Back in 2011, I rented my first shared hosting, and that was a great deal at the time because I needed a place where I can have my side projects and play around with things. But I noticed that my hosting provider at that time is raising price each year for a bit, and now almost 10 years later – price is double. My second problem was that it’s shared, and you are limited with software that comes preinstalled on your server. So I decided its time for an upgrade to the VPS server. Here is my experience of moving everything from one server to another.
Continue reading My experience of moving to VPS server
The story about my first game in Godot Engine
So, this little story begins in 2017 when I first heard about Godot Engine. At that time I was heavily into cryptocurrencies, I started my mining rig, and invest some in Enjin coin. There is something fascinating about the idea of crypto and gaming in my mine (and still is). And at that time there was news that Enjin is sponsoring some open-source game engine that supports Android, iOS… everything excepts consoles (licensing reasons).
Continue reading The story about my first game in Godot Engine
Why you should use Android Data Binding
Why I started used data binding
After my first blog post about Fastest way for creating RecyclerView Adapter, a couple of you post a comment why I don’t use Data Binding instead of Butterknife. To be honest, I didn’t try to use it simply because I’m used to using Butterknife. I know now that I was terribly wrong, so for every developer like me, here is post to try to convince you to start using data binding.
Use Gradle like a boss
Gradle is awesome build tool, and I’m so happy that Android Studio uses it (who ever programmed in Eclipse knows what I’m talking about). I would like to share some tips and tricks.
Update multiple libs version at once
This is really useful with Google’s Android support library, but you will find other examples as well. First, you will need to create extra property, in my example, I name it androidSupportVersion. After that, use this property with your dependencies put a $ sign at the beginning and surround it with curly brackets.
The cool thing about this is that Android Studio will still tell you when a newer version is available.
BuildConfig
This class is automatically generated, and here (with Gradle) you can store some global variables, for example, probably the most common use of this is to have two different API endpoints.
Resources
Similar to previous part, we can use Gradle for generating resources, for example, different name of the app.
You can use all resource types as the type for resValue: array, attr, bool, color, declare-styleable, dimen, fraction, id, integer, plurals, string, style.
Manifest placeholders
We can also define something useful and use it in our app manifest.
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defaultConfig { ... manifestPlaceholders = [mapKey: "b279b6400b0bf87fba17c98249a66df0"] } |
And now we can use it in manifest like this:
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<meta-data android:name="com.google.android.maps.v2.API_KEY" android:value="${mapKey}" /> |
Signing configs
We can store keystore private info under gradle.properties
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keystore=/home/myname/keystore/mykey keystore_password=mypass key_alias=mykey key_password=keypass |
and it to the gradle file:
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signingConfigs { release { storeFile file("${keystore}") storePassword "${keystore_password}" keyAlias "${key_alias}" keyPassword "${key_password}" } } buildTypes { release { signingConfig signingConfigs.release .. } } |
Do you need SHA-1 certificate fingerprint? You could use a keytool, but there is a lot simpler solution. Just run gradle:
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./gradlew signingReport |
Git in Gradle
You can use Git SHA or build time inside your Gradle, for example, you can add Git SHA to your versionNameSuffix just for debug build type.
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def gitSha = 'git rev-parse --short HEAD'.execute([], project.rootDir).text.trim() def buildTime = new Date().format("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'", TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")) |
Conclusion
Gradle is an awesome tool for our apps, and I know that there is a lot more. Did I miss something important? Tell me in the comments below.
Android Studio plugins that I use in (almost) every project
Android plugins are a great way to speed up your development process, so here are my favorites:
Android ButterKnife Zelezny
Probably everyone who uses ButterKnife library knows about this one, but still, I need to mention it. This plugin will generate all view bindings for you.
GsonFormat
This is probably my favorite, this will create you model class from JSON string. It’s really simple to use, just copy/paste your JSON string.
Android Parcelable code generator
Name of this plugin is really self-explanatory. You can easily forget how to write parcelable boilerplate code because this plugin will to work for you.
ADB Idea
Basically, this is the menu with popular A commands, like uninstall, restart, clear data etc.
What about you?
What plugins do you use every day? Tell me in the comments.
Fastest way for creating RecyclerView Adapter
Hello world.
First of all, this is my first blog post, so here is a quick intro. I’m will try to share some interesting blog posts about cool things that I know.
We all hate (or at least I do) writing boilerplate code so I would like to share this quick way for writing RecyclerView Adapter. Before we create an adapter, we need to prepare 2 simple things; one is a class that will be our model, and second will be a layout for an item in the RecyclerView.
Now the fun stuff
Now go to Android Studio > Preferences > Editor > File and code templates and click on that “+” icon for adding the new one.
You may notice that I use ButterKnife library, but you don’t have to, but you should 🙂
Where is my adapter?
Now that we are all set, we need to finally create that adapter. Go to the File > New > and select your RecyclerView adapter template.
You will see a dialog like this, fill name for you adapter class, item class, and finally your item layout, click OK and… magic. The boring part of your adapter class is already written, all you have to do is make sure that you Inject your views and fill it with data (the fun part).