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Introducing Android Development with NetBeans

Updated on 26 November, 2008 for NetBeans 6.5 and Android SDK 1.0 Release 1

Contributed by: Amit Kumar Saha

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In this article, I shall show you how you can start with developing for the Android platform using NetBeans using nbandroid.

Prerequisites

Before you can get started with developing Android applications, you are advised to acquaint yourself with:

• The Android Framework
• Overview of writing applications for Android

Please refer to the Android SDK documentation for information on the above.

You will need:

• NetBeans 6.5
• Android SDK (This document works with Android SDK 1.0)
• Android plugins for NetBeans: The Android plugins are now called 'nbandroid' and being developed http://nbandroid.kenai.com. Earlier, the project was called 'undrioid': http://undroid.nolimit.cz

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Installing the Android plugins for NetBeans

The nbandroid project provides the plugins for Android development on NetBeans. There are 3 possible ways to install the plugin:

• PREFERRED Using nbandroid update center
• Download and install NBMs. Those are available for download from here. Once downloaded, install all the plugins by going to Tools > Plugins > Downloaded.
• You could also clone the project's mercurial repository and build the module suite yourself and then install them. (How?)

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Adding the Android platform

After you have installed the plugins,you have to add your Android platform by going to Tools->Java Platforms:

Point it to your Android SDK location:

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Creating a new Android project

Now, go to File->New Projects. You should now see a new entry for Android:

Go ahead with the default application name (or change it!)

You should see a new project structure as below:

The file MainActivity.java is as shown below:

/*
 * To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
 * and open the template in the editor.
 */

package org.me.hellodroid;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;

/**
 *
 * @author amit
 */
public class MainActivity extends Activity {

    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
        super.onCreate(icicle);
        // ToDo add your GUI initialization code here        
    }

}

As described in the Android SDK documentation, an Android application is organized as a set of activities. The file MainActivity.java that has been generated is the main activity class for this application.

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Running your project

Now, build and Run your project as you would do with any other NetBeans project. Your project builds successfully and the Android emulator boots up:

Where is our Hello World?

Just add

setContentView(R.layout.main);

to the above file in place of

// ToDo add your GUI initialization code here

This should have been generated by the plugin, because the main.xml containing the main view was generated.

Alternatively we can do the following.

We shall now add support to the skeleton code to display the text- Hello, Android. Add the following to the above file in place of the "// ToDo add your GUI initialization code here":

TextView tv = new TextView(this);
tv.setText("Hello, Android");
setContentView(tv);

You will notice that the IDE complains- "Cannot find symbol". This is because we need to import the class TextView. Its easy with NetBeans. Just click on the yellow bulb and select "Add import for.."

The file should now look like:

package org.me.androidapplication1;

import android.app.Activity;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;


/**
 *
 * @author amit
 */
public class MainActivity extends Activity {

    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
        super.onCreate(icicle);
        
       TextView tv = new TextView(this);
       tv.setText("Hello, Android");
       setContentView(tv);
    }

}

Now, run the project again

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Conclusion

The 'nbandroid' project is just getting started with plenty of opportunities to contribute. Join in at http://kenai.com/projects/nbandroid/

References

1. Google Android Documentation

Attachments