Android application development has evolved to be one of the most challenging as well as rewarding area of application development. This is because, Android as a platform is extremely popular with developers because of their open source nature and availability of a robust SDK. Moreover, Android has implemented the principle of least privilege and as a result, the applications only have access to the components that it specifically needs. This seemingly looks like a constraint but goes a long way in generating a very secure environment for the development. Having said this, there are other ways of sharing data with other applications. One way is that applications with same user ID runs in the same Linux process and share the same virtual machine. There is another alternative. Here the respective applications can request permission to access the device data of the user. The permission is generally asked during the time of application installation. There are many interesting aspects of Android application development and therefore, app development agencies must hire Android developers with considerable expertise in developing for Android.
Application components are important as they serve as the building units of any application. There are four different types of application components that are used for Android application development and they are:
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Activities: An activity is a unit that has a screen with a single user interface. Multiple activities work together cohesively to deliver user experience. The interesting part of these activities is that even though they work cohesively, they are independent of each other.
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Broadcast Receivers: This component is responsible for responding to the broadcast announcements that mostly originate from the system.
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Content Providers: This component manages the shared application data. It is through the content providers that applications can either modify or query about the data. This component is important for reading and writing data that is specific to a particular application.
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Services: This component works in the background to support remote processes or perform long operations.
Typically, when a component is started by a system, it starts processing for the application. For activating these components, an asynchronous message or the intent is sent. It is this intent that brings the individual components together for a common cause. A system might not know about the existence of these components. It does so by reading the Manifest XML. By reading this file, an application is able to declare all of its components.
This is just the tip of an iceberg about working with the components of an Android application. There is great deal of more processes attached to the application development and with these critical components. Hence, before deciding to hire an Android developer, an enterprise needs to carefully evaluate the knowledge base and the capabilities of the prospective app developer.
