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Android Application Components

There are four main components that make up an Android application: activities, services, broadcast receivers, and content providers. Activities are used for the user interface and interactions, services handle background processes, broadcast receivers respond to messages between apps and the system, and content providers supply data between apps. These components are described in the application's manifest file and work together using intents and other connectors.

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KASIITA PATRICK
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96 views

Android Application Components

There are four main components that make up an Android application: activities, services, broadcast receivers, and content providers. Activities are used for the user interface and interactions, services handle background processes, broadcast receivers respond to messages between apps and the system, and content providers supply data between apps. These components are described in the application's manifest file and work together using intents and other connectors.

Uploaded by

KASIITA PATRICK
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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MOBILE PHONE APP DEVELOPMENT IN JAVA – GCS 3106

Android application components


Application components are the essential building blocks of an Android application. These
components are loosely coupled by the application manifest file AndroidManifest.xml that
describes each component of the application and how they interact.
There are four main components that can be used within an Android application namely:−
Sr. No Components & Description
1 Activities
They dictate the UI and handle the user interaction to the smart phone screen.
2 Services
They handle background processing associated with an application.
3 Broadcast Receivers
They handle communication between Android OS and applications.
4 Content Providers
They handle data and database management issues.

Activities
An activity represents a single screen with a user interface. In-short Activity performs actions on
the screen. For example, an email application might have one activity that shows a list of new
emails, another activity to compose an email, and another activity for reading emails. If an
application has more than one activity, then one of them should be marked as the activity that is
presented when the application is launched.
An activity is implemented as a subclass of Activity class as follows −
public class MainActivity extends Activity {
}

Services
A service is a component that runs in the background to perform long-running operations. For
example, a service might play music in the background while the user is in a different application,
or it might fetch data over the network without blocking user interaction with an activity.
A service is implemented as a subclass of Service class as follows −
public class MyService extends Service {
}

Credit: Tutorial Points Page 1|3


MOBILE PHONE APP DEVELOPMENT IN JAVA – GCS 3106

Broadcast Receivers
Broadcast Receivers simply respond to broadcast messages from other applications or from the
system. For example, applications can also initiate broadcasts to let other applications know that
some data has been downloaded to the device and is available for them to use, so this is broadcast
receiver who will intercept this communication and will initiate appropriate action.
A broadcast receiver is implemented as a subclass of BroadcastReceiver class and each message
is broadcaster as an Intent object.
public class MyReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {
public void onReceive(context,intent){}
}

Content Providers
A content provider component supplies data from one application to others on request. Such
requests are handled by the methods of the ContentResolver class. The data may be stored in the
file system, the database or somewhere else entirely.
A content provider is implemented as a subclass of ContentProvider class and must implement a
standard set of APIs that enable other applications to perform transactions.
public class MyContentProvider extends ContentProvider {
public void onCreate(){}
}

Additional Components
There are additional components which will be used in the construction of above mentioned
entities, their logic, and wiring between them. These components are −
S.No Components & Description
1 Fragments
Represents a portion of user interface in an Activity.
2 Views
UI elements that are drawn on-screen including buttons, lists forms etc.
3 Layouts
View hierarchies that control screen format and appearance of the views.
4 Intents

Credit: Tutorial Points Page 2|3


MOBILE PHONE APP DEVELOPMENT IN JAVA – GCS 3106

Messages wiring components together.


5 Resources
External elements, such as strings, constants and drawable pictures.
6 Manifest
Configuration file for the application.

Credit: Tutorial Points Page 3|3

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