Implementing the Android App

When working on a multi-platform mobile app it's hard to decide where to start. 0:00 You could start with either the business logic or the user interface. 0:06 We will take a user interface first approach and start with Android, 0:11 then iOS, and then do some refactoring to build our shared code. 0:15 As we build out Android and iOS versions of our app 0:20 I'll walk through each of the steps we'll need to take in order to finish our app. 0:25 Familiarity with Android or iOS will be helpful, but 0:30 not necessary, in order to follow along. 0:34 If you'd like to learn more about Android and 0:38 iOS development, see the teacher's notes for links to resources that can help. 0:40 Let's start with opening MainActivity in the Android project. 0:46 All activities must inherit from the activity base class, and 0:50 should override onCreate so 0:53 that we can execute the setContext method or add elements to the view. 0:56 The SetContextView method refers to the resource layout. 1:01 So let's take a look at this. 1:05 The main AXML will open in its assigner by default but let's switch to the source. 1:08 This is an XML file that uses the Android schema 1:14 to describe how an Android view is drawn. 1:18 You can see the button that was counting our clicks in the template project. 1:21 You can remove the Button tag completely, but leave the linear layout so 1:25 that we can add our own control. 1:30 We can start with the EditText control. 1:33 Make sure to set the Android id to something that starts with 1:35 @+id and a name. 1:38 This will add the people entry to the resource id 1:42 namespace as a pointer to this control when compiled. 1:45 The at sign indicates it's a pointer and 1:48 the +id indicates it should be added to the id resources. 1:51 We will need the resource id peopleentry later when we interact with it. 1:56 You can add the android:layout_width to match parent and 2:01 to layout_height to wrap_content so that size will be reasonable. 2:04 Now, add a button with an Android text that uses @ string calculate, like the id. 2:09 This is a pointer to a string value with the key calculate. 2:16 We need to add the value to the string resource. 2:31 Open the string's XML in the resource values folder. 2:35 Add a string tag with the name calculate, and 2:39 set the content to the string you want to display on the button. 2:41 The last control for 3:01 now is a TextView which will display the results of our pizza calculation. 3:03 This is very simple, but make sure to set the android:id. 3:08 Now, let's take a look at the MainActivity again. 3:17 Now that we're past the SetContentView, we have a button and a Click event. 3:21 Remove them so we can do our own. 3:26 Since we don't wanna interact with all three controls, 3:28 let's make some variables to hold references to them. 3:31 Start with the EditText control and set it to a variable peopleEntry. 3:35 To get a reference to the run time instance of the control we 3:41 must use the FindById method. 3:44 Using the generic version of the method, 3:47 we will indicate the type of the control, and pass in the reference ID. 3:50 You will notice it's not available in Resources Id if we've not compiled yet. 3:55 So to get the references to work, we must build the project so 4:38 that all the new Ids and strings can be compiled into the resource namespace. 4:42 You can simply right-click on the Android project and 4:47 build it or Shift+F6 if the project is already selected. 4:50 Now that we have the Resource.Id using intellisense 4:55 we can find the rest of the controls in the same way. 4:58 Next we want something to happen when we click the calculate button. 5:01 So we add a Click event to the control. 5:05 Using an in-line delegate is the simplest way to add this event. 5:08 First, we need to get a number of people we want to serve 5:13 by getting the text value of the peopleEntry control. 5:17 Parse the string as an int then simply divide it 5:21 by 3 to get the number of pieces needed. 5:24 I know this is a very simple calculation, but we can do more later. 5:28 Now that we know how many pizzas, set the pizzaCount TextView to the number. 5:35 Since it's a string property, we need two string band. 6:01 Next, we'll get our development environment ready so 6:17 we can debug our app and deploy it onto a simulator or a device. 6:20