Android Libraries 2021: Writers have pens, soldiers have swords, but what does Android Developers have? The almighty libraries.
Structurally, an Android library is the same as an Android app module. Anything required to create an app, including source code, resource files, and a manifest for Android, may be used.
However, an Android library compiles into an Android Archive (AAR) file that you can use as a dependency for an Android app module, instead of compiling into an APK that runs on a computer.
In the year 2020, Android OS has a market share of 71.18 percent, according to StatCounter. This figure strongly illustrates Android’s supremacy in the industry.
Many entities have therefore opted to focus on applications for Android. But, to save a lot of time and render applications bug-free, Android software creation includes maximum commitment, a collection of libraries, and Android development tools.
The entire group of Android developers is building Android Libraries 2021, so when creating an app, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. And a win-win condition can be made for you by the best practices of Android libraries.
In short, Android frameworks and libraries (or just libraries in general) are a series of behavioral implementations that have a well-defined interface and are written in programming languages.
In general, these libraries provide metadata, configuration data, message models, support data, code, and subroutines pre-written, values, classes, to name a few.
One of the key reasons for using these libraries is to speed up the pace of development, i.e., without any extra or excessive efforts to create an awesome product.
These libraries have basic pre-written codes and other significant elements for developers that can be used immediately instead of doing these tasks from scratch.
So, if you have just started your career in the making of Android apps and want to know about popular libraries that are a go-to tool for practically any best Android app development business, then what you needed was this post.
1. MyLittleCanvas
One of the top Android libraries for developers is MyLittleCanvas. The library was intended to make it easy for Android to work with canvas, but you can now use objects instead of methods.
This Android library is used to accomplish functions such as a TextView custom underline.
Also, you can use it for Canvas techniques to apply RectShape, RoundRectShape, TextShape, LineShape, DrawableShape, PathShape, CircleShape.
2. ExpansionPanel
Another feature-rich Florent Champigny library that offers Expansion Panels to developers is ExpansionPanel (which contains creation flows and enables lightweight editing of an element).
You can set up several expansion configurations with this library to allow only 1 to open at a time.
This library is easy to understand and the project itself comes with an instant application to be reviewed by developers.
Besides, this library’s full implementation is licensed under the Apache-2.0 license and the sample app is also available on Google Play.
3. ButterKnife
A view linking the library to create boilerplate code for Android developers, ButterKnife uses annotation. Jake Wharton created this high-end Android library, and it makes the code simpler than it was before.
Developers can save time writing redundant lines of code using this esteemed view linking the library.
“ButterKnife is extremely helpful for developers to bind strings, dimensions, drawables, click events, and more if you want to avoid writing repetitive code like “findViewByID(R.id.your view).
4. Kotlin-math
Kotlin-math is another fantastic Android library since it is a complete collection of Kotlin APIs to make it easier to write graphic math.
To ease porting code to and from shaders, these APIs are primarily modeled after GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language).
Just value categories are intended to be the numerous types provided by this library. As top-level functions and not as tools, there are several APIs that are exposed.
5. EventBus – Android Libraries 2021
You can face numerous issues when creating an Android application that has several active components that interact with each other.
EventBus is one of the best libraries using the publisher/subscriber pattern that was primarily created to solve this problem.
The correspondence between modules, decoupled event senders, and receivers have been simplified by this library.
Even, with activities, fragments, and background threads, it performs well. All the various classes involved in this library are completely decoupled from each other, resulting in code that is less difficult and easier to manage and debug.
6. Lottie
As recommended by one of our Expert Android developers, Lottie is one of the libraries of Android animation that parses animations exported as JSON with Bodymovin from Adobe After Effects and renders them natively on mobile.
With this library, artists will create and ship stunning animations for the very first time without an engineer recreating them thoroughly by hand.
It currently supports solids, layers of structure, masks, alpha mattes, pathways of trim, and patterns of the sprint.
7. EasyPermissions – Android Libraries 2021
To ease simple device authorization login when targeting Android M or higher, EasyPermissions is a wrapper library.
Using EasyPermissions, a user can verify whether or not the software already has the permissions needed. Any number of approvals can be taken by this approach as the final statement.
Besides, with EasyPermissions#requestPermissions, to request permissions. This method would request device permissions and, if necessary, display the justification string given. The request code issued must, however, be special to this request.
8. Objectbox
ObjectBox is the commonly popular Android library that helps a developer to dedicate precious resources to what makes their Android apps stand out, not data storage and retrieval.
Also, this library is an embedded object-oriented database and is the best option for SQLite. Incidentally, this is well defined and fitting for the IoT.
9. Android Retrofit – Android Libraries 2021
Retrofit is an Android and Java type-safe HTTP client developed by Square.
Retrofit is the best library that lets you connect your Android Apps to HTTP-based API services. It leverages the main functionality of the OkHttp library, adding to it a bunch of features while removing the boilerplate code.
For obtaining data structures other than JSON, such as SimpleXML and Jackson, Retrofit is easy to use. Besides, for Android and Java, it is a type-safe REST client. Using annotations, this can map an API into a client interface intelligently.
10. ThreeTen
For Android, the ThreeTen library helps manage dates and times. It is a JSR-310 backport, which was previously used as a standard ‘java.time.*’ package in Java 8.
It is very difficult to work with the standard Android Calendar API, but the ThreeTen library is very helpful.
This is, however, smaller in numbers and scale than JodaTime, but the API is more succinct than the API of JodaTime.
However,
You should maintain total control over the code. The trade-off is made for libraries to cover a wider range of use cases.
Using libraries with the main functions suggests that they are the same as selling off. You should not compromise on the outcome, so continue to focus on existing libraries that have been checked.
Read More: ELEVEN ELITE ANDROID LIBRARIES FOR FASTER ANDROID APP DEVELOPMENT
