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In this article, we will learn about Android Jetpack and Jetpack related components. We will discuss about the below Android Jetpack related topics :
- What is Android Jetpack and why should we use it ?
- What is Android Jetpack Components ?
A famous quote about learning is :
” That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.”
So Let’s begin.
In the above diagram, It represents a set of components, tools and guidance to make great Android apps.
Cool !!
So first, we understand the Android Jetpack.
What is Android Jetpack ?
“Jetpack is a suite of libraries, tools, and guidance to help developers write high-quality apps more easily. These components help you follow best practices, free you from writing boilerplate code, and simplify complex tasks, so you can focus on the code you care about.”
Jetpack comprises the androidx.* package libraries, unbundled from the platform APIs. This means that it offers backward compatibility and is updated more frequently than the Android platform, making sure you always have access to the latest and greatest versions of the Jetpack components.
Android Jetpack is a collection of Android software components which helps us in building great Android apps.These software components help in:
- Following the best practices and writing the boilerplate code.
- Making complex things very simple.
Prior to Android Jetpack, we had many challenges during developing the android application:
- Managing activity lifecycles in the application.
- Surviving configuration changes.
- Preventing memory leaks.
All these major problems have been solved by the Android Jetpack’s software components.
So, the solution for all the problems is Android Jetpack.
Another most important thing about the Jetpack is that it gets updated more frequently than the Android platform so that we always get the latest version.
Next question, We talk about a set of components, tools and guidance in Android Jetpack.
What is Android Jetpack Component ?
Android Jetpack components are a collection of libraries that are individually adoptable and built to work together while taking advantage of Kotlin language features that make us more productive.
These software components have been arranged in 4 categories which are as follows:
- Foundation Components
- Architecture Components
- Behavior Components
- UI Components
Let’s discuss one by one.
1. Foundation Components
Foundation components provide following cross-cutting functionality:
- Backwards compatibility
- Testing
- Kotlin language support.
All the foundation components are as follows:
- App Compat: Degrade gracefully on older versions of Android with material design user interface implementation support.
- Android KTX: Set of Kotlin extensions to write more concise, idiomatic Kotlin code.
- Multidex: Provide support for multiple dex files for apps.
- Test: A testing framework for unit and runtime UI tests in Android.
2. Architecture Components
The architecture components help us in building:
- Robust Apps
- Testable Apps
- Maintainable Apps
All the architecture components are as follows:
- Data Binding: Declaratively bind UI elements to in our layout to data sources of our app.
- Lifecycles: Manages activity and fragment lifecycles of our app.
- LiveData: Notify views of any database changes.
- Navigation: Handle everything needed for in-app navigation.
- Paging: Gradually load information on demand from your data source.
- Room: Fluent SQLite database access.
- ViewModel: Manage UI-related data in a lifecycle-conscious way.
- WorkManager: Manage every background jobs in Android with the circumstances we choose.
3. Behavior Components
The behavior components help in the integration with standard Android services like:
- Notifications
- Permissions
- Sharing
- Assistant
All the behavior components are as follows:
- Download Manager: Schedule and manage large downloads in background with auto retry support.
- Media & playback: Backwards compatible APIs for media playback and routing (including Google Cast).
- Notifications: Provides a backwards-compatible notification API with Wear and Auto support.
- Permissions: Compatibility APIs for checking and requesting permissions in app.
- Preferences: Create interactive settings screens for users to configure.
- Sharing: Provides a share action suitable for an app’s action bar.
- Slices: Create flexible UI elements that can display app data outside the app and can be extended all the way back to Android 4.4.
4. UI Components
The UI components provide widgets and helpers to make your app not only easy, but delightful to use.
All the UI components are as follows:
- Animation and transitions: Move widgets and transition between screens.
- Auto: Components to develop Android Auto apps.
- Emoji: Enable updated emoji font on older platforms.
- Fragment: A basic unit of composable UI.
- Layout: Lay out widgets with different algorithms.
- Palette: Pull useful information from color palettes.
- TV: Components to develop Android TV apps.
- Wear: Components to develop Wear apps.
That’s all about Android Jetpack !!
Conclusion
In this article, We understood about the Android Jetpack Concepts. We learned the below Android Jetpack details:
- What is Android Jetpack?
- Why should we use ?
- What Problem solves by Android Jetpack?
- Types of Components in Android Jetpack
- Components list and usage in Android Jetpack
Thanks for reading ! I hope you enjoyed and learned about the Android Jetpack Concepts. Reading is one thing, but the only way to master it is to do it yourself.
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