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In this video we'll walk through setting up a new app project in Android Studio. At last, we get to create something!
Need to import project files? All you do is select File -> Open from the Android Studio menu and then navigate to the FunFacts folder that you unzip from the project files. When you have that folder selected, click 'OK' and the project will be opened in a new Android Studio window.
Fun Fact!
If you have any capital letters in your package name you'll get this error when building your app: [INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_MANIFEST_MALFORMED]
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Before we start any work I want to
stress one very important thing,
0:00
don't be afraid to make
mistakes with this stuff.
0:05
You can learn so much about programming
from making mistakes and then fixing them.
0:07
You can always undo things and
if you really mess up, you can
0:12
download the project files for each
video or even start over from scratch.
0:15
Check the teacher's notes for a link
about how to import project files, and
0:20
again, we're here to help.
0:23
Head over to the community with
any questions or problems.
0:25
All right,
we're ready to start programming,
0:29
let's get started with our Fun Facts app.
0:32
We're going to approach this as
an iterative process, and we'll
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start with a very simple version that
simply displays one fun fact all the time.
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It won't be very useful or fun yet, but it
will introduce us to the tools we'll use,
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as well as verify that everything is
working correctly on our computers.
0:48
All right, with Android Studio open,
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let's select Start a new Android Studio
project from the top of the list.
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We're going to start with the application
name which is the name of our app.
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Let's type Fun Facts with two capital
letter Fs and a space in between.
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We want this to look exactly how we
want it to appear on the device or
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on the Google Play Store.
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Also the application name can only
consist of letters, numbers, spaces,
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or underscores.
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Next we have the company domain, which
is where you can put your own name or
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the organization you work for.
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I'll leave mine as teamtreehouse.com,
but feel free to use your own.
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Notice that the package name
matches the company name and
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the application name,
it changes based on what we type.
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Although we can go over here and click on
Edit if we want to change it ourselves.
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Just don't add any capital letters to your
package name, that's asking for trouble.
1:44
The package name is important because
it's used to differentiate our app
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from others on the Play Store.
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If there's another Fun Facts app on
the Play Store with the same name,
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then we need something besides just
the application name to tell them apart.
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The package name is
what makes them unique,
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the application name gets
appended to the package name so
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that apps by the same organization can be
grouped together by a common package name.
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So all Team Treehouse apps will
start with com.teamtreehouse.
2:13
We can change the package name later on if
we need to, but it's kind of a hassle, so
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it's best to get it
right here at the start.
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We especially don't want to change it
after we publish our app, the package name
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must be exactly the same in order to
make any updates to an existing app.
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Down here is the project
location on your computer,
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I'll leave mine as is but
feel free to change this, then click Next.
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Now we need to pick devices and version
of Android that our app can run on.
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This can be a little overwhelming at
first, but let's keep it simple and
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leave phone and tablet checked.
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We'll be writing this app to work on
a phone and it will also work on tablets,
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but we aren't going to optimize
how it looks on tablets.
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Now we need to pick the minimum SDK,
which stands for software development kit.
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The Android SDK and
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API levels are often used interchangeably,
there's a one to one relationship.
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Meaning each version of the SDK
has a corresponding API level,
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also we've got a helpful message here.
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Lower API levels target more devices but
have fewer features available.
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Okay, but what does this mean?
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Let's click on the Help me
choose button to find out.
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This brings up a graph showing
the distribution of Android versions
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out in the wild, and
what this shows us is that 97.4%
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of devices are on Android 4.0 or above.
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That corresponds to API level 15, so
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we can feel fairly safe in
picking API level 15 for our app.
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Another nice thing about not using the
lowest API level is that we don't need to
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make any additional changes to
make our app backwards compatible.
3:55
Okay, but what about the very
latest version of Android?
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Well, we are targeting API 15 and
4:02
up, which means that our app should
run on each release as it comes out.
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The API level really only comes into play
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when we're using features that either
lose support or are brand new.
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The Fun Facts app focuses on the basics
though, so this isn't an issue.
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The big difference for us is that Android
will apply some basic visual modifications
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based on which SDK
version the app is using.
4:25
All right,
let's hit OK to leave this screen,
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then make sure API 15 is selected and
hit Next.
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On this screen, we see a list of pre-built
activities that we can chose from.
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In Android,
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activities can be thought of as
the different screens that make up an app.
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Starting from an already built activity
can definitely make building an app
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a little easier.
4:49
But since we're still learning, we'll use
the fourth option, the Empty Activity.
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Let's select that and click Next, and now
we want to pick a name for our activity.
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Typically, we'll want something like
MainActivity for the main activity in
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the app, or a name that describes
what the activity is or does.
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Since we're showing fun facts,
let's name our's FunFactsActivity.
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Notice that as we change the name,
the layout name changes as well, cool.
5:19
Now we can finish and Android Studio will
take a minute to build our project, and
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after a short delay,
we should have everything ready to go.
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You'll notice that Android Studio by
default shows the tip of the day.
5:40
You can choose to not see tips if you
want, but I recommend leaving the tips on
5:45
because you can learn helpful keyboard
shortcuts or other useful information.
5:49
I'll close that to get it out of the way.
5:53
And what we have here is a project
shell that's pretty much ready to run,
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it's a full fledged app,
albeit a very boring one.
6:03
In a moment we'll come back and
run it to make sure everything is working.
6:06
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