A report stated that more than 100 Billion mobile applications had been downloaded till the date and the number is doubling almost every year. One way to tackle with such a humongous need of applications in less time is to reduce the complexity of the code and rapidly adapt to the culture of the application. To help the app developers towards that, Google is continuously making efforts to detect the current drawbacks in the application development process and then to eliminate them using the available technology components. The latest solution by Google is ‘Android Jetpack.’
What is Android Jetpack?
In May 2018, Google released the next generation Android APIs in the form of Android Jetpack. It is a collection of components, tools, and guidance to create awesome Android apps. The combination & arrangement of existing Support Library and Architecture Components in Android Jetpack solved many challenges of Android application development. The developers can now manage the activity lifecycle, do custom configurations, and prevent memory leaks which results in making complicated things quite simple. Android Jetpack has ‘unbundled’ libraries and adaptability to different versions of platforms to provide the best modern design practices.
By leveraging the benefits of Android Jetpack, a developer can get the unique infrastructure code while keeping the focus on the most interactive app version for the users. The companies like LinkedIn, iHeartRadio, and Zillow are facing fewer bugs and focusing more on making their apps unique by adopting the components of Android Jetpack.
However, I know you want to get more! So, let’s have more idea of how Android Jetpack is beneficial in the application development process.
Android Jetpack Components
There are four categories of Android Jetpack components:
- Architecture: These components include Data Binding, Lifecycles, LiveData, Navigation, Paging, Room, ViewModel, and WorkManager. They help in building robust, top-quality, testable, and easily maintainable apps.
- UI: The UI components consist of Animation & Transitions, Emoji, Layout, Auto, TV & Wear, Fragment, and Palette. They help in making an easy and delightful application for people.
- Behaviour: Download Manager, Media & Playback, Permissions, Notifications, Sharing, and Slices are behaviour components. The integration with the standard Android services like permission, assistant, sharing, and notifications are possible due to them.
- Foundation: There are four foundation components including AppCompat, Android KTX, Multidex, and Test. The Kotlin integration, backward compatibility to different app versions, and testing framework for UI tests are feasible with them.
Key Features of Android Jetpack:
- Independence: The Android Jetpack components are independent of any app version so you can run the app on various platforms with full backward compatibility.
- Less Coding: Productivity features like Kotlin integration and separation of concerns & testability help to quickly build high-performing Android applications with less coding.
- Unbundled Components: The unbundled Jetpack libraries are excluded from the Android platform. That means you can incorporate new Jetpack functionality in your app, deploy it on Play Store, and give access of new features to users; all in the same day (of course, depending on your speed).
- Quick Integration: Android Jetpack also supports Android Studio Integration. It helps to include new features to the app without disturbing the current functionality of it.
Benefits of Android Jetpack in Android App Development:
- High Performance: The integration of all the modern design practices help in preventing possible crashes while running the app as well as reducing memory leaks.
- Stay Focused: Jetpack components help to stay focused on the application needs at the time of development. As a result, it became easier to implement new features in less time.
- Ease of Functionality: Android Jetpack makes it easy to handle some of the most robust activities like navigation, lifecycle customization, and background tasks.
- Improved Productivity: The components of Android Jetpack and the Kotlin language which is used by most of the Android app development professionals help to increase productivity.
Key Components of Android Jetpack:
- Navigation: The high-quality alpha version of the shipping helps the developers to overcome the problems they were previously facing at the time of in-app navigation development.
- Android KTX: Most of the app developers use Kotlin language. Android KTX increases the Kotlin support by transforming the codes quickly and thus, boosts productivity.
- Paging: Paging stable version can load the large data sets from the network or local storage or both. It helps in providing sufficient data amount of the app and increasing the page scrolling speed. This functionality gives a pleasing experience to the user.
- WorkManager: WorkManager is a vast library which can be a perfect replacement of SyncAdapters. Developers can get the guaranteed solution for the restricted background tasks with the help of it.
This way Android Jetpack helps to develop a robust Android app. The notch of Support Library and next-gen Architecture Components benefits to accelerate the application development and to make quick & convenient app updates.