Chapter 5

REST, Content Providers, Concurrency, Networking, and Sync Adapters

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

  • Understanding REST basics
  • Looking at RESTful Contacts: An example REST API
  • Learning about Android networking
  • Understanding concurrency and lifecycles
  • Building an architecture for robust networking
  • Implementing RESTfulContacts: An example client
  • Understanding sync adapters
  • Understanding Spring for Android

Wrox.com Code Downloads for this Chapter

Please note that all the code examples in this chapter are available at https://github.com/wileyenterpriseandroid/Examples.git and as a part of the book’s code download at www.wrox.com on the Download Code tab.

Mobile developers — including Android developers — face common challenges when communicating with remote services. Tasks that are straightforward on a local network or even the wired Internet — using a remote service or requesting remote data — can have all sorts of subtle pitfalls in a mobile environment. Attempting to use the network efficiently while synchronizing data between mobile platforms and backend web services adds additional headaches. Among the key challenges that Android developers face are these:

  • Data synchronization between a mobile client and a web service
  • Handling large datasets
  • Using Android APIs to solve these problems in such a way that the solutions can be reused across application domains
  • Android MVC and correct handling of the UI thread during remote requests

The previous chapters built the foundation for ...

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