The Plan
It’s always fun to have something concrete at the end of a learning exercise. Its like a bonus. So I thought that the best way to explain a few important basic concepts which any android developer would require, was to make an application covering the topics. At the end of it, you would have learnt the concepts and would also have a working application
So here goes…
Topics to be covered
- Data access over http
- AsyncTask
- JSON Parsing
We will also go through ListView, ViewHolders and Application Context again. Just click on the links to go through tutorials covered previously.
The Project – WhatIsTheExchangeRate(WITER)
Its a currency converter based upon the current Forex rates. We get the Forex Rates from a free open source API available at . The information provided by the API is updated every hour and more details about it can be views at the link mentioned.
The user will be able to set his default currency from the settings page. Once set, all other currencies will be shown in terms of his set currency.
Plan of Action
Let us divide the project into chunks and then tackle one per post.
- A simple HttpManager with the Apache Http Client
- AsyncTask… What? Why? How?
- JSON parser in a jiffy
- Options Menu in Android
- ViewHolder! Make my ListView pretty
Our aim will be to have a running piece of code illustrating the functioning of the topic covered in each post, so that the code at the end of the post will be working code.
Let us begin by creating a new project called WhatIsTheExchangeRate, a package called com.utilities.witer and name your first activity as MainActivity.