This Weeks Links

Fragmented Podcast: 067: Cross platform development with Xamarin cofounder Joseph Hill
In this episode, Donn talks with Xamarin cofounder on how one can use Xamarin for Android development.
They start off chatting about using Xamarin just for business logic sharing. This Joseph tells us was the original intention for use. They also touch on Xamarin forms which allows you to additionally build UI elements cross platform.
Even if you don’t use Xamarin or plan to use Xamarin right away, this was a fantastic insight into the platform, from the creators directly. They touch on advantages, how to really leverage the platform and potential downsides.

Get Started With Retrofit 2 HTTP Client
Retrofit turns your HTTP API into a Java interface. In this tutorial, Chike Mgbemena, is going to discuss why you should use Retrofit. Chike will then show you how to get started and how to add RxJava integration.

FileProvider
This article continues on from the DownloadManager series and discusses a problem previously encountered where we are wanting to share and defer the displaying of content to another app. The article then provides and explores a solution to this problem, using FileProvider.

MVVM architecture with the data binding library
This article looks at what data binding is, the benfits, how to set it up and provides a great overview of how to structure an app’s architecture with the data binding library, using the ModelViewViewModel pattern.

Android for smart device.
Just in case you haven’t heard: Android things is Google android based IOT (Internet of Things) platform. This post provides an overview of Android Things and a list of useful links that will help you get started.

Build Variants and Link Seams
Link seams are a way of changing the behavior of a specific piece of code without the need to edit it in place. They work by modifying the way that files are linked together. This post looks at how link seams can help you to write apps that are more testable and how build variants are used to create link seams.

Implementing Android App Shortcuts
App Shortcuts were introduced in Android Nougat 7.1. They allow a user to access primary actions within your app straight from the launcher, without having to run the app itself. In this tutorial, Andrew Orobator, will show you how you can boost your UX by implementing App Shortcuts.

An adventure with Kotlin – Part I
The first part of this multi-part blog post shares an experience of discovering and starting out with Kotlin. The post goes on to share a few interesting examples of how Kotlin works, what it looks like and what it has to offer.

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Testing Android Things – IoT meets Java
Paul Blundell says we have to think a bit differently when applying Java testing design principles to IoT. In this post, Paul explores the theoretical side of things and why this architecture is good for port, adapter and vendor tests.

[TUT] Testing Android Things – Unit & Vendor tests
In this Tutorial, Paul Blundell will show you how to create an Android Things project to architect your Android Things applications for easier testing. This tutorial will involve both unit and vendor testing.

Design Like a Coder: Efficient Android Layouts
In this post & video, Dan Lew discusses how to write the best layouts for your application and covers a range of improvements including choosing the right ViewGroup, effectively leveraging resource qualifiers, avoiding code duplication, while providing a few tips and tricks.

Living (Android) without Kotlin
For some, going back to Java after using Kotlin would be a frustrating experience. In this post, Piotr Ślesarew takes a look at Kotlin features that you can apply to your Android Java code through some well-known tools and libraries.

How to make an Android and iOS App in C# on a Mac
Warning: This post may contain languages that some Android Dev’s may find offensive. In this post, Demir Selmanovic, will show you how to get started writing your first cross-platform C# app using Visual Studio for Mac.

Videos

Caster.IO Lesson 139: RxJava Operators – subscribeOn
In this lesson we will be diving into concurrency with RxJava using Schedulers and the SubscribeOn Operator

In this lesson you will learn:

• How to use the subscribeOn operator to change the execution thread
• How subscribeOn affects the RxJava observable chain.
• How the placement of subscribeOn operator in the observable chain affects the observable

Caster.IO Lesson 140: Mockito String Matchers – anyString()
This lesson describes what a Matcher is, and how you can use the provided anyString() matcher to return stubs for methods which accept String parameters. When you stub a method which takes a String parameter, you can configure your stubs to only match on specific Strings, or you can configure your stub to match on any String; this lesson will show you how to achieve both of these options. Additionally, if you pass null instead of a String to the stubbed method and want your stubbed answer to be returned, you will need to use a different matcher, as discussed in the lesson.

In this lesson you will learn:

• What a Matcher is
• How to return a stub value for specific string inputs
• How to return a stub value for any string inputs
• How to return a stub value for null inputs
• How to cast the any() matcher if using Java 7

Caster.IO Lesson 141: RecyclerView – GridLayoutManager and SpanSizeLookup
Create a Grid layout with spans (columns).

In this lesson you’ll learn:

• How to create a Grid using GridLayoutManager with our RecyclerView.
• How GridLayoutManager uses a SpanSizeLookup to lay out it’s items.
• Examine how small changes can create drastically different grid layouts by creating our own SpanSizeLookup.

Open Source

awesome-android-things
A curated list of awesome android things tutorials, libraries and much more at one place

github-oauth
Android library to add oauth login flow for github , minimum api 14