2/18/2020 Android - Application Components - Tutorialspoint
Android - Application Components
Application components are the essential building blocks of an
Android application. These components are loosely coupled by the
application manifest file [Link] that describes each
component of the application and how they interact.
There are following four main components that can be used within
an Android application −
[Link] Components & Description
Activities
1 They dictate the UI and handle the user interaction to
the smart phone screen.
Services
2 They handle background processing associated with an
application.
Broadcast Receivers
3 They handle communication between Android OS and
applications.
Content Providers
4
They handle data and database management issues.
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Activities
An activity represents a single screen with a user interface,in-short
Activity performs actions on the screen. For example, an email
application might have one activity that shows a list of new emails,
another activity to compose an email, and another activity for
reading emails. If an application has more than one activity, then
one of them should be marked as the activity that is presented
when the application is launched.
An activity is implemented as a subclass of Activity class as
follows −
public class MainActivity extends Activity {
}
Services
A service is a component that runs in the background to perform
long-running operations. For example, a service might play music
in the background while the user is in a different application, or it
might fetch data over the network without blocking user interaction
with an activity.
A service is implemented as a subclass of Service class as follows
−
public class MyService extends Service {
}
Broadcast Receivers
Broadcast Receivers simply respond to broadcast messages from
other applications or from the system. For example, applications
can also initiate broadcasts to let other applications know that
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some data has been downloaded to the device and is available for
them to use, so this is broadcast receiver who will intercept this
communication and will initiate appropriate action.
A broadcast receiver is implemented as a subclass of
BroadcastReceiver class and each message is broadcaster as an
Intent object.
public class MyReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {
public void onReceive(context,intent){}
}
Content Providers
A content provider component supplies data from one application
to others on request. Such requests are handled by the methods of
the ContentResolver class. The data may be stored in the file
system, the database or somewhere else entirely.
A content provider is implemented as a subclass of
ContentProvider class and must implement a standard set of APIs
that enable other applications to perform transactions.
public class MyContentProvider extends ContentProvider {
public void onCreate(){}
}
We will go through these tags in detail while covering application
components in individual chapters.
Additional Components
There are additional components which will be used in the
construction of above mentioned entities, their logic, and wiring
between them. These components are −
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[Link] Components & Description
Fragments
1
Represents a portion of user interface in an Activity.
Views
2 UI elements that are drawn on-screen including buttons,
lists forms etc.
Layouts
3 View hierarchies that control screen format and
appearance of the views.
Intents
4
Messages wiring components together.
Resources
5 External elements, such as strings, constants and
drawable pictures.
Manifest
6
Configuration file for the application.
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