Chapter 2: Android - Application Components

Introduction

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 following four main components that can be used within an Android application −

Sr.No Components & Description

Activities
1
They dictate the UI and handle the user interaction to the smart phone screen.

Services
2
They handle background processing associated with an application.

Broadcast Receivers
3
They handle communication between Android OS and applications.

Content Providers
4
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 {

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 BroadcastReceiverclass 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 ContentResolverclass. 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(){}

}
We will go through these tags in detail while covering application components in individual
chapters.

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

Fragments
1
Represents a portion of user interface in an Activity.

Views
2
UI elements that are drawn on-screen including buttons, lists forms etc.

Layouts
3
View hierarchies that control screen format and appearance of the views.

Intents
4
Messages wiring components together.

Resources
5
External elements, such as strings, constants and drawable pictures.

Manifest
6
Configuration file for the application.

Android - Hello World Example

Let us start actual programming with Android Framework. Before you start writing your first
example using Android SDK, you have to make sure that you have set-up your Android
development environment properly as explained in Android - Environment Set-up tutorial. I
also assume that you have a little bit working knowledge with Android studio.

So let us proceed to write a simple Android Application which will print "Hello World!".

Create Android Application

The first step is to create a simple Android Application using Android studio. When you click
on Android studio icon, it will show screen as shown below

You can start your application development by calling start a new android studio project. in a
new installation frame should ask Application name, package information and location of the
project.−
After entered application name, it going to be called select the form factors your application
runs on, here need to specify Minimum SDK, in our tutorial, I have declared as API23: Android
6.0(Mashmallow) −
The next level of installation should contain selecting the activity to mobile, it specifies the
default layout for Applications.

At the final stage it going to be open development tool to write the application code.

Anatomy of Android Application

Before you run your app, you should be aware of a few directories and files in the Android
project −
Sr.No. Folder, File & Description

Java

1 This contains the .java source files for your project. By default, it includes
an MainActivity.java source file having an activity class that runs when your app
is launched using the app icon.

2 res/drawable-hdpi

This is a directory for drawable objects that are designed for high-density
 screens.

res/layout
3
This is a directory for files that define your app's user interface.

res/values
4 This is a directory for other various XML files that contain a collection of
resources, such as strings and colours definitions.

AndroidManifest.xml
5 This is the manifest file which describes the fundamental characteristics of the
app and defines each of its components.

Build.gradle

This is an auto generated file which contains compileSdkVersion,

6
buildToolsVersion, applicationId, minSdkVersion, targetSdkVersion,
versionCode and versionName

Following section will give a brief overview of the important application files.

The Main Activity File

The main activity code is a Java file MainActivity.java. This is the actual application file
which ultimately gets converted to a Dalvik executable and runs your application. Following is
the default code generated by the application wizard for Hello World! application −

package com.example.helloworld;

import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;

import android.os.Bundle;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

@Override
 protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

Here, R.layout.activity_main refers to the activity_main.xml file located in the res/layout folder.
The onCreate() method is one of many methods that are figured when an activity is loaded.

The Manifest File

Whatever component you develop as a part of your application, you must declare all its
components in a manifest.xml which resides at the root of the application project directory. This
file works as an interface between Android OS and your application, so if you do not declare
your component in this file, then it will not be considered by the OS. For example, a default
manifest file will look like as following file −

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

package="com.example.tutorialspoint7.myapplication">

<application

android:allowBackup="true"

android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"

android:label="@string/app_name"

android:supportsRtl="true"

android:theme="@style/AppTheme">

<activity android:name=".MainActivity">

<intent-filter>

<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />

 <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />

</intent-filter>

</activity>

</application>

</manifest>

Here <application>...</application> tags enclosed the components related to the application.

Attribute android:icon will point to the application icon available under res/drawable-hdpi. The
application uses the image named ic_launcher.png located in the drawable folders

The <activity> tag is used to specify an activity and android:name attribute specifies the fully
qualified class name of the Activity subclass and the android:label attributes specifies a string to
use as the label for the activity. You can specify multiple activities using <activity> tags.

The action for the intent filter is named android.intent.action.MAIN to indicate that this activity
serves as the entry point for the application. The categoryfor the intent-filter is
named android.intent.category.LAUNCHER to indicate that the application can be launched
from the device's launcher icon.

The @string refers to the strings.xml file explained below. Hence, @string/app_name refers to
the app_name string defined in the strings.xml file, which is "HelloWorld". Similar way, other
strings get populated in the application.

Following is the list of tags which you will use in your manifest file to specify different Android
application components −

 <activity>elements for activities

 <service> elements for services

 <receiver> elements for broadcast receivers

 <provider> elements for content providers

The Strings File

The strings.xml file is located in the res/values folder and it contains all the text that your
application uses. For example, the names of buttons, labels, default text, and similar types of
strings go into this file. This file is responsible for their textual content. For example, a default
strings file will look like as following file −
<resources>

<string name="app_name">HelloWorld</string>

<string name="hello_world">Hello world!</string>

<string name="menu_settings">Settings</string>

<string name="title_activity_main">MainActivity</string>

</resources>

The Layout File

The activity_main.xml is a layout file available in res/layout directory, that is referenced by
your application when building its interface. You will modify this file very frequently to change
the layout of your application. For your "Hello World!" application, this file will have following
content related to default layout −

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"

android:layout_width="match_parent"

android:layout_height="match_parent" >

<TextView

android:layout_width="wrap_content"

android:layout_height="wrap_content"

android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"

android:layout_centerVertical="true"

android:padding="@dimen/padding_medium"

android:text="@string/hello_world"

tools:context=".MainActivity" />

</RelativeLayout>
This is an example of simple RelativeLayout which we will study in a separate chapter.
The TextView is an Android control used to build the GUI and it have various attributes
like android:layout_width, android:layout_height etc which are being used to set its width and
height etc.. The @string refers to the strings.xml file located in the res/values folder. Hence,
@string/hello_world refers to the hello string defined in the strings.xml file, which is "Hello
World!".

Running the Application

Let's try to run our Hello World! application we just created. I assume you had created
your AVD while doing environment set-up. To run the app from Android studio, open one of
your project's activity files and click Run icon from the tool bar. Android studio installs the
app on your AVD and starts it and if everything is fine with your set-up and application, it will
display following Emulator window −

Congratulations!!! you have developed your first Android Application and now just keep
following rest of the tutorial step by step to become a great Android Developer. All the very
best.