Deep Inside Android

OpenExpo 2008 - Zurich September 25th, 2008

Copyright 2007 Esmertec AG

Gilles Printemps - Senior Jan 2007 Architect

Agenda

What is Android? The Android platform Anatomy of an Android application Creating and deploying an application

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What is Android?
A complete software stack for mobile devices.
Introducing Android
A first joined project of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA).
First open, complete and free platform Software stack open-sourced under Apache 2.0 license Source code will be available and everyone will have the capability to built an image

The Android platform

It includes an operating system, a middleware and some applications.
Lightweight and full featured Developers can extend and replace existing components

A generous development environment

A SDK is available to build, compile, test and debug user applications.
Applications are developed using Java programming language No difference between the built-in applications and the user ones

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Agenda

What is Android?

The Android platform

Linux Kernel Native Libraries Android Runtime Application Framework
Anatomy of an Android application Creating and deploying an application

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Linux Kernel

Linux Kernel

Display Driver USB Driver

Camera Driver Keypad Driver

Bluetooth Driver WiFi Driver

Shared Memory Driver Audio Drivers

Binder (IPC) Driver Power Management

A Linux 2.6.24 fit for Android

Some common features have been removed
No GBLIC support No native windowing system Does not include the full set of Linux utilities

New Android specific components have been added

Alarm, Android Shared Memory Kernel Memory Killer, Kernel Debugger, Logger
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Linux Kernel (cont.)

Power Management
Based on the standard Linux Power Management, Android has its own component.
Application uses user space library to inform the framework about its constrains. Constraints are implemented using lock mechanism.

Partial Wake Lock

CPU

Screen

Keyboard

Full Wake Lock

Binder
Driver to facilitate inter-process communication between applications and services.
A pool of threads is associated to each application to process incoming IPC The driver performs mapping of object between two processes Binder uses an object reference as an address in a processs memory space
Application A
Function(Object)

Binder
- Marshaling - Relaying

Application B

Thread

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Native Libraries

Native Libraries Linux Kernel

Surface Manager WebKit

Media Framework SGL Libc

SQLite SSL

Open GL/ES FreeType

Android Libc implementation

A custom implementation, optimized for embedded use.
BSD license Small size and fast code paths Very fast custom pthread implementation Built-in support for android-specific services (system properties, log capabilities) Doesnt support some POSIX features

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Native Libraries (cont.)

Storage, rendering, multimedia,

Provides the main features on the Android platform:
SQLite, a simple relational database management system (No IPC, single file,) WebKit, an application framework that provides foundation for building a web browser Media Framework, based on PacketVideo openCORE platform (codec) Optimized 2D/3D graphic library based on OpenGL ES

Surface Manager
Provides a system-wide surface composer to render all the surfaces in a frame buffer.
Can combined 2D and 3D surfaces Can use OpenGL ES and 2D hardware accelerator for its compositions
7:56 PM
7:56 PM

App 1 Surface Flinger Manager App 2

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Native Libraries (cont.)

Audio Manager
Processes multiple audio streams into PCM audio out paths.
Handle several types of devices (headphone, ear piece,) Redirects audio stream to the specified output
App 1
Media Player ear piece

Audio Manager Manager 2 App 1

Tone Audio headphone

Hardware Abstraction Libraries

Defines the interface that Android requires hardware drivers to implement.
Set of standardized APIs the developer will have to implement Available for all the components a manufacturer can integrate on its Android platform
Graphics Audio Camera Bluetooth GPS Radio

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Android Runtime

Android Runtime Native Libraries Linux Kernel

Surface Manager WebKit

Media Framework Audio Manager Core Libraries Libc

SQLite SSL Virtual Machine

Open GL/ES FreeType

Dalvik Virtual Machine

An interpreter-only virtual machine (no JIT), register based.
Optimized for low memory requirements Designed to allow multiple VM instances to run at one Relying on underlying OS for process isolation, memory management and threading support Executes Dalvik Executables (DEX) files which are zipped into an Android Package (APK)

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Application Framework

Application Framework Android Runtime Native Libraries Linux Kernel

Activity Manager Package Manager

Window Manager Telephony Manager

Content Providers Resource Manager

View System Location Manager

Notification Manager

Some essential services

However, home made applications dont interact directly with them.
Activity Manager handles application lifecycle Package Manager holds information about applications loaded in the system Windows Manager handles all the application related windows View system provides all the standard widgets to build an application Hardware services provide access to lower-level hardware APIs: Bluetooth, telephony, location,
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Platform initialization

