7 Libraries To Use For Android Development
Android application development has gained immense traction in recent times. Android developers are able to develop applications faster using many popular, out of the box Android development tools and frameworks like Android Studio with Gradle and Eclipse among many others. Apart from that, there are a number of open source libraries that developers use on a daily basis. In this article, we have highlighted seven of the best Android libraries that developers must use for custom Android mobile app development.
7 Best Libraries For Android Development:
1. Dagger: Dagger is a widely used dependency injection library for Android development. It is a lightweight dependency injection without any extra bells or whistles. It is both simple and a fast dependency injector for Android as well as Java. Dagger comes with two pieces: a Dagger library with 100kb in size, and a Dagger compiler.
The Dagger library comprises all the essential logic and some annotations. It even uses the standard javax.inject annotations, which makes your code portable between various different injection frameworks like Spring or Guice. As Dagger is the simplest and most lightweight DI frameworks, it does not include all the fancy features offered by other larger frameworks. But it is relatively faster and does its job. It is worth using when you only want to use a plan dependency injection for your project.
Google and Square lead the development of Dagger and it is licensed under Apache License 2.0. You can access Dagger here.
2. LeakCanary: LeakCanary is an open-source memory leak detection library for both Android and Java development. It enables you to easily detect leaking objects by simply adding a couple of lines of Java code to your existing source code. LeakCanary is free and easy to use. Like Dagger, LeakCanary's development is led by Square. Also, it is licensed under Apache License 2.0. You can look for LeakCanary here.
3. ZXing: In the world of machine-readable data, use of Barcodes and QR codes has already become a standard. ZXing has been around for quite some time and was originally written in Java. ZXing can read and create barcodes on several platforms. It has also been ported to various different languages. Since this library has been around for a while, it already has a large user base. For instance, the QR code app you're using in your smartphone is probably using the ZXing library. It works well and performs as expected.
ZXing's development is led by Sean Oven, Daniel Switkin, and the ZXing team. Alike Dagger and LeakCanary, ZXing is also licensed under Apache License 2.0. You can find ZXing here.
4. Retrofit: Retrofit is another Android library developed by Square. It seems Square is pretty good with writing Android libraries. Retrofit is a library that can transform your REST API into Java interface. It is popular and a type-safe REST client for Android as well as Java development. It enables you to write clean code by leveraging Java for communication with almost any RESTful API.
Again, Retrofit is a lightweight Android library and relatively easier to use. It is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and can be accessed from here.
5. Libphonenumber: Android developers have limited options when it comes to formatting and parsing phone numbers. But thanks to the team at Google they have come out with a library called Libphonenumber. It is the best and most extensive library for parsing, validating, and formatting contact numbers. Libphonenumber consists of a simple and easy to use API. It has been ported to many different languages off the JVM such as PHP and C#. Even Libphonenumber is licensed under Apache License 2.0. You can download the library here.
6. Jitpack.io: Jitpack.io is a library created by the team at Streametry Ltd. It can be used for building any Github project and publishing it to public Maven repo. Using this library you can save a lot of your time and hassle while building dependencies. Jitpack.io is one the easiest methods to publish any Github project as a Maven dependency. It uses customized terms of usage license. To get more information on Jitpack.io, navigate here.
7. Tape: One more library developed by Square, Tape is basically a collection of classes that enable queue handling. It is a great library to handle data streams and download data in unstable environments. Instead of manually coding the queue handling task, Tape itself takes care of it. If anything goes wrong, Tape automatically tries to run the command or perform the operation again. It also caches all the intermediate results automatically, which is another great feature in Tape. It has been placed under Apache Licence 2.0. You can find Tape here.
The Dagger library comprises all the essential logic and some annotations. It even uses the standard javax.inject annotations, which makes your code portable between various different injection frameworks like Spring or Guice. As Dagger is the simplest and most lightweight DI frameworks, it does not include all the fancy features offered by other larger frameworks. But it is relatively faster and does its job. It is worth using when you only want to use a plan dependency injection for your project.
Google and Square lead the development of Dagger and it is licensed under Apache License 2.0. You can access Dagger here.
2. LeakCanary: LeakCanary is an open-source memory leak detection library for both Android and Java development. It enables you to easily detect leaking objects by simply adding a couple of lines of Java code to your existing source code. LeakCanary is free and easy to use. Like Dagger, LeakCanary's development is led by Square. Also, it is licensed under Apache License 2.0. You can look for LeakCanary here.
3. ZXing: In the world of machine-readable data, use of Barcodes and QR codes has already become a standard. ZXing has been around for quite some time and was originally written in Java. ZXing can read and create barcodes on several platforms. It has also been ported to various different languages. Since this library has been around for a while, it already has a large user base. For instance, the QR code app you're using in your smartphone is probably using the ZXing library. It works well and performs as expected.
ZXing's development is led by Sean Oven, Daniel Switkin, and the ZXing team. Alike Dagger and LeakCanary, ZXing is also licensed under Apache License 2.0. You can find ZXing here.
4. Retrofit: Retrofit is another Android library developed by Square. It seems Square is pretty good with writing Android libraries. Retrofit is a library that can transform your REST API into Java interface. It is popular and a type-safe REST client for Android as well as Java development. It enables you to write clean code by leveraging Java for communication with almost any RESTful API.
Again, Retrofit is a lightweight Android library and relatively easier to use. It is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and can be accessed from here.
5. Libphonenumber: Android developers have limited options when it comes to formatting and parsing phone numbers. But thanks to the team at Google they have come out with a library called Libphonenumber. It is the best and most extensive library for parsing, validating, and formatting contact numbers. Libphonenumber consists of a simple and easy to use API. It has been ported to many different languages off the JVM such as PHP and C#. Even Libphonenumber is licensed under Apache License 2.0. You can download the library here.
6. Jitpack.io: Jitpack.io is a library created by the team at Streametry Ltd. It can be used for building any Github project and publishing it to public Maven repo. Using this library you can save a lot of your time and hassle while building dependencies. Jitpack.io is one the easiest methods to publish any Github project as a Maven dependency. It uses customized terms of usage license. To get more information on Jitpack.io, navigate here.
7. Tape: One more library developed by Square, Tape is basically a collection of classes that enable queue handling. It is a great library to handle data streams and download data in unstable environments. Instead of manually coding the queue handling task, Tape itself takes care of it. If anything goes wrong, Tape automatically tries to run the command or perform the operation again. It also caches all the intermediate results automatically, which is another great feature in Tape. It has been placed under Apache Licence 2.0. You can find Tape here.
Do you use any other library for your Android project? Please share with us using the comments below.
