In Android app development services, libraries change the whole game regardless of technology stack or platform. Libraries allow app developers to fasten their development process, reduce the lines of code, and achieve more effectiveness. It is a code from other developers who publish on the internet for free use.
This article will list the top 16 Android libraries which developers can use to reduce application development time.
Table of Contents
Best Android Libraries
1. MyLittleCanvas
It is among the top libraries of Android. It facilitates developers to work with canvas by using objects instead of methods.
With that library, one can avail facilities like customized underlining on a TextView. Moreover, TextShape, RectShape, RoundRectShape, LineShape, PathShape, DrawableShape, CircleShape are some more addition that can be used with Canvas methods.
2. Glide
It is the library developers widely use for images. They use Glide to make images load fast with a singular line of code for their application. It effectively displays, resizes, and fetches remote photos in an Android application along with a smooth image scroll.
With the easy-to-use API of Glide, a programmer can utilize any network stack to expedite the decoding speed of pictures. As a result, the enormous garbage collection and storage overhead is kept on minimal during the decoding process. Furthermore, it ensures an enhanced user experience (UX) in an app by loading the images fast. Besides, there is also support for videos and animated GIFs in Glide.
3. Dagger 2
Dagger 2 heavily depends upon Java annotation processors’ usage with compile-time side by side for analyzing and estimating dependencies. However, other Java libraries with dependency injection, on the contrary, endure limitations like depending on XML and face performance issues on startup. Or could also face run-time dependency issues.
One more advantage that comes with Dagger 2 is the simplified access to instances that are shared. If you declare a singleton instance in Dagger, the field declaration becomes simple with @Inject annotation:
4. EventBus
An Android app development company faces different problems while working on multiple active components of an Android application. EventBus comes as an effective solution to this problem. It solves this issue by utilizing the publisher/subscriber pattern.
Interaction between components becomes simplified with this library, along with decouples event senders and receivers. The performance is also well with Fragments, Activities, and background threads. In addition, this library’s many classes are entirely separated from one another, resulting in code that is less complicated and easier to manage and debug.
In addition, it also has some advanced functionalities like subscriber priorities and delivery threads. Besides, life cycle issues and complex dependencies also get avoided in it.
5. Retrofit
Retrofit is a development of Square and known as a type-safe HTTP client. Through the REST API, it produces and processes HTTP requests. Thus, code repetition requirements are also gets reduced. Furthermore, OKHttp, a third-party library for receiving and delivering HTTP-based network requests, is used to power the library.
Operations like threading, caching, retrying failed requests, making connections, error handling, and response parsing this library can effectively manage. A retrofit is a well-planned tool, adequately documented, and a savior for professionals in Android app development.
6. CAMView
It is the famous substitute for the ZXing, a barcode scanner. In addition, it is a library for accessing Android device cameras with an integrated QR scanner based on ZXing.
There is a stack of components that the CamView library holds, set to reside in the layout files, and let a programmer gain spontaneous access to:
Watching a video in live preview feed through the phone’s camera
Processing the data live on your own camera
Using an in-built decoding engine of ZXing to scan barcodes
7. Picasso
Picasso is another addition to the great libraries of Android. A company named Square created and maintaining it. Its dependency heavily relies on and contributing to the open-source world, catering processing and loading of images. The use of Picasso simplifies the images display process from external locations. There is also a support of automatic disk caching, a complex transformation of images, ImageView recycling, and terminating download in an adapter.
Every process phases this library handles effectively. Similar to Glide, Picasso handles HTTP requests and image caching.
8. ButterKnife
A view binding library, ButterKnife generates boilerplate code by utilizing annotation for Android app developers. Jake Wharton, to make code clear and better, created this library.
Creators with this acclaimed view binding library can reduce code repetition by a significant amount. It allows you to bind drawable strings, click events, dimens, and more.
@OnClick annotation can be used instead of setOnClickListener method writing for clicking events for viewing one or multiple views. For Android projects, the ButterKnife library is an excellent option to consider.
9. EasyPermissions
EasyPermissions is a wrapper library that untangles login permissions in a system for Android Marshmallow or higher versions. With the help of EasyPermissions, the user can validate the app’s required authorization. Any number of permissions a method can take for the final argument.
For showing the rationale string in case of necessity, a method EasyPermissions#requestPermissions will ask the system for permission. However, the given code request needs to be unique.
10. Espresso
It is a demanding task for developers to test the mobile app user interface. However, to make it less complicated, Espresso comes into action. It looks for inconsistency in Text View’s text and compares with other text to find any matches. Thus, Espresso is a viable option for those who want concise and acceptable test cases for the Android user interface.
11. ZXing
ZXing is a library that comes in use for image processing. Implemented on Java, ZXing also supports other development languages. There is also assistance for 1D industrial, 1D products, and 2D barcodes.
For gathering barcodes in millions of amounts, Google also utilizes the ZXing library on the web indexable. Additionally, it also serves as a basis for barcode scanning applications.
12. JUnit
Junit is a unit testing framework. It is a testing type to test individual source code units. A set of asserted methods in this framework compare the actual outcome with the expected one. The use of annotation in JUnit is heavy. To identify a test method, we use @Test to declare a method, @Before before calling a test, and @After for declaring a method after a test.
13. Room
Developers with Room can simplify their offline map development with the official support of the ORM Android library. Also, the potential of SQLite can be fully utilized here for handling the data. Compared to ORM and its complex APIs, there is a use of SQL annotations and syntax, making it easy to understand. Its support to Rx also functions well.
14. Hyperlog-Android
For storing logs in a database, Hyperlog-Android is a standard Android log class. For debugging, it pushes logs to a distant server. You can also consider it as a utility logger library.
15. Gravity View
Gravity is a relatively new notion in Android libraries’ world to tilt images through sensors. It uses the Android device motion sensors and enables users to carry out different functions by rotating the device.
16. Timber
This library fastens the debugging process. Along with that, one can generate logs without manually tagging them. As soon as the record have its class, tags appear automatically.
Conclusion
These are the 16 Android libraries that are proven to aid programmers and reduce development time. Moreover, their use will improve the application’s efficiency and performance along with reducing lines of code.
If you want to understand more about libraries or want to get your Android app developed, you need to consider contacting a software development company.
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