Android Boilerplate

Sample Android app that we use at ribot as a reference for new Android projects. It demonstrates the architecture, tools and guidelines that we use when developing for the Android platform (https://github.com/ribot/android-guidelines)

Libraries and tools included:

• Support libraries
• RecyclerViews and CardViews
• RxJava and RxAndroid
• Retrofit 2
• Dagger 2
• SqlBrite
• Butterknife
• Timber
• Picasso
• Otto event bus
• Functional tests with Espresso
• Robolectric
• Mockito
• Checkstyle, PMD and Findbugs for code analysis

Requirements

• Android SDK.
• Android 6.0 (API 23) .
• Latest Android SDK Tools and build tools.

Architecture

This project follows ribot's Android architecture guidelines that are based on MVP (Model View Presenter). Read more about them here.

How to implement a new screen following MVP

Imagine you have to implement a sign in screen.

1. Create a new package under ui called signin
2. Create an new Activity called ActivitySignIn. You could also use a Fragment.
3. Define the view interface that your Activity is going to implement. Create a new interface called SignInMvpView that extends MvpView. Add the methods that you think will be necessary, e.g. showSignInSuccessful()
4. Create a SignInPresenter class that extends BasePresenter<SignInMvpView>
5. Implement the methods in SignInPresenter that your Activity requires to perform the necessary actions, e.g. signIn(String email). Once the sign in action finishes you should call getMvpView().showSignInSuccessful().
6. Create a SignInPresenterTestand write unit tests for signIn(email). Remember to mock the SignInMvpView and also the DataManager.
7. Make your ActivitySignIn implement SignInMvpView and implement the required methods like showSignInSuccessful()
8. In your activity, inject a new instance of SignInPresenter and call presenter.attachView(this) from onCreate and presenter.detachView() from onDestroy(). Also, set up a click listener in your button that calls presenter.signIn(email).

Code Quality

This project integrates a combination of unit tests, functional test and code analysis tools.

Tests

To run unit tests on your machine:

./gradlew test

To run functional tests on connected devices:

./gradlew connectedAndroidTest

Note: For Android Studio to use syntax highlighting for Automated tests and Unit tests you must switch the Build Variant to the desired mode.

Code Analysis tools

The following code analysis tools are set up on this project:

• PMD: It finds common programming flaws like unused variables, empty catch blocks, unnecessary object creation, and so forth. See this project's PMD ruleset.

./gradlew pmd

• Findbugs: This tool uses static analysis to find bugs in Java code. Unlike PMD, it uses compiled Java bytecode instead of source code.

./gradlew findbugs

• Checkstyle: It ensures that the code style follows our Android code guidelines. See our checkstyle config file.

./gradlew checkstyle

The check task

To ensure that your code is valid and stable use check:

./gradlew check

This will run all the code analysis tools and unit tests in the following order:

Distribution

The project can be distributed using either Crashlytics or the Google Play Store.

Play Store

We use the Gradle Play Publisher plugin. Once set up correctly, you will be able to push new builds to the Alpha, Beta or production channels like this

./gradlew publishApkRelease

Read plugin documentation for more info.

Crashlytics

You can also use Fabric's Crashlytics for distributing beta releases. Remember to add your fabric account details to app/src/fabric.properties.

To upload a release build to Crashlytics run:

./gradlew assembleRelease crashlyticsUploadDistributionRelease

New project setup

To quickly start a new project from this boilerplate follow the next steps:

• Download this repository as a zip.
• Change the package name.
  • Rename packages in main, androidTest and test using Android Studio.
  • In app/build.gradle file, packageName and testInstrumentationRunner.
  • In src/main/AndroidManifest.xml and src/debug/AndroidManifest.xml.
• Create a new git repository, see GitHub tutorial.
• Replace the example code with your app code following the same architecture.
• In app/build.gradle add the signing config to enable release versions.
• Add Fabric API key and secret to fabric.properties and uncomment Fabric plugin set up in app/build.gradle
• Update proguard-rules.pro to keep models (see TODO in file) and add extra rules to file if needed.
• Update README with information relevant to the new project.
• Update LICENSE to match the requirements of the new project.

License

    Copyright 2015 Ribot Ltd.

    Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
    you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
    You may obtain a copy of the License at

       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

    Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
    distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
    WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
    See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
    limitations under the License.