Kernel
The bootloader loads the kernel and starts the init process

Init

daemons

Zygote

Runtime Service Manager

Daemons for handling low level hardware interfaces are started up (usb, adb, debugger, radio) Zygote, the initial Dalvik VM process is created Runtime process initiates the Service Manager, a key element for Binders and IPC communication

Dalvik VM System Server Surface Manager Audio Manager

Registration

Runtime process requests Zygote to start a new instance of Dalvik for running the System Server

The two first processes are able to handle graphic and audio outputs

Telephony Activity Manager

Bluetooth Package Manager

All the others android components are then started

Service Manager

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Agenda

What is Android? The Android platform

Anatomy of an Android application

Activity Service Content Provider Processes and Tasks
Creating and deploying an application

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Activity
One single screen in an Android application
What is really an Activity?
Displays a user interface component and responds to system/user initiated.
When an application has a user interface, it contains one or more Activities One activity is then considered as the main entry point by the system An existing Activity can be replaced with a new one that fulfill the same contract Each Activity can be invoked from others applications

Adding a new Activity in an Android project

The new Java class must extend the framework Activity class Created Activity must be defined into the applications Manifest
<activity android:name=.sampleActivity android:label=@string/app_name> </activity>

Class name

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Activity Lifecycle
Android maintains an history stack of all the activities which are spawned in an application
A Classic scenario
An Activity is started and explicitly finalized (i.e. finish() is called).
OnCreate()
First method called during lifetime; the Activity is created Initialize all the resources (i.e. create a thread, connection to a database) Execution of the Activity can start at anytime; system put it on top of the stack Activity is on-screen (may be not in foreground); user cannot interact with.

Start up

OnStart()

OnResume()

Activity is visible to the user and has the focus.

OnPause()

Focus is lost and potentially the Activity will shutdown Save data (persistence)

Shutdown

OnStop()

Activity is no more on the top of the stack

Service Manager OnDestroy()

Activity does not exist anymore in the system Resources can be freed

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Activity Lifecycle (cont.)

Switching between Activities

Android will notify the running Activity through two new callbacks.
OnResume() OnFreeze() OnPause() OnStop() OnStart() OnRestart()
On Restart(): Signal the Activity will be restarted On Freeze(): All the Activity to save UI state Save the value belonging to the UI (i.e. field in a form)

Dropping an Activity
An Activity can be dropped from memory only in the following specific states:
When it is paused, even if it is completely alive When it is completely obscured by another Activity (stopped)
Normal Execution OnStop() OnDestroy() OnCreate() Copyright 2007 Esmertec AG
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Navigation and Triggering

Intents / Intent Filters

Simple message objects that represent:
An intention to do something A declaration of capacity and interest in offering assistance to those in need
Activity
MP3

Player Activity Activity Manager

- Edit / Create a play list - View a play list

Intents

- Build a play list - Listen one play list

Service
- Play a MP3 file

IntentFilters

An intent is made up a number of pieces of information describing the action or the service:
action attribute is typically a verb (VIEW, EDIT, DIAL,) The data to operate on is expressed in the form of an Universal Resource Identifier (URI) category attribute gives additional information about the action to execute
<intent-filter> <action android:value=android.intent.action.VIEW /> <data android:mimeType=com.esmertec.player/media/12 /> </intent-filter>

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Broadcast Intent Receiver

Broadcasted notifications from the system
When using these Receivers?
When an application desires to receive and respond to a global event.
In order to be triggered when an event occurs, application does not have to be running By default, Android includes some built-in Intents Receiver
Alerter

Activity
- Get incoming calls - Get incoming SMS

Activity Manager

How to receive these specific Intents?

The user class must extend the framework IntentReceiver class To process incoming Intents, onReceiveIntent() method is implemented receiver element must be described into the applications Manifest
<receiver android:name=.Alerter> Class name <intent-filter> <action android:name=android.provider.Telephony.SMS_RECEIVED /> </intent-filter> </receiver>

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Service
A long-running background task
Defining and invoking a Service
Adding a Service with Android is quite similar than for an Activity.
Framework Service class must be extended The new Service must be defined into the applications Manifest
<service class=".AdderServiceImpl"/>

Class name

When a Service is using IPC, an AIDL description of its features is also needed.
Android Interface Definition Language (AIDL) is used to generated code to allow communication between two processes through IPC This mechanism is interface-based, similar to Corba (Unix) or COM (windows) but lighter weight With this specific mode, the Service is started through the binder and not with startService()
Activity Activity Manager
Start

