What is Android Jetpack?
Android Jetpack is a collection of Android software components which helps us in building great and compatible Android apps.
These components help in:
• Following the best practices and writing the reusable code.
• Making complex structures very simple.
Earlier there were many challenges as follows:
• Managing the activity lifecycles.
• Surviving all the configuration changes.
• Preventing all memory leaks.
All these major problems are solved by the Android Jetpack's software components.
Since, the solution for all the problems is Jetpack.
Another most important thing about the Android Jetpack is that it gets updated more frequently than the Android platform hence we always get the latest version.
Android Jetpack comprises the androidx.* package libraries, unbundled from the platform APIs. This means that it offers great backward compatibility.
Android Jetpack Components
Android Jetpack components we can say are the collection of libraries that are individually adoptable and built to work together that make us more productive.
These software components have been arranged in four categories which are as follows:
• Foundation Components
• Architecture Components
• Behavior Components
• UI Components
Foundation Components
The foundation components provide the following features:
• Backward compatibility
• Testing
• Kotlin language support.
All the foundation components are given as follows:
• App Compat: Degrades gracefully on the older versions of Android with material design user interface implementation support.
• Android KTX: A set of Kotlin extensions to write more concise and idiomatic Kotlin code.
• Multidex: Provide support for multiple dex files for Android apps.
• Test: A testing framework for unit and runtime UI tests in Android apps.
Architecture Components
The architecture components help us in building following:
• Robust Apps
• Testable Apps
• Maintainable Apps
All the architecture components are given as follows:
• Data Binding: Declaratively bind UI elements to our layout to data sources of our app.
• Lifecycles: Manages activity as well as fragment lifecycles of our app.
• LiveData: Notify views when any database changes.
• Navigation: Handles everything needed for in-app navigation.
• Paging: Gradually loads information on the demand from your data source.
• Room: Fluent SQLite database access.
• ViewModel: Manages UI-related data in lifecycle-conscious way.
• WorkManager: Manages every background work in Android with the conditions we choose.
Behavior Components
The behavior components help in integration with standard Android services like,
• Notifications
• Permissions
• Sharing
• Assistant
All the behavior components are given as follows:
• Download Manager: Schedules and manages large downloads in background with auto retry support.
• Media & playback: Backward compatibility APIs for media playback and routing (including Google Cast).
• Notifications: Provides notification API with Wear and Auto support which is backward compatible.
• Permissions: Compatibility APIs for checking as well as requesting permissions in app.
• Preferences: Creates interactive settings screens for the users to configure.
• Sharing: Provides a share action which is suitable for an app’s action bar.
• Slices: Creates flexible UI elements that can display app data outside the app and can be extended all the way back to Android 4.4 versions.
UI Components
The UI components provides widgets and helpers to make your app not only easy, but delightful to use.
All the UI components are given as follows:
• Animation and transitions: Moves widgets and transition between the screens.
• Auto: Components to develop the Auto Android apps.
• Emoji: Enables the updated emoji font on the older platforms.
• Fragment: The basic unit of composable UI.
• Layout: Layout that is the widgets with different algorithms.
• Palette: Pull the useful information from the color palettes.
• TV: Components to develop the Android TV apps.
• Wear: Components to develop the Android Wear apps.
This way the Android Jetpack helps us. We should start using it.