During the past years, the Android platform has grown fast. As you might know, when we talk about rapid pace, we mean as quick as a flash. Therefore, we reckon all developers have to keep the best Android libraries in mind. Especially, due to the fact that they save a lot of time and headaches in native android app development. That is why we decided to introduce eminent libraries. Let us get down to business.
Imagining the world without Android is not easy. It has been more than a decade since it was first introduced. Android is a good run since billions of users are using this operating system all around the world. But what exactly is Android? The question does not have a definitive answer. Let us go over it in greater detail. iOS is specifically for Apple, which has a similar look in all of Apple’s gadgets. When it comes to Android, however, things are a little different. It is primarily due to the fact that Android is available for phones from a variety of categories, brands, and manufacturers.
Android is an open-source operating system (OS). An OS synchronizes software and hardware so they can work together. The Linux-based OS programming language is based on Java, C#, and C++. Since 2005, Google has held this lucrative business. Thanks to Google’s play Store, users can download or even upload Android mobile apps for others to download. Everything is more straightforward with Android than it is with iOS, which is why it is exploding in popularity.
The world of software, applications, web design, and IT in a nutshell is enormous. Therefore, there are plenty of concepts to learn. One term that is common in most fields is Library. A library is a combination of codes that you can use in your program, and conducts a particular function. So, as a developer, you can save a lot of time, energy, and headaches by employing the pre-written code. The 2 most famous library types are Android libraries and iOS libraries.
Libraries are essential tools for building various applications like messaging apps in the software industry.
If you do not know how to make a messaging app like Telegram, reading our recent article can quite help you.
Before we dive deep into the best Android libraries, there is something that is worth saying. Twelfth dream Team As A Service (TAAS) is sparkling with new ideas to smoothen your business’ success. We foster the best approaches by following a six-step process. Read more about our process.
Retrofit is a powerful library for connecting to servers and server APIs. It’s a REST server for Android and Java that allows you to run RESTFUL web servers with ease. Retrofit is supported by Square Inc. and verified by Google.
Volley is its main rival, however, Retrofit is more popular due to the different features between developers. The second release of Retrofit brought updates for better usability than the first release.
Image loading and handling an API is quite awkward. Don’t worry though. Developers keep things in perspective. With Glide, image loading is not a setback anymore. This library allows you to scale and transform images. With Glide, you can complete some of the more difficult image-related tasks, such as caching and cropping images.
When it comes to developing responsive Android apps, RxJava is a viable option. All you see on the screen is a stream of operations and information. Everything happens based on that, a sort of cause and effect relationship. You can generate the data stream from everything. Unsynchronized means a task that can uccour simultaneously. A super beneficial result of Asynchronousy is independent management. You can run something to work in the background to avoid UX issues when this procedure is included in mobile apps.
Without Dagger, this list of libraries would be incomplete. Dagger is a static dependency injection framework. It is a little bit challenging to learn dagger, just like RxJava, but it is worth the time and energy spent for it.
Dependency injection is a way to collect minor components and convert them into a perfect system. For instance, think of a car. Having at least one spare tire is necessary for safety, because if one of the current ones get damaged, the car wouldn’t work well and be safe at all.
When developing giant programs, you cannot manage dependency injection because of the speed that everything is at. In this case, Dagger is a friend in need. It helps you prevent similar circumstances because it controls the process with annotation.
Last year, Google updated Dagger Android so that allows you to write neater and more optimized codes.
Holo Graph is an excellent library for graphical data presentation with charts and diagrams. The graphs fall into 4 categories:
Zxing is a barcode scanning library for Android and Java. It is open-source (which means it’s free to use) and supports 1D and/or 2D barcodes.
Androidktx is a set of Kotlin extensions. It is an open-source platform that can decrease a code’s volume. In this way, Android programming is more appealing. Google has promised to provide a complementary API in the future, depending on the level of collaboration of other developers and the feedback they receive.
Converting raw data into a database is not a big deal anymore with the emergence of the library, Room. Room provides a concrete layer on SQLite to access SQLite in its full protentional in the most powerful way. The most popular usage of Room is for local data storage. When a device is not connected to the network, user can view its content in offline mode. After a device is reconnected again, the data is synchronized. Room has three major components:
Alike Retrofit Picasso is endorsed by Square Inc. . Downloading and storing images is just a piece of cake with this Android library. As you have probably seen, visual content is hitting social media. Therefore, Picasso is an eminent tool to convey your message to the audience. Implement it in your project to deliver pictures in minimum sizes with the highest quality.
What is a library in the field of software development? A library is an essential tool for Android application development and projects. A library paves the way for further advanced programming features. That is not all. They are bound up in more practical cases. In this post, we did our best to offer the list of the most popular Android libraries to ease your working process. In future updates, we will enlarge the list.
If you’ve had experience in Android development, you must have worked with Android libraries. If you know other libraries, then leave their names in the box below.
By helping others, you will learn how to help yourself (Aung San Suu Kyi).
Is there any mobile operating system other than iOS and Android? Yes, there are others such as Blackberry OS, Symbian OS, Palm OS, and Harmony OS.
Which one is better Glide or Picasso? In terms of speed, Glide is faster at loading although the library is a bit bulky.
Do experienced programmers employ libraries? Yes, thanks to the presence of libraries programmers save time and headache.
