Kotlin Developer Starter in Android projects

During our STX Next's Lightning Talks I'd given a presentation about Kotlin. It's a quick starter about the language. The idea was to create a short talk that would fit in a timeframe of 45m-1h. I assumed that attendees had basic skills from Android development, functional programming, java JDK and some JVM languages like - scala, closure or groovy.

Slideshare presentation:
https://t.co/oVPJw1YIGa


Presentation summary:
Kotlin - one of the popular programming languages built on top of Java that runs on JVM. Thanks to JetBrains support and excellent IDE integration, it’s an ideal choice for Android development. 100% Java compatibility, interoperability and no runtime overhead is just the beginning of a long list of strengths. Kotlin is supposed to be a subset of SCALA, on one hand covering major advantages for developers and keeping short compile times on the other.

This presentation is a Developer Starter - a set of hand-picked information allowing a person with no knowledge of Kotlin to start writing basic Android activities and set up a kotlin-based Android project. It starts with language background, reasons for its creation and advantages. Then presents basic use cases, syntax, structures and patterns. Later on Kotlin is presented in Android context. Simple project structure, imports and Kotlin usage with Android SDK is explained. In the end cost of Kotlin compilation is presented and the language is compared to SCALA and SWIFT.

Automated acceptance tests in Calabash

The Mobilengers team at StxNext has recently moved to Calabash as our automated acceptance testing framework. All tests are written in Gherkin - simple, descriptive language that Cucumber can understand. Gherkin gives the ability to describe the desired behaviour in plain text preserving the possibility to run such a test on real devices. It serves two purposes - as a documentation tool and as automated tests framework. It has been translated to over 60 spoken languages (with leading English) so that your team can use the keywords in their own language.

Automated tests follow two simple conventions - that source file should be saved as .feature and that one source file should only contain description of a single feature.

Calabash is the mobile implementation of Cucumber. It enables native apps testing and is cross-platform - Android/iOS. It’s also open-source with all the code available freely on GitHub.

With Calabash we’re able to implement simple gestures (like - swipe down, button-clicks, go back etc.), make assertions concerning displayed content as well as take screenshots whenever something goes wrong in the app.

Running tests in the cloud on the real devices gives us the possibility to cover more devices without buying every phone available on the market. We use Amazon AWS Device Farm which has the possibility to run Calabash tests and covers most popular device models. It also gives detailed tests results, takes screenshots as well as pinpoints references to lines of source code where specific errors have originated from. AWS has the option to test apps in different device locales, GPS locations and specific “other apps” dependencies.

Simple tutorial on how to install Calabash (OsX/Ubuntu) and run basic tests can be downloaded here.

Reference:
https://github.com/kosiara/calabash-android-example-projects
https://github.com/calabash/calabash-android
https://github.com/calabash/calabash-ios
https://cucumber.io/
https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Gherkin
http://www.slideshare.net/Codemotion/calabash-codemotion-2012 (ios)
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/devicefarm/latest/developerguide/welcome.html

Books:
https://pragprog.com/book/hwcuc/the-cucumber-book

PEKA - wirtualny monitor

Niedawno rozpoczęły się prace nad aplikacją umożliwiającą sprawdzanie dokładnego czasu przyjazdu tramwajów i autobusów.

Nareszcie możliwe jest wygodne korzystanie z wirtualnego monitora systemu PEKA na urządzeniach mobilnych.

Jeżeli mieszkasz w Poznaniu - wybierz ulicę, a następnie swój przystanek - aby zobaczyć dane, które pozwolą Ci DOKŁADNIE określić w którym momencie przyjedzie Twój tramwaj/autobus.

Funkcje:


- szukaj połączeń autobusowych/tramwajowych według ulicy/nazwy przystanku/nr linii


- dodawaj poszczególne przystanki do ulubionych, aby mieć do nich szybki dostęp


- połączenia z rzeczywistym czasem przyjazdu są oznaczone niebieskim "GPS"

- widget umożliwiający obserwowanie swojego ulubionego przystanku

Kliknij tutaj, aby przejść do Google Play.

OsX - handful of shortcut key combinations

1. q: Where is the insert key  a: Apple's keyboard does not have an insert key
   emulate 'ins' key by pressing Ctrl + "t"

2. q: Where is the ~ key?  a: to the right of the left "shift" key

3. q: How to take a screenshot of the screen? a: press "ctrl" + 3 - to take the screenshot of the entire screen and "ctrl" + 4 - to take the screenshot of the selected screen area. Screenshots are saved on the desktop



Resources:
mac-os-x-and-midnight-commander-the-missing

OsX - default partition table

What is the default partition type on OsX 10.10 Yosemite?

Partition table: GUID partition table (gpt)
partition type: hfs+

OsX - choose the right Java version for Intellij 14 CE

/Applications/IntelliJ IDEA 14 CE.app/Contents/bin/inspect.sh

2015-03-18 21:02:24.425 idea[962:382297] No matching VM found.

[JavaAppLauncher Error] CFBundleCopyResourceURL() failed loading MRJApp.properties file

[JavaAppLauncher Error] CFBundleCopyResourceURL() failed while getting Resource/Java directory

[LaunchRunner Error] No main class specified

[JavaAppLauncher Error] CallStaticVoidMethod() threw an exception

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException

at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.run(LaunchRunner.java:113)

at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.callMain(LaunchRunner.java:51)

at apple.launcher.JavaApplicationLauncher.main(JavaApplicationLauncher.java:61)

Download the newest "Apple Java" from here.

Download the regular Oracle Java.

Remember to set the JAVA_HOME variable in .bash_profile correctly:
export JAVA_HOME= /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_40.jdk/Contents/Home

You can also edit the file: /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA 14 CE.app/Contents/Info.plist

and change 1.6 to 1.8

Android - List all activities from *.apk file

aapt dump xmltree <apk-file> AndroidManifest.xml