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App Development

See UHasselt ECTS Sheet

Last changes for academic year 2022—2023.

Course notes

1. Android Essentials

  1. The Android Life Cycle: Activities
  2. Messaging between activities and apps: Intents
  3. Typical (master/detail) layouts and their adapters: Views
  4. Data storage: File and Network access
  5. Complex layouting: Fragments
  6. Embedded Hardware: Signals
  7. Security by design

2. Language & Support Tools

  1. The Kotlin Programming language
  2. Kotlin Examples
  3. Test Driven Development and mobile dev.
  4. Multiplatform mobile dev.

3. Extras

  1. Installation guide
  2. Common errors FAQ
  3. Links and external tutorials
  4. Project information
  5. Need inspiration? A sample/demo project

Syllabus

Good-to-know

What you should know before starting this course:

  • Knowledge of object-oriented software development.
  • Knowledge of the Java programming language.

What you should have learned after completing this course:

  • The ecosystem and life cycle of a mobile (Android-based) app and how to tackle the development.
  • The role of the different components in app development and being able to choose one over the other depending on the context.
  • Basic knowledge of the Kotlin programming language.
  • Basic knowledge of the technical Android API.
  • Unit testability of mobile applications.
  • Basic knowledge of multi-platform possiblities in the app development world.
  • drawing up a project plan/analysis for mobile development projects.

Course planning

This course is worth 3.0 ECTS points, hence it will be divided into 12 chunks (weeks) of 2h contact moments each. Extra coaching sessions will be planned if required.

The course lies in the second semester of the second year and has quite a bit of overlap with other software-related courses happening at the same time, specifically Software Engineering Skills (SES). During the SES lessons, we’ll get to know design patterns and unit testing, which will also be applied in this very course.

Below is a rough overview of the planned lab sessions:

date contents
14-02 Introduction, Kotlin Programming essentials/advanced
21-02 Setup of Android Studio, Project overview, Life Cycle: Activities
28-02 Activities cont., Messaging & Intents
07-03 Messaging & Intents cont.
14-03 Complex layouting: Fragments
21-03 Fragments: cont.
28-03 Complex layouting: Nested Views
25-04 Nested views cont., Test Driven Development with Android
02-05 Data Storage on Android
09-05 Data Storage cont., embedded signals
16-05 Security by design
23-05 Summary, free project work

Evaluation

  • No formal exam planned.
  • An android-based project which will have to be defended orally to motivate the taken design and implementation decisions. Open questions will be asked to gauge the knowledge level of the student.

More learning material

See the section “Extra” in the menu or in the links above. Each section will contain a “More learning material” part at the bottom of each page linking to supplemental bits and pieces for the curious student.