Dan Lew

rxjava

Don't break the chain: use RxJava's compose() operator

One nice aspect of RxJava is that you can see how data is transformed through a series of operators: Observable.from(someSource) .map(data -> manipulate(data)) .subscribeOn(Schedulers.io()) .observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread()) .subscribe(data -> doSomething(data)); What if you have a set of operators that you want to

android

Setting up a new app in Crashlytics without the IDE plugin

I like Crashlytics [https://crashlytics.com/]. I like the service they provide: their crash logs have saved my ass countless times. I also like that it's free. However, there is one problem I've run into time and time again: getting new apps setup with it. They

android

A Guide to Lollipop Notification Settings

Lollipop changed the notification settings we all knew and loved but in a rather unintuitive way. It's so unintuitive I felt the need to write this guide. In short: you can do (almost1) everything you used to be able to do and more! It's just confusing

android

Handling Android resources with non-standard formats

In Android you have to deal with a large variety of screen sizes. The current solution is to use adaptive design to handle all the screens. One concept of adaptive design is that you have ever-growing content frames... up to a point. Once the device is too large or

android

An animated drawable issue in Lollipop

A common pattern in Android is to use View.setVisibility() to swap widgets in your hierarchy. Unfortunately, in Lollipop, there is a risk of running afoul of the new RippleDrawable [https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/drawable/RippleDrawable.html] when doing so. Let's look at a sample

android

I don't need your permission!

Permissions on Android are tricky to get right from a user perspective. Usually you only want to do something minor and innocuous (pre-fill a form with a contact's info) but the actual permission you have to request gives you much more power than necessary (access to ALL

android

Styling Views on Android (Without Going Crazy)

Styles are hard to get right on Android. There's a lot of potential for frustration. The hierarchy easily devolves into spaghetti code. How often have you wanted to change a style but feared you might break something unintentionally by doing so? After many years of working with Android,

You Should Write More

How often does this happen to you: Your program crashes with a mysterious exception. You paste the crash logs into Google. The first link has a solution. Hooray! You found this magical solution because some good samaritan in the past decided to share his or her notes. You, too, can

android

Grokking RxJava, Part 4: Reactive Android

In parts 1 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/09/15/grokking-rxjava-part-1/], 2 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/09/22/grokking-rxjava-part-2/], and 3 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/09/30/grokking-rxjava-part-3/] I covered how RxJava works (in a general sense). But as

rxjava

Grokking RxJava, Part 3: Reactive with Benefits

In part 1 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/09/15/grokking-rxjava-part-1/], I went over the basic structure of RxJava. In part 2 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/09/22/grokking-rxjava-part-2/], I showed you how powerful operators could be. But maybe you're still

rxjava

Grokking RxJava, Part 2: Operator, Operator

In part 1 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/09/15/grokking-rxjava-part-1/] I went over the basic structure of RxJava, as well as introducing you to the map() operator. However, I can understand if you're still not compelled to use RxJava - you don't have

rxjava

Grokking RxJava, Part 1: The Basics

RxJava [https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxJava] is the new hotness amongst Android developers these days. The only problem is that it can be difficult to approach initially. Functional Reactive Programming is hard when you come from an imperative world, but once you understand it, it's so awesome! I&

android

What Should You Localize?

Localization is an important topic to me; there's no faster way to expand your audience than include the entire rest of the world! A few months ago I wrote about how to setup your strings [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/04/16/android-localization-tips/]. That's

android

Upcoming Talk: Custom Views for Profit and Pleasure

As is my wont, I'm going to be going to a few conferences in the upcoming months and giving some talks. My new talk this year will be all about my love of custom Views on Android. It's called "Custom Views for Profit and Pleasure&

android

New App: Download Shortcut

I've published another tiny tool app: Download Shortcut [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.danlew.download]. It solves a problem which has vexed me on Android: what if an app lets me open a link to a file (say, an mp3) but doesn't

android

Fast Android asset theming with ColorFilter

One of the neat aspects of the material theme [https://developer.android.com/preview/material/theme.html] in the upcoming Android L release is being able to theme all of your app (icons and all) with just a handful of attributes: <style name="AppTheme" parent="android:

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Gfycat for Android

I think Gfycat [http://www.gfycat.com/] is doing some amazing work with their service - I don't mind gifs as a visual medium but it has always bothered me how large/slow they are to load. Gfycat takes those gigantic gifs and compresses them to a more convenient

android

The Hidden Pitfalls of AsyncTask

Logc.at [logc.at] is a defunct blog I wrote a couple posts for a few years ago. I'm using the Wayback Machine [https://archive.org/web/] to recover and repost my articles here. I originally wrote this article when I was (foolishly) still using AsyncTasks. Nowadays I

android

Android Tips Round-Up, Part 5

Here's the final round-up of Android tips I've been posting. I've officially run out of things to post. If I ever come across something new I'll post it but it won't be daily anymore. It's been fun

android

Why I avoid android.util.Patterns

I wanted to leave a quick note about android.util.Patterns [http://developer.android.com/reference/android/util/Patterns.html]: I think it's a dangerously misleading class. It's so tempting - who wouldn't want ready-made, AOSP-approved regexes? But there's some serious

android

Android Tips Round-Up, Part 4

Here's the fourth round-up of Android tips I've been posting. More: Part 1 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/03/30/android-tips-round-up-part-1/] | Part 2 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/04/14/android-tips-round-up-part-2/] | Part 3 [https://blog.

android

Android Tips Round-Up, Part 3

Here's the third round-up of Android tips I've been posting. More: Part 1 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/03/30/android-tips-round-up-part-1/] | Part 2 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/04/14/android-tips-round-up-part-2/] | Part 3 | Part 4

android

Android Localization Tips

I've been interested in localization on Android recently. There's a few neat things I've been experimenting with I thought I'd share. xliff:g One common problem when sending strings for translation is that some parts of a string should not be localized.

android

Android Tips Round-Up, Part 2

Here's the second round-up of Android tips I've been posting. More: Part 1 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/03/30/android-tips-round-up-part-1/] | Part 2 | Part 3 [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/04/28/android-tips-round-up-part-3/] | Part 4

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Android Tips Round-Up, Part 1

With my recent project [https://blog.danlew.net/2014/03/17/android-tip-of-the-day/] I've been posting one Android class/method a day. People have been asking for an archive of these links, so every couple weeks I'm going to round them up here.