This Week’s Links
Fragmented Discord Chat Server
Kaushik (@kaushikgopal) and Donn (@donnfelker) are excited to announce that they’ve created a public Discord server that you can join, for free to chat with other folks in the developer community. You can join the discord group by installing the Discord app and joining the server via the following links: Install App: Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS. The invite link to join is: https://discord.gg/zBSfhwk
Fragmented Podcast – Ep #143: Real World Testing Thoughts
In this mini Fragmented podcast, Donn (@donnfelker) and Kaushik (@kaushikgopal) share some thoughts on real world testing with Android development – a favorite topic of theirs. Kaushik recently ran into a case where an espresso test fails because the UI stops performing. It’s an interesting discussion on figuring out what matters when you write your tests. They dive into strategies and techniques around testing. What makes a good test, what should you be testing? Topics include why Hermetic testing is pretty hard on mobile and ideas around a simple solution that could be provided out of the box, and TDD and it’s role in today’s world.
Google Play Services Discontinuing Updates for API Levels 14 and 15
Due to the age of the Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) platform active device count being below 1%, Google announced they are deprecating support for ICS in future releases of Google Play services. For devices running ICS, the Google Play Store will no longer update Play Services APK beyond version 14.7.99.
Sync Google Drive Files to Apps Using the Drive REST API, Bidding Farewell to the Drive Android API
If you’ve wanted Google Drive files accessible from within your application, chances are you might use the Google Drive REST API or the Google Drive Android API to help. Both tools allow users to download or upload files from Drive from inside of another application. This week, Google announced they’re simplifying options for developers by retiring the Drive Android API, and are focusing solely on expanding functionality for the Drive REST API.
Rialto – Getting Started
This week Mark Allison released Rialto: A new Android text styling library based upon Annotation Spans. Rialto enables you to provide consistent text formatting throughout your app by using annotations in your string resources. In this article, look at how to get started using Rialto.
Shard Splits with Consistent Snapshots
At Square, they have a lot of data being inserted into their databases. To make it possible for MySQL to handle the load, they shard the data using Vitess. Because the amount of data they receive is very large and the rate is increasing, one split of the database won’t do. Rather, they need to keep making the shards smaller so each individual MySQL database does not have to deal with too much data at once.
Review: How Kotlin Handles Nullable References
How does a non-null property wind up null in Kotlin? Read this post for a review on how Kotlin Handles Nullable References
Better Android Apps Using MVVM with Clean Architecture
If you don’t choose the right architecture for your Android project, as your project grows it will be harder to maintain. In this article, learn to combine MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel or sometimes stylized “the ViewModel pattern”) with Clean Architecture to see how this architecture can be used to write decoupled, testable, and maintainable code.
Zero to Kotlin Hero : Kotlin Android Extensions
If you’re already an Android developer or you are starting out as one, Kotlin Android Extensions are a great library for your Android development toolkit. In this article, explore how to use these extensions in your next project.
Videos
Caster.io: Build a Google Assistant App with DialogFlow: Creating your first DialogFlow Intent
DialogFlow allows you to have natural and rich conversational experiences with the users. Intents are mappings of what the user said to an action to be taken by the project. DialogFlow uses machine learning to match phrases spoken and written by the users to those actions your provides. You can provide multiple phrases with a specific intent. The more you add, the smarter your action will be.
Caster.io: Build a Google Assistant App with DialogFlow: Creating Dialog Follow up intents
There are cases where the conversation needs follow-ups, more questions or a nice dialog with the user. For those cases, DialogFlow provides the abilities to have follow-up intents. Those intents are triggered by previous intents, by that, there is a nice conversation between the user and the action that can gather all the required information from the user in a natural way.
Open Source
Rey-MusicPlayer
The Music Player includes a lot of features, including the ability to sort music files six different ways, search per son, album and artists and the ability to share your favorite songs with your friends directly from nowplaying or anywhere in the app!
SlyCalendarView
The Sly Calendar View is a calendar that allows you to select both a single date and range of dates. The library allows you to change colors programmatically without referencing the theme.