Android UI Development with Jetpack Compose

et started with creating intuitive native user interfaces on Android platforms using Kotlin and Jetpack Compose with the help of this illustrated guide

Key Features

• Distinguish between the imperative (Android View) and declarative (Jetpack Compose) approach
• Explore the Compose app structure, UI elements, and core concepts like state and composition over inheritance
• Enhance apps with animations, transitions and build for smartphones, tablets, and foldable devices

Book Description

Compose has caused a paradigm shift in Android development, introducing a variety of new concepts that are essential to an Android developer’s learning journey. It solves a lot of pain points associated with Android development and is touted to become the default way to building Android apps over the next few years. This second edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect all changes and additions that were made by Google since the initial stable release, and all examples are based on Material 3 (also called Material You).

This book uses practical examples to help you understand the fundamental concepts of Jetpack Compose and how to use them when you are building your own Android applications. You’ll begin by getting an in-depth explanation of the declarative approach, along with its differences from and advantages over traditional user interface (UI) frameworks. Having laid this foundation, the next set of chapters take a practical approach to show you how to write your first composable function. The chapters will also help you master layouts, an important core component of every UI framework, and then move to more advanced topics such as animation, testing, and architectural best practices.

By the end of this book, you’ll be able to write your own Android apps using Jetpack Compose and Material Design.

What you will learn

• Recognize the motivation behind Jetpack Compose
• Gain an understanding of the core concepts of Jetpack Compose
• Build a complete app using Jetpack Compose
• Utilize Jetpack Compose inside existing Android applications
• Test and debug apps that use Jetpack Compose
• Understand Material Design and how it is implemented using Jetpack Compose
• Write apps for different form factors
• Bring your Compose UI to other platforms

Who this book is for

If you’re an Android developer with existing knowledge of the Kotlin programming language looking to learn how to build modern Android user interfaces using Jetpack Compose, then this book is for you. This book is not an introduction to Android development. You must have a basic understanding of how Android apps are developed using Android Studio.

Table of Contents

1. Building Your First Compose App
2. Understanding the Declarative Paradigm
3. Exploring the Key Principles of Compose
4. Laying Out UI Elements in Compose
5. Managing State of Your Composable Functions
6. Building a Real-World App
7. Exploring App Architecture
8. Working with Animations
9. Exploring Interoperability APIs
10. Testing and Debugging Compose Apps
11. Developing for Different Form Factors
12. Bringing Your Compose UI to Different Platforms

About the author

Thomas Künneth is a Google Developer Expert for Android and has been a speaker and panelist at multiple international conferences. He works as a Senior Android developer at Snapp Mobile. Thomas has been an author of countless articles as well as one of the top-selling German Android books (currently in 6th edition). He has also frequently contributed to various open source projects.