Service
Notification Communication

Binder

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Content Provider
Handle data and expose them to other applications
Why using a Content Provider?
The only way to share data between Android applications.
It implements a standard set of methods to allow access to a data store Any form of data storage can be used like SQLite database, files, or memory hash map
Activity
APK

Activity
APK

Activity

Content Provider

Service

Data

SQLite

XML

Remote Store

A Content Providers exposes a unique URI used to query, add, update and delete data:
A standard prefix (content://) The authority part (fully-qualified to ensure uniqueness) The path to determine what kind of data is being requested A specific record being requested, if any
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Processes and Tasks

A relation between the kernel and Android
APK Task APK

Activity P1

Activity

Activity

Activity P2 P3

Content Provider Service

Content Provider Service

Processes
A low-level kernel process in which an applications code is running.
By default, Android binds the content of an APK to a Linux process Process tag can be used to tune this relation with a lower granularity (activity, service,)

Tasks
A notion that users know on other platform as application.
A collection of related Activities Capable of spanning multiple processes Interaction with Activities can be controlled through Activitys launchMode attribute
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Agenda

What is Android? The Android platform Anatomy of an Android application

Creating and deploying an application

Eclipse plug-in Building the package Running the application Debugging environment

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Creating an Application

Using the Eclipse plug-in

After some clicks, a basic application can be created, compiled and executed.
Only some properties are required to create an Android skeleton The plug-in creates all the file/directories useful to generate the final APK It can be freely downloaded by following the instructions at http://code.google.com/android/intro/installing.html

OpenExpo

XML

AndroidManifest

res

com.esmertec. openexpo

Resources

Java

SampleActivity

An element of a complete development environment containing:

An Android emulator which mimics the hardware and the software of a mobile phone Some tools for debugging, tracing, logging
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Creating an Application (cont.)

AndroidManifest.xml file
Describes the application components that the package exposes.
This file is mandatory and is located at the root of the application directory A top-level application presented to the user must include at least one Activity that supports the MAIN action and LAUNCHER category
<?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8?> <manifest xmlns:android=http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android package=com.esmertec.openexpo android:versionCode=1 android:versionName=1.0.0> <application android:icon=@drawable/icon android:label=@string/app_name> <activity android:name=.SampleApp android:label=@string/act_name> <intent-filter> <action android:name=android.intent.action.MAIN /> <category android:name=android.intent.category.LAUNCHER /> </intent-filter> </activity> </application> </manifest>

XML

AndroidManifest

res
<?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8?> <resources> <string name=act_name> SampleActivity </string> <string name=app_name> Android Application </string> </resources>

XML

values

string

drawable

icon

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Building an APK

Dalvik Executable (DEX files)

A optimized format for efficient storage and memory mappable definition.
All classes are compiled with a standard Java language compiler Migration between a standard class file and the Android bytecode is done with the dx tool (For debugging purpose, it can also present a people-friendly readable format)
AIDL *. AIDL

*.

Java

*.
XML JAR Java

Java

*. Class

DEX

Application Manifest res Android R

Generating the Android specific java files:

When an application contains IPC services, AIDL files must be preprocessed to get Java classes Interface based AIDL tool saves developer the time used to write marshalling code All Android projects have a resource ID file called R.java Its basically a series of integers that can be used to reference the actual resources This file is generated automatically by aapt and should not be edited

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Building an APK (cont.)

Packaging the resources

During the build process, an archive containing application resources is also created.
This file is automatically generated by the aapt utility Among other things, its made up of an index resource file called resources.arsc
resources res
XML

ARSC XML JAR ap_

Manifest

res

Android

resources

Manifest

Generating the Android PacKage (APK)

Typically, an APK includes all the files related to a single Android application:
A compressed collection of AndroidManifest.xml, application code, resources Additionally, META_INF directory can integrate certificates used to sign application
resources
DEX

ARSC DEX ap_

res
META-INF

Resources

Package

XML

Manifest

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Running the application

Installing / Removing a package

All Android applications are handled by the Package Manager.
An APK must just be uploaded to a specific directory Two locations are monitored: /data/app (user) and /system/app (system)
data

app
Package

Package Manager

Android Debug Bridge (ADB)

A client/server application used as a gateway to communicate with the device. It allows:
Copying files to/from the device or the emulator (push, pull, install) Running shell binary commands

adb
Commands

adbd
Commands

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Debugging environment

Dalvik Debug Monitor Service (DDMS)

A GUI application providing debugging information to Android developers:
Processes and threads examination Memory heap statistics and allocation tracker Emulator controls to simulate specific device events File explorer to perform basic management on the file system Dump of the printed out messages,

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