How to define BuildConfig values (e.g. server URL) using both build flavor and build type

When creating an app, build variants are almost always used to some degree. For example, working on a debug build during development but publishing a release build. These buildTypes are a good way of distinguishing between multiple environments your app may run in. You’ll often have a QA buildType that talks to a different server than your live app. Setting server URLs for each buildType is a very common practice, and is usually enough.

How to add padding to an Android vector drawable

When adding icons to Android apps, you’ll generally be working with square icons. For example, the excellent built-in vector icon library (also available online) only contains perfectly square icons.

How to share dependencies in a multi-module Android app

Note: This post is a tidied up version of my answer to a StackOverflow question about structuring multi-module apps.

How to handle colours logically in a multi-flavour Android app

Handling colours in Android apps is generally pretty straightforward, as simple hex codes are used. However, standardising these across the entire app can be an easily ignored task, one which is essential for multi-flavour apps. Correctly utilising colours allows a single codebase to produce app flavours with radically different colours, e.g. to match company branding.

Android Developer Nanodegree enrollment closes soon!

Just a quick notice that entry to Udacity’s Android Developer nanodegree closes in around 32 hours after this post is published!

Using StickyLayoutManager to give your RecyclerView sticky headers

Once you’ve created a RecyclerView with headers and content, it’s often useful to have the headers “sticky”. Sticky headers will display over the top of your content, and help your app’s users keep track of which section they are currently in.

Creating a RecyclerView with multiple content types and layouts in Kotlin

RecyclerViews are a little bit complicated to get started with, but almost every app has one or two of them somewhere. One of the first problems you may encounter when using them is their lack of a built-in way to handle multiple content types. Creating and binding a single layout is very straightforward, but multiple layouts requires a slightly more complex setup.

Adding a variable to both the Android Manifest and Build Config

Whilst it is possible to set a variable in your AndroidManifest.xml using manifestPlaceholders and setting the value in your build.gradle, it can often be useful to access these values in your code too. For example, I recently used this post’s technique to define a deep link path (defined in the manifest) and check the url’s path at runtime (checked in the code).

Setting an emoji only / blank GitHub status

Saving and restoring a RecyclerView's position in Android

When using a RecyclerView in your Android app, especially one with many (or infinite) items inside it, your users will get pretty frustrated if you fail to remember their position.