI, RTTTL/RTX, Ogg, PCM/WAVE

Video Image

H.263, H.264, MPEG-4, VP8 JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP

RTSP and HTTP progressive streaming. HTTP live streaming coming soon. More native support in the works. Native support available via Khronos OpenMax IL

Cloud to Device Push

Big deal for many pull-based apps. Will make devices use less battery.

C2DM The Big Picture

Device Administra<on
New in FroYo: Android Device Admin API. Administrator can set: Enable passwords Set password quality Max failed logins Prompt for new password Remotely wipe device data Lock the device App requests Device Admin permissions. If granted, admin policies apply. If not, app doesnt work. Policies could be hard-coded or dynamic. Third-party enterprise solutions use this framework to build DM policies.

File System
The file system has three main mount points. One for system, one for the apps, and one for whatever. Each app has its own sandbox easily accessible to it. No one else can access its data. The sandbox is in /data/data/com.marakana.yamba/ SDCard is expected to always be there. Its a good place for large files, such as movies and music. Everyone can access it. System partition is where the entire Android operating system is, customized by OEM or not.

HELLO WORLD!

Android SDK - Whats In The Box

SDK Tools Docs Platforms Data Skins Images Samples Add-ons Google

Create New Project

Use the Eclipse tool to create a new Android project. Here are some key constructs: Project Target App name Package Ac<vity Eclipse construct minimum to run whatever Java package Java class

Anatomy of An App
Java Code + XML and Other Resources + Manifest File = Android App

Running on Emulator

Emulator, not a simulator

MAIN BUILDING BLOCKS

Yamba Demo

Lets see a real-world medium complexity Android app in action: Yamba: Yet Another Micro Blogging App

Ac<vi<es
An Activity represents a screen or a window. Sort of.
Android Application
Main Activity Another Activity Another Activity

Ac<vity Lifecycle
Activities have a welldefined lifecycle. The Android OS manages your activity by changing its state. You fill in the blanks.

Intents
Intents represent events or actions. They are to Android apps what hyperlinks are to websites. Sort of. Intents can be implicit or explicit.

Services
Services are code that runs in the background. They can be started and stopped. Services doesnt have UI.

Service Lifecycle
Service also has a lifecycle, but its much simpler than activitys. An activity typically starts and stops a service to do some work for it in the background, such as play music, check for new tweets, etc. Services can be bound or unbound.

Remote Services

Content Providers
Content Providers share content with applications across application boundaries. Examples of built-in Content Providers are: Contacts, MediaStore, Settings and more.

Content Provider Example

Broadcast Receivers

An Intent-based publish-subscribe mechanism. Great for listening system events such as SMS messages.

Architecture of An App
An Android application is a collection of many different building blocks. They are loosely coupled and can be reconfigured by the developer easily, or at least thats the intention. Lets look at 7 stages of Yamba next.

Yamba Part 1

Yamba Part 2

Yamba Part 3

Yamba Part 4

Yamba Part 5

Yamba Part 6

Yamba Part 7

ANDROID USER INTERFACE

Two UI Approaches
Procedural You write Java code Similar to Swing or AWT DeclaraKve You write XML code Similar to HTML of a web page

You can mix and match both styles. Best practice: Start with XML and declare most of UI Switch to Java and implement the UI logic

XML-Based User Interface

Use WYSIWYG tools to build powerful XML-based UI. Easily customize it from Java. Separate concerns.

Views and Layouts

Layouts contain widgets and other layouts forming a composite pattern.

Linear Layout
One of the most commonly used layouts. It lays its children next to each other, either horizontally or vertically.

Rela<ve Layout
Children of relative layout are placed in relationship to each other. This layout is efficient.

Table Layout
Table layout puts its children into table rows and columns. It is similar to an HTML table.

Frame Layout
Frame layout places its children on top of each other, like a deck of cards. It is useful for widgets such as tabs or as a placeholder for views added programmatically.

Common UI Components
Android UI includes many common modern UI widgets, such as Buttons, Tabs, Progress Bars, Date and Time Pickers, etc.

Selec<on Components
Some UI widgets may be linked to zillion pieces of data. Examples are ListView and Spinners (pull-downs).

Adapters

Adapter

Data Source

To make sure they run smoothly, Android uses Adapters to connect them to their data sources. A typical data source is an Array or a Database.

Complex Components
Certain high-level components are simply available just like Views. Adding a Map or a Video to your application is almost like adding a Button or a piece of text.

Menus and Dialogs

Graphics & Anima<on

Android has rich support for 2D graphics. You can draw & animate from XML. You can use OpenGL for 3D graphics.

Mul<media
AudioPlayer lets you simply specify the audio resource and play it. VideoView is a View that you can drop anywhere in your activity, point to a video file and play it. XML: <VideoView android:id="@+id/video" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_gravity="center /> Java: player = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.video); player.setVideoPath("/sdcard/samplevideo.3gp"); player.start();

DEBUGGING ANDROID APPS

LogCat
The universal, most versatile way to track what is going on in your app. Can be viewed via command line or Eclipse. Logs can be generated both from SDK Java code, or low-level C code via Bionic libc extension.

Debugger

Your standard debugger is included in SDK, with all the usual bells & whistles.

TraceView

TraceView helps you profile you application and find bottlenecks. It shows execution of various calls through the entire stack. You can zoom into specific calls.

Hierarchy Viewer
Hierarchy Viewer helps you analyze your User Interface. Base UI tends to be the most expensive part of your application, this tool is very useful.

ANDROID SECURITY

Security Overview
No app can adversely impact other apps, user, or OS Cannot read/write users private data Cannot read other apps data Cannot perform network access Cannot keep device awake, and so on Each application is its own sandbox To share resources, apps need to request permissions User must grant permissions at install time Linux manages security Not up to Dalvik (Java) but outsourced to Linux Native code (NDK) also adheres to sandboxing

Applica<on Sandboxing
An application is an island on its own. It contains any number of Activities, Services, Receivers and Providers. It has its own file system, database, place to store native libraries. No other app can access any of its data without prior permission.

Permissions
A component that does something potentially dangerous can require callers to have permission to access it. App that wants to use it must have user grant it permission. Permissions are granted at install time. All or nothing. Forever.

Some System Permissions

ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE BATTERY_STATS CALL_PHONE CAMERA GET_ACCOUNTS INSTALL_PACKAGES KILL_BACKGROUND_PROCESSES READ_CALENDAR RECEIVE_SMS WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION ACCESS_WIFI_STATE BLUETOOTH CALL_PRIVILEGED DEVICE_POWER GET_TASKS INTERNET NFC READ_CONTACTS RECORD_AUDIO WRITE_SETTINGS

Summary
Android is open and complete system for mobile development. It is based on Java and augmented with XML. It takes about 3-5 days of intensive training to learn Android application development for someone who has basic Java (or similar) experience.

Marko Gargenta, Marakana.com marko@marakana.com +1-415-647-7000