Learning Kotlin by building Android Applications

Learn programming in Kotlin including data types, flow control, lambdas, object-oriented, and functional programming while building 3 Android Apps

About This Book

• Experience the gentle learning curve of Kotlin as you develop your own applications
• Learn how to integrate Kotlin into Android Studio and use it in your projects
• Build real-world applications such as Googly Eyes and games using Kotlin

Who This Book Is For

If you are completely new to Kotlin or the Android platform and need to publish Android applications for fun or for business purposes, but you have no clue where to start, then this book is for you. This book is also for advanced Android developers who want to learn to use Kotlin instead of/alongside Java for Android development, although having some programming experience would be advantageous.

What You Will Learn

• Learn the basics of using the Android Studio IDE and a number of basic programming concepts in Kotlin
• Discover Android development by building Android apps with Kotlin
• Uncover some amazing features of Kotlin that give it the upper hand over Java
• Kotlin Interoperability with Java
• Integrate Crashlytics for crash reporting and beta testing.
• Use Google Location services and understand various APIs available for getting user location updates
• Understand the principles of networking and communication.
• Learn about the usage of third-party libraries for loading of data
• Automate your build process with continuous integration tools

In Detail

Today Kotlin is an official programming language for Android development and is widely adopted. Kotlin is expressive, concise, and powerful. It also ensures seamless interoperability with existing Android languages like JAVA and C++, which makes it easier to learn a new language for their most favored platform.
This book adopts a project-style approach, where we focus on teaching Android development by building three different Android Application, namely Building you Tic-Tac-Toe application, Developing your location based alarm and lastly a To-Do list application.
The book begins by giving you a strong grasp of the Kotlin language and its APIs as a preliminary to building stunning applications for Android. You'll learn to set up an environment as the difficulty level grows steadily, in line with applications covered in later chapters.
The book also introduces you to the Android Studio IDE, which plays an integral role in Android Development. It covers Kotlin's basic programming concepts such as functions, lambdas, properties, object-oriented code, safety aspects and type parameterization, testing, and concurrency, and helps you write Kotlin code to production.
Finally, you'll be taken through the process of releasing your app on the Google Play Store. You will also be introduced to other app distribution channels such as Amazon App Store.
As a bonus chapter, you will also learn how to use the Google Faces API to detect faces and add fun functionalities.

Style and approach

This book has a project-style approach where we focus on teaching Android development by building Android Apps with the Kotlin programming language. In the process you learn about Android development as well as Kotlin and its features. This book does not assume any prior knowledge of Android development.