Using Oxygene for Java to Develop for Android devices - Intro

Brian Long Consultancy & Training Services Ltd.
January 2012

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Executive Summary

Android devices have become very prominent over the last couple of years and represent a useful market sector to target for business applications. Traditional Android development is done in Java using the Eclipse IDE, but this is not the only way to build Android apps.

With Oxygene for Java, formerly known as Project "Cooper" from RemObjects, you have all you need to develop and debug applications for deployment to Android phones and tablets. This tutorial looks at getting started with the process of building Android applications with Oxygene, getting to understand the build process and what goes on in an Android application.

Oxygene

Contents

Oxygene for Java

Introduction

Java Android

As well as working with Microsoft’s .NET with Delphi Prism (aka Oxygene for .NET), you can also use the Oxygene language to build applications for the Java platform with Oxygene for Java. This allows you to take your existing Delphi or Oxygene programming skills and immediately make use of them in the Java world, making use of the countless Java libraries and frameworks that exist. It also means you can develop applications for Java and Google's Android. Oxygene for Java is seen by many as a Delphi for Android, at least at the language level.

When targeting Android, Oxygene for Java includes the required tooling to build, package, sign, debug and deploy Android applications. Oxygene for Java cuts out the need to learn the Java programming language and the Eclipse IDE, meaning you can retain your Object Pascal programming skills and work in the familiar environment of Visual Studio while still producing native Android apps.

Oxygene for Java was launched on 30th November 2011. It offers several things to facilitate generating native Android applications:

Getting started

Let's take a look at the process of getting set up for developing Android applications with Oxygene for Java on Windows.

Note: Oxygene for Java requires Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012 (official support is present in the August 2012 update of Oxygene for Java). If you do not have a copy of Visual Studio then Oxygene will install the Visual Studio 2012 Shell and work within that.

Install Java Development Kit (JDK)

The Android SDK has various dependencies on the Java SE Development Kit (JDK) so this must be installed first.

You can download the JDK from Oracle's web site (click the JDK link).

Note: The JDK is a superset of the JRE (Java Runtime Environment). The JRE is insufficient; it's the JDK that must be installed. The JDK installer will install the JDK and also the JRE.

Note: You must install the 32-bit JDK, even on 64-bit Windows. At the time of writing the current version is JDK 7 Update 2 and the installer is called jdk-7u2-windows-i586.exe (84.04 MB).

Note: Once JDK 7 has informed you of successful installation, a Continue button then offers to install JavaFX 2.0 SDK. For Android development with Oxygene for Java this is unnecessary and you can close the JavaFX SDK installer without any issues.

Note: It is recommended to add the JDK's bin directory to the system PATH (see below for information on how to add to the system PATH). So, for example on 64-bit Windows with the JDK version mentioned above, you'd add C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_02\bin to the PATH, and on 32-bit Windows you'd add C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_02\bin.

The installation is quite straightforward.

Installing the JDK

Install Android SDK

This involves a couple of steps.

You can now choose parts of the SDK to install. You must install the Android SDK Tools and the Android SDK Platform-tools. In addition you can choose which versions of the Android API to install. Each API version relates to a different release of Android. So, for example, Android 2.2 (API 8) is the FroYo release of Android and Android 2.3.3 (API 10) is the updated (maintenance release) Gingerbread release.

You can also choose to install a local copy of the API documentation if you wish. This allows access to the reference materials when not connected to the Internet.

Installing Android SDK packages

Note: the packages available for download by the SDK Manager are regularly updated, and so the revisions shown in the screenshot above may be different to what you see. Additionally, the documentation package available is typically for the latest available API release and so will be found as one of the options for the latest available API release (as in the screenshot above).

Note: Once you have an updated tools directory in your Android SDK directory you can also invoke the SDK Manager by launching android.bat, a batch file found in this tools subdirectory.

Add SDK folders to system PATH

To ensure you can readily run commands at later points you should add a couple of the Android SDK folders onto the system PATH.

To edit the system environment variables you need to go to the Advanced page of the System properties dialog. A couple of shortcut ways of getting there are:

Now click Environment Variables..., select PATH from the list of System variables, press Edit... and add additional semicolon separated paths. The paths to add are the tools and platform-tools folders under the SDK directory, so on a 64-bit Windows system with default installation that means adding these folders:

Configure one or more emulators

In order to test your applications on various potential device configurations you can set up emulators (Android Virtual Devices or AVDs) for different screen sizes, densities, Android platform and SD card size.

You can launch the Android Virtual Device Manager in various ways:

Installed Android emulators

Use the New... button to create a new AVD, choose its attributes and give it a name.

Creating an AVD

Pressing the Create AVD button will create the virtual device and indicate success with a message like this:

Successful AVD creation

You can see in the earlier screenshot that the Virtual Devices page tells you these emulator images are stored in %USERPROFILE%\.android\avd - in my case this expands to the C:\Users\Brian Long\.android\avd folder.

Note: It should be mentioned again that if you decide to install additional packages after invoking the SDK Manager through the android batch file, you will likely need to have launched it with administrative privileges. You can do so by running the batch file from a command prompt that was run as administrator.
An alternative in Windows 7 and (I think also) in Windows Vista is to press ÿ to bring up the Start menu, type in the android command, then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to run the command as administrator (where just pressing Enter would run as the logged in user).

Note: You can start the Android emulator, specifying a particular AVD either by selecting it in the Android Virtual Device Manager and pressing the Start... button or by using the emulator.exe command from a command-line. For example, the Gingerbread AVD being created in the screenshot above can be started with this command-line:

emulator -avd Gingerbread

or even this abbreviated command-line:

emulator @Gingerbread

Install Oxygene for Java

Lastly you need to install Oxygene for Java. You can either purchase Oxygene for Java from the RemObjects store or download the trial version. It costs $399 (or $599 if you purchase it with its sister product Oxygene for .NET (aka Delphi Prism). The trial version is fully functional other than being limited to 30 day's usage. Either way, the installation is straightforward:

Installing Oxygene for Java

Installing Oxygene for Java

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