Train with a trainee: Android app development from the ground up: Week 1

First and foremost, and I can’t stress this enough, I am not a developer. I want to be though and that’s what counts. If any of the information provided in this 12 week series is incorrect or can be made simpler, please let me know. Like many of you, I have spent hours, days and weeks reading and learning from various websites. The information is out there but sadly as with all things in the web is not very streamlined. I signed up for a 12 week online training course that will walk us through everything we will need to know about building Android applications from the ground up. I thought it would be a good idea to share with you all this process as I learn it. For a noob, like myself, all this information should be very helpful. For a seasoned vet, correct any mistakes I share and who knows maybe I’ll put something up that you didn’t know. If you wish to follow along, be my guest, they will be put out every week and updates will be sent out via @AndroidSPIN and @openandroidmove on twitter. You can also find the whole series HERE in our Forums and will be updated with each week as well. Here is how I plan to approach this for everyone. Each week of training has 4 to 5 sections in it. I will create a post for each section unless they overlap and need to be put into one post.  Feel free to ask questions and Google anything you would like. As I said I am not a developer nor do I claim to be. You will be reading and learning what I am being taught. Here’s what we will be learning this week: Introduction to Android and Java.

(1) Installing Android
(2) Creating Hello World
(3) Running on Emulator
(4) Introduction to Java Data types, Loops, Conditionals and Operators

For this article we are just going to focus on the first part, (1) Installing Android.

Many of you may have already gone through these steps when attempting to learn from other sites. I know I did. So what I did was uninstalled everything and started at ground zero so I could follow this training class to the letter. If you already have all these steps completed then you can skip this part. Let’s get started!

We will need java to run an Android development environment. Download the latest JDK available for download for Android. You can find that here http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp. Once that has been downloaded and installed we move on to the next program.

We need to install Eclipse. Eclipse is the official IDE for Android. The version you will want to download is ‘Eclipse IDE for Java Developers’ get that download from herehttp://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-ide-java-developers/galileosr2 Once the file is complete you will need to open it up. The file comes in a .zip format so open the .zip file using your favorite application (I use winzip) and then place the folder on your desktop for right now to make everything easy to find.

Last thing we need is the Android SDK. You can get that here http://d.android.com/sdk/index.html Of course it is in a .zip file again so extract it to your desktop like we did with the Eclipse Folder. Once you have that file you will open it up and run SDKmanager.exe application. A window will appear asking what packages you wish to install. For safety and because I don’t know any better, just select ALL and let it download everything available. This will take some time to get all the install files in. It took me roughly 20 minutes for it to complete.

We now have all the software needed to get started on building applications. We just need to set it all up so it’s ready for work.

In order to use Eclipse we need the Android Development Kit (ADK). This is really simple to install, Open Eclipse and select HELP scroll down towards the bottom and select INSTALL NEW SOFTWARE. Click on ADD SITE button and paste this https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ You will see Developer Tools pop up in the name section, check the box then hit next. Follow the screen prompts and accept the terms and condition. It will then install the ADK for you then you will be prompted to restart Eclipse.