Android Development Glossary

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• Provide a Android developer glossary of the top 75 Android development concepts sorted by the most commonly used. For each concept include a brief description and the URL for the Android official documentation and the appropriate GitHub repo or other source code repository. Answer using MediaWiki format.

Creating a detailed glossary for Android development involves covering a wide range of concepts from basic components to advanced functionalities and frameworks. Here's a compilation of 75 key concepts in Android development, including their descriptions and links to the official Android documentation. Given the nature of Android's open-source ecosystem, many components and tools are directly maintained by Google and the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), while others are supported by the community on GitHub.

```mediawiki

A single screen with a user interface in an Android app. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/components/activities]

A modular section of an activity, which has its own lifecycle and receives its own input events. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/components/fragments]

A messaging object used to request an action from another app component. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/components/intents-filters]

A component that performs long-running operations in the background. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/components/services]

A component that manages access to a structured set of data. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/providers/content-providers]

A component that enables the system to deliver events to the app outside of a regular user flow. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/components/broadcasts]

The basic building block for user interface components. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View]

Defines the visual structure for a user interface. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/declaring-layout]

XML files that describe the UI layout for activities and fragments. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/declaring-layout]

The build system for Android. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio/build] [Source: https://github.com/gradle/gradle]

The file that declares the essential information the system needs to run the app components. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/manifest-intro]

The software development kit for Android, providing the necessary tools and libraries. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio]

The official Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Android development. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio]

The package file format used by Android for distribution and installation of mobile apps. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/components/fundamentals#Components]

A suite of libraries to help developers follow best practices, reduce boilerplate code, and write code that works consistently across Android versions and devices. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/jetpack]

A class designed to store and manage UI-related data in a lifecycle conscious way. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/viewmodel]

An observable data holder class that respects the lifecycle of other app components. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/livedata]

A library that allows you to bind UI components in your layouts to data sources in your app. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/data-binding]

An abstraction layer over SQLite to allow for more robust database access while harnessing the full power of SQLite. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/room]

A type-safe HTTP client for Android and Java. [Documentation: https://square.github.io/retrofit/] [Source: https://github.com/square/retrofit]

A powerful image downloading and caching library for Android. [Documentation: https://square.github.io/picasso/] [Source: https://github.com/square/picasso]

An image loading and caching library for Android focused on smooth scrolling. [Documentation: https://bumptech.github.io/glide/] [Source: https://github.com/bumptech/glide]

A flexible view for providing a limited window into a large data set. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/layout/recyclerview]

A layout that allows you to create large and complex layouts with a flat view hierarchy. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/constraintlayout/widget/ConstraintLayout]

Helps you implement navigation, from simple button clicks to

more complex patterns.

An API that makes it easy to schedule deferrable, asynchronous tasks that must be run reliably. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/workmanager]

A testing framework for writing concise, beautiful, and reliable Android UI tests. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/training/testing/espresso]

A set of APIs for testing Android apps. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/training/testing/set-up-project]

A design system for creating a cohesive look and feel for your app. [Documentation: https://material.io/design] [Source: https://github.com/material-components/material-components-android]

An architectural pattern for implementing user interfaces. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/jetpack/guide]

Extensions to the build script that provide additional tasks and configuration options. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio/build/gradle-plugin]

A versatile command-line tool that lets you communicate with a device. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb]

A tool for code shrinking, obfuscation, and optimization. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio/build/shrink-code]

A tool that allows you to run Android applications on your computer. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio/run/emulator]

A testing framework for performing automated UI testing on Android apps. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/training/testing/ui-automator]

The open-source project that the Android team uses to develop, test, package, version, and release libraries within Jetpack. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx]

A platform developed by Google for creating mobile and web applications. [Documentation: https://firebase.google.com/docs/android/setup] [Source: https://github.com/firebase/firebase-android-sdk]

A collection of APIs that enable features like location, sign-in, and many others. [Documentation: https://developers.google.com/android/guides/overview]

