O'Reilly.App inventor 2.2014

Publisher:O'Reilly Media Formats:
Print  Ebook  Safari Books Online
Print: October 2014 Ebook: October 2014 Pages: 360 Print ISBN:978-1-4919-0684-2 | ISBN 10:1-4919-0684-7Ebook ISBN:978-1-4919-0682-8 | ISBN 10:1-4919-0682-0

About the book

Yes, you can create your own apps for Android devices—and it’s easy to do. This extraordinary book introduces you to App Inventor 2, a powerful visual tool that lets anyone build apps. Learn App Inventor basics hands-on with step-by-step instructions for building more than a dozen fun projects, including a text answering machine app, a quiz app, and an app for finding your parked car!



The second half of the book features an Inventor’s Manual to help you understand the fundamentals of app building and computer science. App Inventor 2 makes an excellent textbook for beginners and experienced developers alike.

• Use programming blocks to build apps—like working on a puzzle
• Create custom multi-media quizzes and study guides
• Design games and other apps with 2D graphics and animation
• Make a custom tour of your city, school, or workplace
• Control a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT robot with your phone
• Build location-aware apps by working with your phone’s sensors
• Explore apps that incorporate information from the Web

Table of Contents

1. AI2 Tutorials
2. Chapter 1HelloPurr
3. What You’ll Learn
4. The App Inventor Environment
5. Designing the Components
6. Live Testing
7. Adding Behaviors to the Components
8. Downloading the App to Your Android Device
9. Sharing the App
10. Variations
11. Summary
12. Chapter 2PaintPot
13. What You’ll Learn
14. Getting Started
15. Designing the Components
16. Adding Behaviors to the Components
17. The Complete App: PaintPot
18. Variations
19. Summary
20. Chapter 3MoleMash
21. What You’ll Build
22. What You’ll Learn
23. Getting Started
24. Designing the Components
25. Adding Behaviors to the Components
26. The Complete App: MoleMash
27. Variations
28. Summary
29. Chapter 4No Texting While Driving
30. What You’ll Learn
31. Getting Started
32. Designing the Components
33. Adding Behaviors to the Components
34. The Complete App: No Texting While Driving
35. Variations
36. Summary
37. Chapter 5Ladybug Chase
38. What You’ll Build
39. What You’ll Learn
40. Designing the Components
41. Adding Behaviors to the Components
42. The Return of the Ladybug
43. Adding Sound Effects
44. The Complete App: Ladybug Chase
45. Variations
46. Summary
47. Chapter 6Paris Map Tour
48. What You’ll Learn
49. Designing the Components
50. Setting the Properties of ActivityStarter
51. Adding Behaviors to the Components
52. The Complete App: Map Tour with Activity Starter
53. The Complete App: Map Tour (Web Viewer)
54. Variations
55. Summary
56. Chapter 7Android, Where’s My Car?
57. What You’ll Learn
58. Getting Started
59. Designing the Components
60. Adding Behaviors to the Components
61. The Complete App: Android, Where’s My Car?
62. Variations
63. Summary
64. Chapter 8Presidents Quiz
65. What You’ll Learn
66. Getting Started
67. Designing the Components
68. Adding Behaviors to the Components
69. The Complete App: The Presidents Quiz
70. Variations
71. Summary
72. Chapter 9Xylophone
73. What You’ll Build
74. What You’ll Learn
75. Getting Started
76. Designing the Components
77. Creating the Keyboard
78. Recording and Playing Back Notes
79. The Complete App: Xylophone
80. Variations
81. Summary
82. Chapter 10MakeQuiz and TakeQuiz
83. What You’ll Learn
84. Getting Started
85. Designing the Components
86. Adding Behaviors to the Components
87. The Complete App: MakeQuiz
88. TakeQuiz: An App for Taking the Quiz in the Database
89. The Complete App: TakeQuiz
90. Variations
91. Summary
92. Chapter 11Broadcast Hub
93. What You’ll Learn
94. Getting Started
95. Designing the Components
96. Adding Behaviors to the Components
97. The Complete App: Broadcast Hub
98. Variations
99. Summary
100. Chapter 12Robot Remote
101. What You’ll Learn
102. Getting Started
103. Designing the Components
104. Adding Behaviors to the Components
105. Driving the NXT
106. Using the Ultrasonic Sensor to Detect Obstacles
107. Variations
108. Summary
109. Chapter 13Amazon at the Bookstore
110. What You’ll Learn
111. What is an API?
112. Getting Started
113. Designing the Components
114. Programming the App’s Behavior
115. The Complete App: Amazon at the Bookstore
116. Customizing the API
117. Variations
118. Summary
119. Inventor’s Manual
