Froyo to KitKatTwo Years Developing & Maintaining DeliRadio

by Andy Dyer

About Me

• Android & Rails developer at ChaiOne in Houston, Texas, USA

• Android apps on Google Play - DeliRadio, Music Library, and Wrist Presenter

• Hobbies/Interests - Vinyl collector, coffee & beer snob, burger aficionado

• Ich lerne Deutsch

About DeliRadio

• Explore local concert calendars

• Stream stations based on location or specific venues

• Share discoveries with friends

• Receive notifications when favorite artists play nearby

About DeliRadio - Navigation & Filters

About DeliRadio - Server Architecture

• Sinatra/Ruby API used by Android, iOS, and third-party clients

• Virtual private cloud

• Web, database, and job servers

• Hosted on Amazon S3 & CloudFront CDN

• ElasticSearch & Redis for caching & high performance search

Supported Android Versions Over Time

Early 2012

Min: Froyo Max: Honeycomb

Mid 2012

Min: Froyo Max: ICS

Early 2013

Min: Gingerbread Max: Jelly Bean

Early 2014

Min: ICS Max: KitKat

Topics

• Development Tools & Build Process

• Libraries Used

• Graphics & User Interface

• QA & Testing

Topics

• Development Tools & Build Process

• Libraries Used

• Graphics & User Interface

• QA & Testing

Development Tools (Early to Mid 2012)

Eclipse

• But which one?

• Build System: Ant

• Dependencies: JAR files or Maven (if you’re patient)

Development Tools (Mid 2012 to Mid 2013)

Android Developer Tools (ADT) Bundle

• Android specific version of Eclipse

• Slightly more lightweight

Build Process - Eclipse & ADT

• Initial approach - File > Export, manually enter keystore password, etc.

• Slightly better approach - Template based Ant build

• Release & debug resources

• Custom Ant build targets with config specific tokens

• Templates for manifest and other source files

Build Process - Eclipse & ADT

Problems with this approach

• Non-standard

• Templates must be be updated instead of main files (i.e. manifest gets overwritten with populated template on each build)

• Switching between release & debug must be done via the command line. IDE just builds current files.

Development Tools (Mid 2013 to Present)

Android Studio

• Gradle

• Maven dependencies - Similar to Ruby Gems

Build Process - Android Studio

Gradle

• Release & debug resources - automatically merged during build process, no need for templates

• Automated signing & version code incrementing for release builds

• Automatic upload of test builds to Test Fairy

Gradle Build - Config-Specific Resources

android { ! // ... ! sourceSets { debug { manifest { srcFile 'gradle/debug/AndroidManifest.xml' } res { srcDir 'gradle/debug/res' } } ! release { manifest { srcFile 'gradle/release/AndroidManifest.xml' } ! res { srcDir 'gradle/release/res' } } } ! // ... !}

Gradle Build - Release Signing

android { ! // ... ! signingConfigs { release { storeFile file("../my_keystore.jks") storePassword "$up3r$3cr3t" keyAlias "my_key_alias" keyPassword "$up3r$3cr3t" } } ! buildTypes { release { signingConfig signingConfigs.release } } ! // ... !}

Gradle Build - Version Code Increment

def versionMajor = 1 def versionMinor = 0 def versionPatch = 0 !task('increaseVersionCode') << { def manifestFile = file("src/main/AndroidManifest.xml") def pattern = Pattern.compile("versionCode=\"(\\d+)\"") def manifestText = manifestFile.getText() def matcher = pattern.matcher(manifestText) matcher.find() def versionCode = Integer.parseInt(matcher.group(1)) def manifestContent = matcher.replaceAll("versionCode=\"" + ++versionCode + "\"") manifestFile.write(manifestContent) } !tasks.whenTaskAdded { task -> if (task.name == 'generateReleaseBuildConfig') { task.dependsOn 'increaseVersionCode' } }

Gradle Build - Version Code Increment

android { ! // ... ! defaultConfig { minSdkVersion 14 targetSdkVersion 19 versionName "${versionMajor}.${versionMinor}.${versionPatch}" } ! // ... !}

Gradle Build - Test Fairy Upload

buildscript { repositories { mavenCentral() maven { url 'https://www.testfairy.com/maven' } } ! dependencies { classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:0.10.+' classpath 'com.testfairy.plugins.gradle:testfairy:1.+' } } !apply plugin: 'android' apply plugin: 'testfairy' !android { testfairyConfig { apiKey "1234567890abcdef" } } !!gradlew testfairyDebug

https://github.com/testfairy/testfairy-gradle-plugin

Topics

• Development Tools & Build Process

• Libraries Used

• Graphics & User Interface

• QA & Testing

Libraries Used - API (Early 2012 to Mid 2013)

• Apache HTTP Client - API requests

• Ignition Library - Caching & async image loading

• GSON - JSON parsing

Libraries Used - API (Mid 2013 to Present)

• Volley - API requests & caching

Pro Tip: compile 'com.mcxiaoke.volley:library-aar:1.0.+'

• Picasso - Async image loading

• GSON & Jackson - JSON parsing

• Apache HTTP Components - File uploads

Libraries Used - User Interface

• Smooth Progress Bar - Dashed progress bar similar to Gmail, etc.

• Sticky List Headers

• View Pager Indicator

Libraries Used - User Interface

• Butter Knife - View Injection !! @InjectView(R.id.profile_username) TextView username; ! @Override public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) { View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.my_fragment, container, false); ButterKnife.inject(this, view); return view; }

Libraries Used - Social Networks

• Facebook SDK

• Twitter4J

• Signpost - Twitter OAuth flow

Libraries Used - Miscellaneous

• Google Play Services - Battery friendly location

• GreenDAO ORM - Much simpler than content providers

• Otto - Event bus, pub/sub messaging between components

• Crashlytics - Crash reporting & analysis

Topics

• Development Tools & Build Process

• Libraries Used

• Graphics & User Interface

• QA & Testing

Graphics & User Interface

• iOS design != Android design - But iOS 7 blurred the lines

• Retina images - XHDPI

• Non-Retina images - MDPI

• Icon font - Scalable icons that can be styled as text

Graphics - Using an Icon Font

1. Use Font Awesome web font or your own font for scalable, styleable icons

2. Map font characters in a strings resource file

3. Load font, apply to TextView or Button subclass

4. Set view text to desired character, style, etc.

5. Bask in the awesome !https://github.com/bperin/FontAwesomeAndroid

Graphics - Icon Font in Layouts

<com.FontAwesome.Example.TextAwesome android:id="@+id/text_prost_icon" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="@string/fa_beer" android:textSize="30sp" /> !!<com.FontAwesome.Example.ButtonAwesome android:id="@+id/button_kaffee_icon" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="@string/fa_coffee" >

User Interface - Multiple Screen Sizes

• Use ActionBarCompat & Nine Old Androids if supporting Gingerbread or lower

• Use RelativeLayout where possible to dynamically position views

• Dimensions in dimens.xml files, different values directories for various screen sizes

• Screen size specific layouts where necessary

Topics

• Development Tools & Build Process

• Libraries Used

• Graphics & User Interface

• QA & Testing

QA & Testing - Devices

• Too many to test them all

• Attempt to test a representative sample

• Major manufacturers - HTC/Motorola/Samsung/Nexus

• After Gingerbread support dropped, OS version & OEM customizations are much less of an issue

QA Testing - Process

• Bugs & features entered in Pivotal Tracker

• Multiple builds delivered for testing each week

• Use Test Fairy test session videos to troubleshoot device specific issues

• Full regression test of RC build before each release

Vielen Dank!

K andydyer.org

n @dammitandy

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