IBM's DeveloperWorks has published a tutorial on using Eclipse to develop for the Google Android mobile phone platform. Frank Ableson's “Develop Android applications with Eclipse” tutorial explores the Android Development Tools Eclipse plugin and generates two sample… applications.

The intermediate-level tutorial walks through a starter application with Android, says DeveloperWorks, covering all phases of building and debugging. It then moves on to a second application where it explores more complex Android features such as contacts searching and Google Maps address lookup.

The tutorial includes the following code snippets:

• AndroidManifest.xml snippet — application deployment descriptor
• IntentReceiver — the class that processes intents as advertised by the IntentFilter tag in AndroidManifest.xml
• SaySomething.java — implements an Android activity
• Main.xml — contains visual elements/resources used by Android activities
• R.java - connects visual resources to the Java source code
• AndroidManifest.xml complete — full AndroidManfest.xml file, with descriptions
• MobileServiceCallContacts.java — displays contacts and reacts to user input for Google Maps address lookup

According to Ableson, Android is not only important due to the Google factor, and its widespread support, but because it is unique. “Android takes a different approach to applications,” he writes in the introduction. “The architecture of Android permits a highly customizable software environment thanks to its runtime binding of requested actions and the code to satisfy those requests.”

Availability

The tutorial is available now with registration. To get the most of this intermediate-level tutorial, says DeveloperWorks, students will need the Android software development kit (SDK) and a recent copy of Eclipse Classic (Ableson used V3.31). Mobile-development experience and Java programming skills are helpful, but not required.

More information is available here.

Another developer's perspective on Android is available here.

 
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