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There are lots of ways to work with the web in Android. One of the easiest and most robust is a 3rd party library called OkHttp.
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As one might expect,
0:00
there are many different ways to
interact with the web in Android.
0:01
The Android ASDK has some
APIs that we can use.
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Also, because it's such a common task,
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many different third party
solutions are available.
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By third party solutions,
I mean solutions written by developers
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that are not part of
the Android ASDK itself.
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Why would someone write their own API?
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Well, the reason there are so
many third party solutions is that working
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with HTTP and WebRequest can be
a little painful with the Android APIs.
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For many situations, the solutions
provided in the Android SDK are great.
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Sometimes, however,
better solutions are available.
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We can think of third-party libraries
like upgrades to a bicycle.
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I'm sure that your last bicycle came with,
for example, a fully functioning seat.
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However, you might have found it to
be slightly uncomfortable to use for
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a long period of time.
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Using a third party seat can help make
the experience much more comfortable.
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I'm here to help you become
a great Android developer.
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Sometimes, that means using
third party libraries to make
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our development experience more
comfortable than it would be when strictly
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adhering to the official SDK.
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How does one get started when doing
something new in programming?
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A great first step is to check for
resources and see what's available and
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recommended.
1:27
Now, I know you didn't come
here to watch me Google things.
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You want to learn how to be a developer.
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Well, here's a secret, okay?
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Don't tell anyone.
1:37
Developers use Google all the time.
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Using the web to help solve problems
allows you to avoid common pitfalls and
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to reuse solutions from other developers.
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But what do we need to search for?
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Let's start at the Android
developers site.
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Go over here to Develop and guides.
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Scroll down a little ways
until we find Connectivity.
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So Connectivity's what we're looking for.
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Well, there's not a ton of great
information here on the developer site for
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HTTP connectivity.
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I know there has to be some
great solutions available.
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Let's head back over to Google and
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search for the best Android HTTP library.
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We get our results here with the better
options at the top of the page.
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When doing these searches,
pay attention to dates on the articles.
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Things in Android, and
technology in general, change quickly.
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So something from 2015 may be outdated or
unsupported.
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We can restrict our search
to a specified date range.
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Go to Tools.
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Here, where it says Any time,
choose within the past year.
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We see that there is a mention
of a few different libraries.
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Now, here's a great tip for
searching to compare items.
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This works for almost everything when
investigating different products.
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Search for its name plus these
two magic letters, VS for versus.
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Let's search for Android Volley.
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Android volley versus, auto-complete
in the search bar shows some common
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libraries that are compared
to one another.
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Now, I know from past experience
that this library here,
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okayhttp, is very easy to work with.
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And it's what we'll use for
our Stormy app.
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Now, you might be thinking this is great,
Ken.
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You've been here before, so
this is going super smoothly.
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You're right.
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Sometimes research can
be super frustrating and
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take up way more time than you thought.
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Trust me, though, researching options is
helpful and makes you a better developer.
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Let's Google okhttp library.
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We'll see that we can get it from GitHub.
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This library is provided
by the company Square,
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which has contributed many different
libraries to Android development.
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It's under active development, and if we
scroll down a bit to view the Read Me
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section, we see some information
about how to use the project.
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An important spot to check when looking at
third party libraries is for the license.
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OkHTTP is released under
the Apache license,
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which means it is open source and
free for us to use.
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Okay, I know you're taking this course
to learn how to be a developer.
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And I'm saying to use
code from someone else.
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Isn't that cheating?
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Not at all.
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Making use of third party solutions
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is a great way to be a more
productive developer.
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Popular libraries such as
these are well tested.
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Look around in this repository a bit
to see how much code it takes to get
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HTTP connectivity working properly.
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It's a great option to use.
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Back in the readme file,
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it shows us how to include OkHttp
in our Stormy project with Gradle.
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Let's see how to do that
after a short break.
5:23
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