Android Framework?

Question

Are there any frameworks out there which make it even more easy than it is to build Android applications and would you be interested in one?

• Thizzer: Just interested if there are any frameworks out there.
• mxk: @kevindtimm in which way are questions about software frameworks not related to programming? Plus, stackoverflow is concerned with software development in general, not only programming.
• Nik Reiman: @Matthias I completely agree... though I have no idea why @MrThys felt like adding a bounty to this question. Rather silly imo.
• jgauffin: @Nik I added a bounty, not MrThys. Why is it silly? Having a framework/toolkit which lowers development time is worth much.
• Vladislav Bauer: You could find something interesting here: android-arsenal.com

Answer 1

Soon there will be!

I am working on DroidFu, an Android shared library which will give you:

• tons of utility functions available directly in Activities (and Services), such as spawning list and error dialogs, checking for Intent availability, and other workarounds/replacements for cases where Android lacks desired functionality
• easy handling of asynchronous tasks (takes care of resurrecting dialogs after orientation changes)
• Easy XML parsing using a convention over configuration based XML pull parser
• new adapters and widgets, such as as ListAdapterWithProgress (rendering a loading spinner as the last element when loading something) or a GalleryItem widget which will lazy load an image via a URL while rendering a spinner
• an ImageLoader which can load images from the web asynchonously, backed by a FIFO cache, great for rendering avatars in lists and stuff

I plan to make this available on GitHub.

stay tuned.

update (Feb 2013) Sorry to say that no one is working on this anymore. All people involved in the project have moved on, and since the lib was mostly used in the Qype app, no one feels like maintaining it anymore (Qype got acquired by Yelp btw, so I'm not even sure if we would be allowed to, since most of it was developed during my working hours at Qype.)

For anyone who feels like salvaging it, sources are here.

• Albert: DroidFu is now discountinued. The project owners have created a better android framework called "iginition" github.com/kaeppler/ignition
• greg7gkb: And of course, the project has moved again on Github: github.com/mttkay/ignition
• mxk: Actually, it's worse: no one's maintaining it anymore. All people involved in the project have moved on to different jobs and work on other things now :-/

Answer 2

I just found out about App Dev Wiki. As described on its website:

This wiki is meant to collect links, tools, libraries, and anything that is useful for mobile development.

Currently listed android frameworks are:

• ignition
• droid-fu
• RoboGuice
• Commonsware
• ActionBarSherlock
• Spring Android
• DroidParts

• Jeshurun: ignition seems to be a pretty good library. The only downside is it uses the pos called maven exclusively, which makes it a pain to get working.
• LinuxLuigi: ignition and droid-fu are not continued. both projects are stopped.

Answer 3

One of the best right now IMHO is Appcelerator

Free and open-sourced, develop one app for all major platforms (cross-platform), compiles the app to native code, has a rich API...

I enjoyed playing with it.. very easy to learn :)

Hope this help!

P.S.: even though it sounds like I work there, I don't... unfortunately for me :(

• user336063: You say it's open source but I've yet to find any links or instructions on how to obtain the source files for this.
• Mathias Conradt: The theory sounds great, but Appcelerator is pretty buggy; might work for simple apps, but hard to really get good UIs out with Titanium and especially on Android. iOS support of Titanium is much more enhanced than Android support. Also see this discussion on Quora: quora.com/…
• Unknown artist: I saw a short video of their office... Yeah, it's probably the only office I'd love to work in, except my own (in the future) :)
• Janis Veinbergs: 2 years have passed, whats the status of Appcelerator for Android development today?

Answer 4

Not really a 'software framework', but a tool to create simple apps easily (that's what Google says):

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

I don't use this tool since I'm not a big fan of this approach, but you could give it a try.

You can build many different types of apps with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like MoleMash or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend's faces. You can even make use of the phone's sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.

But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android's text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud.

To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app's behavior.

• Jim Kiley: Seems to be redirecting to a dead URL at MIT. Anybody know where it went?

Answer 5

There's also phonegap, which you can use to write android apps using html+javascript.

Answer 6

http://www.motherapp.com/ apparently converts 'HTML' to 'applications'.

Answer 7

There are several frameworks of different scope and purpose to make mobile application development faster, or cross-platform, or code-free.

Technology thrives on competition and new ideas, so please don't take the presence of several other solutions as a deterrent from making your own if you think you can build a rounder wheel.

Answer 8

The Simple framework is fully compatible with Android. Its an annotated approach for XML serialization and data binding, and is fully bi-directional. So you can read or write XML on the Android platform. Whats more is its really lightweight and has no external dependencies. In essence its like a JAXB substitute for the Android platform. For more information check out the Tutorial.

Answer 9

To continue the list :

I am working on the BARACUS framework, which focus is to ease the pain of Android component development.

Current features:

• Bean Container with Dependency Injection (type based on Interfaces or Implementations)
• pure Java Configuration
• Bean lifecycle management
• Tiny OR-Mapper solution to have basic ORM w. lazy loading and automatic Row Mapping
• Declarative form validation
• Database hot backup and recovery
• Automated database version management + automated migration

The library is available through maven central repository (including a maven archetype).

Also, a set of tutorials is available on blogstpot

The library is Apache2 licensed, open source (on github) and free usable in any projects (commercial+non-commercial).

• Alper Turan: Seriously, I prefer pure Java to this Baracus thing. It confuses me a lot.
• gorefest: The framework is intended to bring Java EE standard technology patterns to Android - like CDI, IOC, ORM etc pp and that's exactly what it does. If you are not familiar with these concepts, I can understand that you prefer a pure Java approach. I really missed this stuff on Android, so I wrote the library - working as a add-on-container on any android app.

Answer 10

I have completed developing an Android Framework for everyone to be able to use easily and quickly. I already developed several applications with that and it is called appFramework and as you can see, you will be using almost every feature and latest libraries in seconds with just extending or implementing the classes i have already created in the library. Setup process is already included, rest of using roadmap is up to you!

Already Created Classes of Features:

• Google Map
• Recycler View
• Retrofit
• Firebase Auth
• RunTime Permission
• CircleImageView
• BottomBar
• Tag Styled Picker
• Right or Left Swipe Actioned Layout (FlingCard)
• Material SearchView
• AppCompatActivity
• Drawer
• Tag Activites of Fragments
• ConfirmationDialog

Have a nice coding!