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coursera-android#

Time spent#

Day	hours
2014-01-21	1
2014-01-22	1
2014-01-23	1
2014-01-25	2
2014-01-31	1
2014-02-01	2

TODO#

• Dalvik Virtual Machine, internals
• Android Security Underpinnings

Weeks#

Week 1#

• You can telnet to your emulator, the port is in the title of your emulator (5554).
• manipulate device while logged in :
  • network speed edge or network speed full or power capacity 5 or power status not-charging or geo fix 0.00 40.00 or sms send 301555555 "test msg" , see here for more:

metskem@athena ~ $ telnet localhost 5554
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
Android Console: type 'help' for a list of commands
OK
help
Android console command help:

    help|h|?         print a list of commands
    event            simulate hardware events
    geo              Geo-location commands
    gsm              GSM related commands
    cdma             CDMA related commands
    kill             kill the emulator instance
    network          manage network settings
    power            power related commands
    quit|exit        quit control session
    redir            manage port redirections
    sms              SMS related commands
    avd              control virtual device execution
    window           manage emulator window
    qemu             QEMU-specific commands
    sensor           manage emulator sensors

try 'help <command>' for command-specific help
OK

• • you can run multiple emulators, and one let call the other, the number is equal to the port number again
• DDMS = Dalvik Debug Monitor Service
• method tracing
• logcat (cmdline syntax), for example:

adb -s emulator-5554 logcat WikiNotes:I *:S

• • -s emulator-5554 to select the (virtual) device, if you have more than one running
  • WikiNotes:I - Informational messages for tag WikiNotes
  • *:S - All other tags to Silent

week 2#

Four main building blocks in Android :

• Activity - Interaction with user (input and output)
  • single focused task for the user
• Service - Long running background stuff
  • for example the Music app
  • support interaction with remote processes
• BroadcastReceiver - Receive and act upon events in Android
  • events are represented by the Intent class
  • only for Intents they have registered themselves for
• ContentProvider - Provide services to applications (input and output)
  • store and share date
  • database style interface
  • handles interprocess comms

Non code (resource) files

• res/values/*.xml - Strings, String arrays, Plurals
  • Accessed by other resources as @string/string_name
  • Accessed in Java as R.string.string_name
• res/layout/*.xml
  • Accessed by other resources as @layout/layout_name
  • Accessed in Java as R.layout.layout_name

Activity

The Activity Lifecycle:

• Typical onCreate() workflow
  • Restore saved state (super.onCreate() )
  • Set content view
  • Initialize UI elements
  • Keep references to UI elements if necessary
  • Link UI elements to code actions

-- onRestart() , do specific stuff required after activity was stopped
-- onStart() , loading persistent application state
-- onResume() , start foreground-only actions
-- onPause() , shutdown foreground-only actions, save persistent stat
-- onStop() , cache state (may not be called when Android kills the activity)
-- onDestroy() , release activity resources (may not be called when Android kills the activity)

Activities are created by creating Intents, and passing these Intents to startActivity() or startActivityForResult() . Started activity can set the result with Activity.setResult().

AndroidManifest.xml

Contains:

• Application Name
• Components
• Other
  • Required permissions
  • Application features
  • Minimum API level

week 3#

Intents

Intent is a data structure that represents:

• an operation to be performed
• an event that has occurred

Intent fields:

• action - specifies the desired action (action_dial, action_edit, action_sync)
• data - data associated with the intent, specified as a URI (Uri.parse("tel:0548512395")
• category - additional info about components that can handle the intent (category_launcher or category_browser)
• type - the mime type of the intent
• component - the component that should receive the intent (always one activity)
• extras - a Map of key-value pairs
• flags - specify how intent should be handled, a few special flags: FLAG_ACTIVITY_NO_HISTORY (dont put activity in history stack) FLAG_DEBUG_LOG_RESOLUTION (extra logging when intent is processed)