Android Library is termed as a set of structural implementations of behaviour, which includes almost everything that is required for a developer to build an app for Android-based gadgets. These are written in programming languages along with pre-written codes, configuration data, documentation, message templates, resource files, source codes, to name a few, in a well-defined interface.
Android Library helps developers' to eliminate unnecessary efforts that are normally experienced while creating an application from scratch. It compiles files in Android Archive (AAR) file format, instead of Android Application Package (APK) file format, that is capable to contain C/C++ libraries, and can be used as a dependency for an Android application module.
In short, just like Captain America needs his shield and the Mighty Thor needs his Mjölnir, Android app developers will need Android Library to create astounding applications for their users.
Best Android Library options for 2020-2021
With the launch of Android 11, many developers are looking forward to many new features that can help them have a go-to tool to build the best Android-based applications.
Before we proceed further, let’s pen down some of the facts about Android. According to Statista, the worldwide users of Android reached 1.6 billion in 2019. Moreover, Android share in the mobile industry has reached 72.92% so far.
Based on our research, here are the top 20 Android Libraries that can help developers achieve their goals:
Dagger 2
Dagger 2 is one of the most used dependency injection frameworks. While many of the frameworks mainly rely on XML that triggers performance issues during startup, even when validating dependency issues during run-time, Dagger 2 works on Java annotation processors and compile-time to analyze dependencies. It also simplifies access to shared instances, by generating codes that are easy to read and debug.
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Picasso
Picasso is one of the popular names among developers for hassle-free caching and loading of images. Picasso takes care of many pitfalls such as automatic memory, facilitating complex image transformation with minimum memory, ImageView recycling, and many others.
Retrofit
Retrofit is one of the developer-friendly libraries for anyone who has a network request to make. Retrofit is known as a type-safe REST client as this intelligently maps an API to a client interface with the help of annotations. With the help of Retrofit, developers can take advantage of features such as selecting request methods, manipulating endpoints and headers, adding query parameters, etc.
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Timber
Timber is one library that allows the developers to learn and debug smoothly. This library has a lot of capabilities that can make logging very easy, without even tagging logs manually as the logs are clear with the class and the tags come automatically.
Espresso
Espresso is a testing framework library that helps developers to run user interface tests for different Android-based applications. This library lets developers write tests and also help verify whether the text of a TextView matches up to other texts or not. It is also used for writing beautiful, reliable, and concise test cases for Android UIs.
Glide
Glide is another Android library that is used widely for image and caching, as well as, sound loading. This framework is recommended straight by Google as it offers much functionality to developers like resizing images, video calls, decoding, animated GIFs, etc. Glide also helps in making the scrolling of images more smooth and can also fetch, resize, and even display images remotely.
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Zxing
Zxing is a barcode-scanning library and is highly used for indexing millions of barcodes. Zxing is implemented in Java that ports to other programming languages, as well as is being supported by the 1D product, 1D industrial and 2D barcodes.
CAMView
CAMView is another library that comes under the barcode scanning category. This is an easy camera access library with an embedded QR Scanner. This library has many useful features to offer such as scanning barcodes through Zxing's built-in decoding engine and live video preview feed through the device's camera.
Bubble Navigation
This is a lightweight navigation-based library that helps developers in creating attractive navigation bars along with many customized options for an interactive and engaging application.
ButterKnife
If one is looking for the best view-binding libraries, ButterKnife is the one to go for. Developed by Jake Wharton, this library helps in assigning IDs, effortlessly. As view-binding is somewhat like dependency injection, ButterKnife annotations generate boilerplate codes that make it different from Dagger 2.
Android Databinding
As compared to ButterKnife, this view-binding library requires the least use of Android Studio version 1.3. It does not use annotations as this allows developers to bind UI components to data sources in the application. In this library, layouts are defined through the codes that require UI framework methods.
Gravity View
This is a pretty new concept that is introduced for image tilting via device sensors. By utilizing the motion sensors of an Android device, Gravity View gives access to its users to perform a few functions by rotating their devices. To use this library, one has to have an Android 3.0 or higher version.
Stetho
Stetho is one of the 'sophisticated' libraries on the list. This Android library is not just limited to JavaScript Console or Database and Network inspections but also gives access to Google Chrome Developer Tools features that are basically for Chrome desktop browser. Developers can also enable optional dump application tools that offer an impactful command-line interface.
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ExoPlayer
A Google-developed Android media player library, that allows users to play audio and video media with many customizable features. In today's scenario, ExoPlayer happens to be one of the most useful libraries in mobile app development.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel is one of the best-paid analytics libraries. As compared to Google Analytics, Mixpanel offers certain basic features for free, but the upgraded versions will be chargeable which will help developers to track different user events, as well as, the user's entire journey to the funnel.
MP Android Chart
Looking for a library that is mainly used for drawing, graphic designing, or a graph viewer? MP Android Chart is the one to go for. This tool mainly supports line, bubble, bar, radar, pie, candlestick charts, and is also useful for animation, scaling, and dragging.
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Holo Graph Library
This is another library that is useful for viewing graphs and charts on Android devices. As the new one in the list, this is slowly gaining popularity as it helps developers to add well-designed graphs and charts to Android-based applications, along with viewing different graphs such as BarGraph, PieGraph, LineGraph, and Multi-series-Donut-Graph.
Crashlytics
Crashlytics is very useful in the Android Library that assists in reporting application crashes. It becomes interesting and important because developers need to keep track in case any app crashes, and is needed to be fixed on an urgent basis. Crashlytics can be implemented expeditiously as it does not hold any extra data that causes the app to crash.
RxJava2
RxJava is a preferred choice when it comes to the implementation of reactive programming. As per many Android app developers, this is considered to be 'unbeatable' as it simplifies the process to chain async operations that open different ways as to how the operation should work and also be able to highlight technical glitches as compared to other libraries.
Robolectric
Robolectric is another unit-testing based library that supports developers in handling inflation of resource loading, views, and others. It keeps the running tests isolated from other tests as this runs in a sandbox. It can also stimulate the Android SDKs for these tests by eliminating additional frameworks such as Mockito.
Conclusion
The above list of Android Libraries is carefully selected, keeping in mind to cover all the areas in developing a sophisticated and more engaging application for the end-users. These Android Libraries offer a helping hand to Android app developers to create a robust application in a much lesser time and also eliminate technical difficulties in testing, managing, and maintaining these apps.
So if you are thinking of developing an Android application and need more information about Android libraries, you can contact Owebest Technologies to help you with a better development plan. You can also book a free consultation with us and then plan a better application for your idea. It's time to transform your idea into a realistic application, Owebest Technologies will help you with better planning and deployment.
all, you are planning for better revenue with your application, and to do so, you will need a development team of experts to bring the best of your idea.
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