7 Easy Steps to Build Your First Android App Using Android Studio

There’s no denying the fact that Android apps are here to stay for the long run. They are fast, they are user-friendly, and practically, they are the reasons why smartphones are so popular. But that’s how a consumer sees these apps.

You, on the other hand, can create an android app and release it in the market for use.

 

If you are a skilled programmer, you may have already learned how to develop an exciting android app, but if you don’t, you can always start to improve your knowledge. Here, we are going to discuss how you can use Android Studio, the most sophisticated android development platform to build a basic android app.

7 Steps to Build Android App using Android Studio

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Install Android Studio on Your Computer:

The first step, as you may realize is to download and install Android studio on your computer. You can either buy the licensed version of the software from a retailer or visit http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html  to download the software – Android Studio.

It’s like installing any other software. So you won’t be having any difficulty during the installation process. Just follow the instructions provided by the installer and ta-da – the most sophisticated Android app developing platform is installed on your computer.

2. Start a New Project:

Once Android Studio is installed on your computer, you can then adhere to the following steps to open a new project:

• Open Android Studio.
• Go to the “Quick Start’” menu and click on “Start a new Android Studio project”.
• When the “Create New Project” window opens, give a name to your project. You will also need to put your company’s name in the given space. Once done, set the project file location and click next.
• Select the target android device. Make sure only the “Phone and Tablet” box is checked. Also, ensure that the minimum SDK is set below your phone’s operating system level, especially if you are planning to test the app on your phone.
• On clicking “next”, another window will open and ask you to “add an activity to your mobile”. Select “blank activity”, leave the fields in the “customize the activity” window as they are, and click “Finish”.

3. Edit the Welcome Message in “main activity”:

Once the new project is open, go to the “activity_main.xml” tab, and pursue the following steps:

• Check if the design tab is open on the activity_main.xml display. If it’s not, open it manually.
• Click and reposition the welcome message (Hello, world) from the upper left corner of the phone display to its center.
• On the window’s left side, you will find the project file system. Open the values folder from there and find the strings.xml file.
• After opening the strings.xml file, find the welcome message – “Hello world!”
• Add another line next to the “Hello world!” message. Like “Welcome to my app”.
• Now, go back to the activity_main.xml tab and check if the centered text now reads “Hello world! Welcome to my app”.

4. Add a Button to the “Main Activity”:

In order to let the users navigate further into the app, you need to add a button to the main activity screen. Here’s how to do it:

• Go to the Design tab in the activity_main.xml display and open the Palette menu.
• Find “Button” under the “Widget” heading.
• Once you select the option, you’ll get to position the “button” in the display. Click and drag the “Button” to place it underneath the welcome message.
• Keep the button selected and navigate to the “Properties” menu on the right side of the window.
• Select the “text” field from the menu and change the text from “New Button” to something more appropriate like “Proceed” or “Next Page”.

5. Introduce Another “Activity”:

As you may realize, only one activity is not going to help you build a remarkable android app. So you need to add at least another activity to your project. Here’s how you can add a second activity to your app:

• Go to the project’s file system tree and right click on the tab “app”.
• Navigate through to New>Activity>Blank Activity.
• To keep track of the activity, change its name to “Second Activity”, and click finish.
• When you get to the Design view of activity_second.xml, reposition the text box from the upper left corner to the center of the display, the way you did on the main activity.
• Keep the text box selected and navigate to the “id” field in the Properties menu and change the text to “text2”.
• Now, open strings.xml again and add a new line “Welcome to the second page” or likewise under the previous welcome message of “Hello world! Welcome to my app”.
• Once that is done, go back to activity_second.xml and select the text box again.
• Now navigate to the Properties menu and set the “text” field to “@string/second_page”.
• Finally, check if the text box now reads “Welcome to the second page” or the line that you chose to write in the strings.xml, and also make sure it appears in the center in of the display screen.

6. Prepare Code for The Button’s “onClick” Method:

Now comes the difficult part – coding. If you are a professional coder, this won’t be too hard for you, but if your coding skills are not that great, you can still write the Button’s “onClick method.

• Select the MainActivity.java tab and add the following lines of code at the end of the onCreate method:

Button button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button);

button.setOnClickListener(new View.onClickListener() {

@Override

public void onClick(View v) {

goToSecondActivity();

}

});

• Now, include these following method at the bottom of the MainActivity class:

private void goToSecondActivity() {

Intent intent = new Intent(this, SecondActivity.class);

startActivity(intent);

}

• When you’re done writing the code, click the + next to import at line 3 of MainActivity.java to increase the import statements.
• And finally, add these following steps to the end of the import statements in you don’t see them already.

import android.content.Intent;

import android.view.View;

import android.widget.TextView;

7. Perform a Test Run:

Once you write code to build Android app using Android studio, you have to test it.

The biggest mistake most of the app developer does that they don’t test their App features completely. And they rely for it on testing team.

The basic functionalities of the app will be ready after performing the steps mentioned above, but you will still need to test the application. Here’s what you need to do:

• Click the green play symbol from the toolbar of Android Studio window.
• As the “Choose Device” dialog box appears, select the “Launch emulator option” and then click “OK”.
• Once the emulator opens, it will automatically launch the designed app on the virtual phone display (given it is unlocked).
• Check if the texts are appearing the way you wanted, and the buttons are taking you to the next page properly.

There you go. Now you know how to build Android app using Android studio with some basic functionality like greeting the user and button that navigate to the next page.

What Next?

Refer Android app code for different features. Keep adding in features in your app as per your project requirement.

Many of my friends are into Android development and selling their Android apps to small business.

This guide provides you with the cursory knowledge on which you can develop further understanding of much-sophisticated uses of Android Studio.