A Complete Roadmap to Become Android Developer

Introduction

Android is one of the famous mobile operating systems which is based on the Linux kernel. More than 75% of smartphone devices use android as an operating system to perform different tasks. So Android development is a great field to enter into, as it provides a wide variety of opportunities for those who are interested in creating mobile applications. However, becoming an Android developer can be a long and complicated process, so it's important to have a roadmap to ensure you stay on track. In this article, we'll outline a complete roadmap to becoming an Android developer, from beginning to end to become a successful android developer.

Why do you have to learn Android Development?

Before starting your journey to becoming an android developer you should have a clear goal in your mind that why you have to learn android development ? What is the purpose for which you want to learn android development? Whether it may be that you are creating a new project, you want to start your own business or anything. Your goal will help you to determine How much knowledge you will have to gain to become an android developer. For ex : If you want to learn android development for creating your simple college project then the basic android development will be enough for you to learn. So it depends on your goal for which you want to learn android development.

How to Learn Android?

In android development there are different types of programming languages which are used such as XML, Java and Kotlin. The XML file in the android studio project is used to design the user interface of the andxqxaroid application whereas JAVA and Kotlin files are used to write the business logic for the UI part within our android application. As there are 2 programming languages available for writing business logic for android applications. There is a huge confusion between beginner level developers to decide which language to be chosen for developing mobile applications.

Kotlin is an official programming language declared by Google for building mobile applications which is widely used. Kotlin is basically an advanced version of the JAVA programming language and it is easy to write and understand.

Java is also an object oriented programming language which helps us to communicate with the operating system, hardware that directly uses JAVA. This language will help us to create any programs which will support any of the operating systems whether it may be Mac, Windows or Linux.

There are different learning sources which you can checkout for learning this programming language. But for better understanding follow the resources provided by Google to gain more insights on learning this programming language.

A roadmap to Learn Android Development

To start with building android mobile applications follow tutorials and blogs on How to create new projects in android studio and how to implement different features in the mobile applications. Below are the steps which you can follow to get started with learning Android Development.

Learn Programming Language

As there are two programming language option which we can choose for developing of android mobile applications such as Java and Kotlin. Developers can choose any of this language to start with android development.

Learn Android Studio

Android Studio is an official IDE for building android mobile applications. It is developed by Intellij. Take an overview of Android studio so that you will get an idea about the different options and different tools present in android studio which will be used while building android mobile applications.

Checking our Android Components

Android application comprises several components such as Activities, Services, Broadcast Receivers and Content Providers. Each component has their unique use cases.

• Activities − Activities are used to display the screens within an android application and we can manage the lifecycle of an android application through the activity itself.

• Services − Services are used to perform some background task such as playing a music in background or to perform some background task.

• BroadCast Receivers − BroadCast Receivers are used to trigger events within an android application when some event occurs in the background.

• Content Providers − Content Providers are used to access the data from another application inside our application such as accessing contact from contacts application.

4. UI Designing

As an Android developer you should be able to design the UI for your mobile applications. You can build the UI for your mobile applications using XML language which is easy to learn. While learning the UI designing take a look at the different types of widgets, view groups which are to be used within the android application.

Data Storage in Android

There are several methods in android applications which we can use to store the data such as Shared Preferences, SQLite database, Room Database and others which are use to store and retrieve the data from an Android application.

Using a Third Party Library

As an android developer you will be developing so many android applications. It is necessary to use some external libraries within your android applications to add some features within your android application. We can use libraries such as Glide, Picasso and others for implementing some external features within our android application.

Firebase

Firebase is a cloud services provider which provides different types of services for mobile applications, websites and others which will provide solutions such as creating a realtime database, sending notifications, storages and others to maintain it.

Android Architecture

When developing any android application it is mandatory to follow the android architecture pattern which will help us to make code more readable and easy to understand. There are several android architecture patterns used while android applications are as follows −

• MVVM.

• MVC.

• MVM.

Unit Testing

Now you are able to develop the mobile applications, now before rolling out your applications for users. It is mandatory that your application passes all the test cases. So for that we can implement Unit Testing for testing of our mobile application.

Generating signed APK and Publishing It

Now when your project has been tested, you can proceed with creating a signed APK for your project which we can use to push it into our Google Play Console.

Conclusion

In the above article we have taken a look at a Complete Roadmap which will help you to learn android development efficiently