New Course: Your Second Kotlin Android App

It’s day 3 of the Android Avalanche: an event where we’ll be releasing new Android and Kotlin books, courses, and screencasts every day!

Today, we are releasing a brand new course: Your Second Kotlin Android App. After you’ve completed Your First Kotlin Android App and Programming in Kotlin, continue your Android development journey by creating another app. Not just any app, but a TODO list app.

You’ll build this app from the ground up and in this 39-video course by Brian Moakley. Take a look at what’s inside:

Part 1: Getting Started

In part one, learn about a recycler view, what they do, and how to incorporate it into your app.

1. Introduction: A journey of a thousand android apps starts with the creation of your second one. Learn about the course objectives and what you will build.
2. Creating a Project: This video will get you started on making your second app as well as explain some of the project creation features.
3. Adding a Recycler View: When creating a lists, a good tool to use is RecyclerView. This video will get you started.
4. Setting up a Recycler Adapter: Having a RecyclerView isn’t enough. You also need an adapter. Learn about adapters in this video.
5. Challenge: Filling in the Blanks: With your adapter created, you just need to hook it up to the activity.
6. Creating a View Holder: The adapter managers the data. The view holder handles the view. This video gives you an overview of the process.
7. Challeng: Binding Data: With your RecyclerView in place, the only thing left to do is present the data which just happens to be your challenge.
8. Conclusion: With your list setup, you’re just getting started. This video points you towards your next steps.

Part 2: Saving Data

In the second part, save your todo lists by way of shared preferences and how to read them back again.

1. Introduction: Creating lists isn’t enough. You’ll ultimately need to save that data which is what this part covers.
2. Adding a Dialog: To add items, you’ll need to create a dialog and thankfully, Android has a ton of them.
3. Shared Preferences: Shared Preferences is a way that we save data. This video covers the basics of using it.
4. Challenge: Instancing Your ListManager: You’ve created a ListManager class. You’re challenge is to create an instance of it.
5. Hooking Up the Activity: Now that we have our shared preferences in place, it’s now time to hook them up with the main activity.
6. Conclusion: With your data being saved, all you need to do is pass data between activities which is the topic of the next part.

Part 3: Communicating Between Activities

In part 3, create multiple activities and learn how to pass data between them.

1. Introduction: Apps comes with a lot of different activities and in this part, you’ll learn how to pass data between them.
2. Challenge: Creating Another Activity: Before you can pass data between activities, you’ll need to add a new activity.
3. Intents: Intents are a fundamental part of working with Android.
4. Parcels: Parcels are another way to pass data which is useful for packaging objects.
5. Bringing Everything Together: With your preferences in place, all you need to do is integrate it with the rest of the app.
6. Challenge: Setup the Recycler View: You started this series by being shown how to add a RecyclerView. Now, your challenge is to add one on your own.
7. Completing the Detail List View Layout: Now that you have a new Recycler View in place, you’ll now need to setup the layout for it which you’ll do in this video.
8. Adding List Items: With the Recycler View all setup, the next task is to add items to it by way of a floating action button.
9. Returning Data from Activities: Activities not only present layouts to the user, but they can also provide data to other activities.
10. Conclusion: This video reviews the topic covered in this part.

Part 4: Working with Fragments

In part 4, refactor your app into fragments and get it to work on a multiple screen sizes.

1. Introduction: While your todo list is going on the phone, it’s looking terrible on tablet. You’ll fix this by way of fragments.
2. Creating a Fragment: This video will walk you through the process of creating a new fragment.
3. Integrating Fragments in Activities: This video will show you the process of replacing activity code with a fragment instead.
4. Challenge: Setting Up a New Device: A great way to test your new layout is to create a new virtual device which is your challenge.
5. Showing the Fragment: Now that you have the fragments created, all you need to do is use them.
6. Challenge: Creating a New Fragment: Your challenge is to create a new fragment. Are you ready for it?
7. Using the New Fragment: With your new fragment ready to go, you’ll need to use it to handle all layout for the list detail activity.
8. Creating a Tablet Layout: With your activities converted to fragments, all it takes is a little bit of code and you’ll be able to create a simple tablet layout.
9. Returning the App: The tablet layout is all set to go, but there are errors that need to be resolved. This video shows you how to fix them.
10. Conclusion: At last, you have a working app. What’s next? This video has you covered.

Part 5: Android Material Design

In the final part of the course, learn about Android Material Design and how to use it to improve your app.

1. Introduction: Your app may be functional, but it doesn’t look good. This video lets you know why it’s important.
2. Material Design: Thankfully, Android has materials to help you design your app.
3. Primary and Secondary Colors: When working with apps, it’s useful to think in primary and secondary colors.
4. Card Views: Cards are a visual tool to make your app pop. Learn about them here.
5. Conclusion: The final video reviews what you accomplished and where to go next.

The Android Avalanche Bundle

If you like this course, from now until March 30th you can get it along with the rest of our new Android and Kotlin books, courses, and screencasts — at a big discount!

Our new Android Avalanche Bundle includes:

• Android Apprentice ($54.99 value): Gives you access to our new Android Apprentice book, which teaches you how to build four complete Android apps from scratch. PDF/ePub format.
• Kotlin Apprentice ($54.99 value): Gives you access to our new Kotlin Apprentice book, which gives you a deep dive into the Kotlin programming language itself. PDF/ePub format.
• A raywenderlich.com subscription ($19.99 value): Gives you access to all 8 of our new Android video courses, our 2 new Android screencasts, and access to any new courses and screencasts we release in the future.

The bundle price of $99.99 includes the first month of your subscription, which will continue at $19.99/month thereafter. You can cancel at any time and keep the books. This bundle gives you more than 20% off everything in the Android Avalanche!

The Android Avalanche bundle is only available for the next two weeks, so be sure to order your copy while you can.