Vanilla JavaScript Code Snippets

In a new series of posts, we highlight some of the useful tools and techniques for developers and designers. This time around, let’s look at vanilla JavaScript code snippets — resources and lightweight libraries to help you solve a problem without a large overhead or third-party dependencies read more

Tools Every Android Developer Should Be Using

The two most common operating systems that host mobile applications are Android and iOS. Every day, on average, 3,739 new mobile applications are added to the Google Play store. And that’s only counting apps built on Android. The mobile app era is in full effect! So if you weren’t already planning to launch a mobile app for your new business venture, consider this a wake-up call. But before you jump in headfirst, take a moment to explore the following tools that every Android developer should be using.

Like any software development, Android development requires the programmer to use an integrated development environment, or IDE. IDEs streamline Android development by consolidating different tools and aspects of writing the program; each IDE is built differently and specializes in its unique niche. These IDEs typically bring Android SDK and platform tools together while providing the developer with an Android emulator to test the program without running it on an actual device. And while these are incredibly powerful tools, they only scratch the surface of what’s available for Android development.

Android libraries come in handy during app development by harnessing the power of open-source code libraries like the GitHub platform to quickly locate minute pieces of code to be used in your mobile app. Other libraries include Retrofit, which excels at using web services to fetch data from a server used in the mobile app. Google recommends Glide library to maintain image aspect ratio, loading and caching. And MaterialDesignLibrary provides developers with custom user interface components that increase the mobile app’s intuitiveness for the end-user.

It is customary with Android development to first test your mobile app before deploying it. When deploying, Android-based operating systems require an Android Package or APK. Tools like Gradle pull code lines from Java and XML files to generate this APK for the developer in either top-level or module-level builds. Once it’s deployed, it’s likely your end-user will need to store data locally to their phone. Android’s operating system uses a database called SQLite to do so, but it never hurts to explore third-party databases like greenDAO or OrmLite.

Firebase is like an Android Swiss army knife for facilitating authentication, file storage, crash management, analytics, file storage, notifications and server management processes. And finally, every Android developer should build the foundation of their code architecture using software design patterns such MVC, MVP or MVVM.

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Happy coding!