Top 6 Important Components of An Android App

An Android system features several components designed to handle different factors. Creating an Android app without using these components is not possible. So, getting a notion about these components is necessary to create a user-friendly app. In this blog, let’s look into the functional significance of these pillars and more details about them.

# 1- Intents

Intents denote the specific communication channels and the commands for an Android ecosystem. Intents get involved when you focus on the activities like initiating a call, message sending, adding an event to a calendar, communicating data, etc. You can consider intents as the gateways of several functions or the gateways. Any Android app can’t function when the intent is absent.

You can categorize intents into two categories that include implicit and explicit intents. No target component is there when you use the implicit intents. Whereas, explicit intents identify a specific target when responding to the request. You can use them to start the components in the apps.

Intents come with a varied range of use cases. The basics of them are listed here:

Activity Starting– Activity is the single screen in any app. You can consider an activity similar to what a web page means to a website. Like the web pages, when you click on any activity, you are taken to another one. Any activity done within the app gets declared as the AndroidManifest.xml.
Service Starting- Services are responsible to carry the options in the background when the app remains closed. Developers can start service in different ways, and one significant of them is intent.
Broadcast Delivery– Broadcast is the message and presents the events in the Android systems. For broadcast delivery, an intent is passed to the sendBroadcast() or sendOrderedBroadCast()techniques. Android is a good option for creating custom broadcasts targeting the components.

#2- Activities

The prime functional unit of Android apps is the activity. It is a UI component that allows easy interaction with users. The activity lifecycle controls the functional state providing a seamless user experience.

The activities of an app depend on the implementation of the app. The activity of an Android also denotes the space where it has the required access to different system components.

When you want the proper code implementation, a proper understanding of the activity lifecycle of this technology is needed. This lifecycle is a series of different methods aiming to present the states of the apps. These methods play a role in the app’s behavior handling as well.

For a better understanding, let’s focus on a helpful real-life example. Think of a video app. When you leave such apps, the video will pause immediately. And after you return, the video will resume. Two call-back methods, called onPause() and onResume(), handle this specific activity in the video apps. Other call-back methods common in this life cycle are:

onCreate()- As the name says you can set the crucial Android activities here.
onStart()- Lifecycle enters the start state in this callback method.
onStop()- As the name says, this method becomes relevant when the lifecycle reaches the stopped stage. When any activity covers others or stops running, this method takes place.

# 3- Services

As just mentioned, activities are parts of UI. But many tasks are there that don’t come with any UI, ( playing music in the background while navigating other apps is a good example. It is the scene when the services come into the scene. Services are ideal options to run long-term apps. Services will continue seamlessly if you don’t decide to stop them. You can use the launcher service also to start the service when the app starts.

# 4- Broadcasts

The goal of these receivers is to listen to the broadcast messages from the systems or the other apps. You can use these receivers to get relevant notifications about different system firing. The broadcast receiver starts executing whenever the other app fires any specific event.

You even have options to send broadcast messages and receive them to the app. A broadcast receiver can enable different features after the proper execution. You can call broadcasts the representations of the publisher-subscribers’ patterns.

Using broadcast messages, sending and receiving across Android apps become easy. Android apps can send these messages for custom events as well. Different apps send the system broadcasts and subscribe to receive any event. An intent object with the added data and identifiable actions receives the declaring broadcasts in any app. Three popularly used methods for broadcast sending include sendOrderedBroadcast, sendbroadcast and LocalBroadcastManager.sendBroadcast().

The first method among these three allows sending results to one receiver at a time, and each of the receivers has the option to send results to the calling components. The second one can send the broadcasts undefined to all the receivers. Here the receivers can’t read the results from others. And in the third method, ensuring the best safety, only receivers in the same app receive broadcasts.

# 5- Content Providers

The prime purpose of the content provider is to manage access to the central data repository. This crucial part of the Android app also has its UI, and they are often used by other apps. The combination of providers’ clients and providers offers a standard data interface allowing easy data access.

Access to the data layer is also controlled by content providers. A standard interface is also there for connecting in a process when the code runs on another one.

# 6- Widgets

You will find these small visual components on the home screens. This variation of the broadcast receivers is the perfect option to create interactive and dynamic components that users can embed on their home screens.

Final Words

So, it’s time to wrap up, and now you have an understanding of the top Android app development components. If you also think of developing a smooth Android app using these elements properly, contact a trusted Android development company without looking further.