A dialog that appears to the user when an application has been unresponsive for a long period of time. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/topic/performance/vitals/anr]

A feature that allows you to serve a customized APK for each user's device configuration, making your app smaller and faster to download. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio/build/configure-apk-splits]

A publishing format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources, but defers APK generation and signing to Google Play. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle]

A class that holds the “draw” calls, allowing for custom drawing in Android. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/Canvas]

A fully static, compile-time dependency injection framework for both Java and Android. [Documentation: https://dagger.dev/] [Source: https://github.com/google/dagger]

A feature of the Android Gradle plugin that allows you to configure multiple variants of your app. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio/build/build-variants#flavor-dimensions]

A Java library that can be used to convert Java Objects into their JSON representation. [Documentation: https://github.com/google/gson] [Source: https://github.com/google/gson]

A dependency injection library for Android that reduces the boilerplate of doing manual dependency injection in your project. [Documentation: https://dagger.dev/hilt/] [Source: https://github.com/google/dagger]

An app experience that can be run without needing to be installed. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/topic/google-play-instant]

A tool to migrate libraries to use AndroidX by rewriting their binaries. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/jetifier]

A memory leak detection library for Android. [Documentation: https://square.github.io/leakcanary/] [Source: https://github.com/square/leakcanary]

A static tool that scans your Android project

source code for potential bugs and optimization improvements for correctness, security, performance, usability, accessibility, and internationalization.

A mocking framework for unit tests in Java. [Documentation: https://site.mockito.org/] [Source: https://github.com/mockito/mockito]

An HTTP client that’s efficient by default: HTTP/2 support, connection pooling, gzip, and caching. [Documentation: https://square.github.io/okhttp/] [Source: https://github.com/square/okhttp]

A framework that brings fast and reliable unit tests to Android. [Documentation: http://robolectric.org/] [Source: https://github.com/robolectric/robolectric]

A library for composing asynchronous and event-based programs using observable sequences. [Documentation: https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxJava] [Source: https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxJava]

A way to save and retrieve persistent key-value pairs of primitive data types. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/SharedPreferences]

A C-language library that implements a small, fast, self-contained, high-reliability, full-featured, SQL database engine. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/database/sqlite/SQLiteDatabase]

Tools and libraries to help you test your Android applications. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/training/testing/start/index.html]

A small message that pops up at the bottom of the screen to display information. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/toasts]

A type of drawable that's scalable without losing definition. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/graphics/vector-drawable-resources]

A feature that allows you to more easily write code that interacts with views by providing compile-time safety when referencing views in your code. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/view-binding]

A view that displays web pages. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/webapps/webview]

A way to describe certain types of graphical assets in XML. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/drawable-resource]

A set of Kotlin extensions that are part of Android Jetpack, designed to make Kotlin development on Android more concise, pleasant, and idiomatic. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/kotlin/ktx]

A concurrency design pattern that you can use on Android to simplify code that executes asynchronously. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/kotlin/coroutines] [Source: https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.coroutines]

URLs that take users directly to specific content in your app. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/training/app-links/deep-linking]

Battery optimization features introduced in Android 6.0 (API level 23) to improve battery life. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/training/monitoring-device-state/doze-standby]

A cross-platform messaging solution that lets you reliably send messages at no cost. [Documentation: https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging] [Source: https://github.com/firebase/firebase-android-sdk/tree/master/firebase-messaging]

Allows you to display maps and customize them within your Android application. [Documentation: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/android-sdk/intro]

APIs that support in-app purchases in Android apps. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing]

A modern toolkit for building native Android UI. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose] [Source: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/support/+/refs/heads/androidx-main/compose/]

A layout type that helps manage motion and widget animation in your app. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/constraintlayout/motion/widget/MotionLayout]

Helps you load and display small chunks of data at a time. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/paging]

An Android interface for classes whose instances can be written to and restored from a Parcel. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Parcelable

]

Access and manage sensor hardware on Android devices. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/sensors_overview]

Define the look and feel of your app. [Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/look-and-feel/themes]

```

This glossary covers foundational elements of Android development, including official documentation and some source repositories for key libraries and tools. The Android development ecosystem is vast, and these concepts provide a strong foundation for understanding and working within it. Keep in mind that the Android landscape is continually evolving, so staying updated with the latest documentation and best practices is crucial.