Gain insights into MVVM architecture in Android with Kotlin. Learn about networking with Retrofit, local storage with Room, and pagination. Discover how to build scalable, maintainable apps.

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The course focuses on the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) architecture in Android development using Kotlin. The MVVM is widely recommended due to its robustness, scalability, and ease of maintenance. It is a valuable skill to have for building high-performance Android applications.

Firstly, you will learn the basics of MVVM architecture and its advantages over other approaches to Android development. Then, you'll start from scratch and create layouts for a news application. Next, you'll use the Retrofit and OkHttp networking libraries and get to familiarize yourself with APIs. You'll get hands-on experience in storing data locally via the Room library. Finally, you'll be introduced to both the repository and ViewModel patterns, as well as how to work with the Paging library and deliver data to our fragments.

By the time you’re done with the course, you’ll be able to use MVVM in your Android projects, interact with APIs, store data locally, and implement pagination.

Mastering MVVM Architecture in Android Development using Kotlin

# Drawer layout

The drawer layout is a menu container that contains navigation destinations. A user can slide it open and close after use. They’re normally recommended for applications with more than five fragments. Although our application has only three destinations, let’s learn how to create and use it.

Let’s go through the code.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">

    <item
        android:id="@+id/github_repo"
        android:title="@string/github_repository"
        android:icon="@drawable/git"/>
    <item
        android:id="@+id/rate_app"
        android:title="@string/rate_this_app"
        android:icon="@drawable/star"/>
    <item
        android:id="@+id/developer"
        android:title="@string/about_developer"
        android:icon="@drawable/programmer"/>

</menu>

In the code snippet above, we have a menu layout called `navigation_drawer_menu.xml` that contains different options that a user can click to navigate to different destinations, like settings or a destination to rate the app.

    <com.google.android.material.navigation.NavigationView
        android:id="@+id/navMenu"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        app:headerLayout="@layout/nav_header_layout"
        app:menu="@menu/navigation_drawer_menu"
        app:itemMaxLines="2"
        android:layout_gravity="start"
        app:itemTextColor="@color/colorWhite"
        android:backgroundTint="@color/colorBlack"
        android:fitsSystemWindows="true"/>

The above code snippet is placed in the `activity_news.xml` just below the `ConstraintLayout` but inside the `DrawerLayout` as shown below.

It combines the `menu` and the header to form a `DrawerLayout` using the attributes

- `app:menu="@menu/navigation_drawer_menu":` This is used to reference the menu items in the menu file.

- `app:headerLayout="@layout/nav_header_layout":` This is used to form the header.


Learn  how to create a drawer layout in our application.

Introduction

MVVM Architecture

Layouts

Layout Design Assessment

API

Android Web Services Assessment

Utility Classes

Repository Pattern

ViewModel Pattern

Android Business Logic Assessment

Views

Conclusion

Appendix

Drawer Layout

Drawer layout

Layouts