Timewasted

A definite book to have in your Android arsenal.

If you are an Android developer, this is book you want on your shelf. Android Recipes gives you examples of working code to solve real world problems. Sure you can find the information on-line, but where else will you find all of this information in single, easy to use source, without spending hours digging through random web pages looking for a working example. While reading the book, I found myself frequently stopping to make notes or sending myself an email so I could try something new at work the next day. I can say that my understanding of what is possible has grown and my apps are better as a result.

Like many recipe books, the layout is a problem and solution format. The chapters are logically divided into things like system services, communications and networking, and working with libraries. Each chapter gives a multitude of problems which Android developers face daily. Then, and example is given of how to solve the problem. Best of all, the examples are thorough. Many books gloss over simple things like the layout of a screen. The authors have obviously taken the extra effort to provide a complete example of each solution.

So what can you expect to learn? This is a VERY short list of some of the problems which this book helps solve.

• UI challenges such as manually handling UI rotation and creating pop-up menu actions.
• Parsing XML and JSON.
• Receiving SMS messages and capturing notification events.
• Capturing and playing back audio and video.
• Using the scripting layer to run shell and python scripts.
• Persistent data and working with the SQLite database.
• Integrating 3rd party JARs into your project

If you are on the fence about this book, I encourage you to take the plunge and buy it. You will not be disappointed.