120. Chapter 14Understanding an App’s Architecture
121. Components
122. Behavior
123. An App as a Recipe
124. An App as a Set of Event Handlers
125. Event Types
126. Event Handlers Can Ask Questions
127. Event Handlers Can Repeat Blocks
128. Event Handlers Can Remember Things
129. Event Handlers Can Interact with the Web
130. Summary
131. Chapter 15Engineering and Debugging an App
132. Software Engineering Principles
133. Solve Real Problems
134. Build a Prototype and Show Users
135. Incremental Development
136. Design Before Coding
137. Comment Your Code
138. Divide, Layer, and Conquer
139. Understand Your Language: Tracking with Pen and Paper
140. Debugging an App
141. Watching Variables
142. Testing Individual Blocks
143. Incremental Development with Do It
144. Disabling Blocks
145. Summary
146. Chapter 16Programming Your App’s Memory
147. Named Memory Slots
148. Properties
149. Defining Variables
150. Setting and Getting a Variable
151. Setting a Variable to an Expression
152. Incrementing a Variable
153. Building Complex Expressions
154. Displaying Variables
155. Local Variables
156. Summary
157. Chapter 17Creating Animated Apps
158. Adding a Canvas Component to Your App
159. The Canvas Coordinate System
160. Animating Objects with Timer Events
161. Creating Movement
162. Speed
163. Collision Detection
164. EdgeReached
165. CollidingWith and NoLongerCollidingWith
166. Interactive Animation
167. Specifying Sprite Animation Without a Clock Timer
168. Summary
169. Chapter 18Programming Your App to Make Decisions: Conditional Blocks
170. Testing Conditions with if and else if Blocks
171. Programming an Either/Or Decision
172. Programming Conditions Within Conditions
173. Programming Complex Conditions
174. Summary
175. Chapter 19Programming Lists of Data
176. Creating a List Variable
177. Selecting an Item in a List
178. Using an Index to Traverse a List
179. Example: Traversing a List of Paint Colors
180. Creating Input Forms and Dynamic Data
181. Defining a Dynamic List
182. Adding an Item
183. Displaying a List
184. Removing an Item from a List
185. Lists of Lists
186. Summary
187. Chapter 20Repeating Blocks
188. Controlling an App’s Execution: Branching and Looping
189. Iterating Functions on a List with for each
190. A Closer Look at Looping
191. Writing Maintainable Code
192. Using for each to Display a List
193. The while-do Block
194. Using while-do to Compute a Formula
195. Summary
196. Chapter 21Defining Procedures and Reusing Blocks
197. Eliminating Redundancy
198. Defining a Procedure
199. Calling a Procedure
200. The Program Counter
201. Adding Parameters to Your Procedure
202. Returning Values from a Procedure
203. Reusing Blocks Among Apps
204. The distanceBetweenPoints Procedure
205. Summary
206. Chapter 22Working with Databases
207. Storing Persistent Data in TinyDB
208. Retrieving Data from TinyDB
209. Shared Data and TinyWebDB
210. Requesting Data with Various Tags
211. Setting Up a Web Database
212. Summary
213. Chapter 23Reading and Responding to Sensors
214. Creating Location-Aware Apps
215. Using the Orientation Sensor
216. Using the Accelerometer
217. Summary
218. Chapter 24Communicating with the Web
219. The WebViewer Component
220. The Web Component
221. TinyWebDB and TinyWebDB-Compliant APIs
222. Summary

About the Author

David Wolber
David Wolber is a leader in App Inventor education and teaching beginners how to program their phones and tablets. His focus is empowering artists, designers, kids, women, men, humanity majors, business students—makers of all types—to add coding to their creative arsenals. His teaching materials, video screencasts, and course-in-a-box are available at appinventor.org, and his students have been chronicled in articles of the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Wired Magazine.
David is a professor at the University of San Francisco. He taught one of the first App Inventor courses in 2009 as part of a Google pilot and has been teaching and working with the App Inventor teaching community ever since. His teaching materials on the Google and MIT sites, and on appinventor.org, have provided the first introduction to coding for thousands of new app builders, and his course-in-a-box materials have served as a template for many App Inventor courses at the K-12 and university levels. David recently took a sabbatical at MIT to work with co-author Hal Abelson and contribute to the development of App Inventor 2. He also is contributing to the Mobile Computer Science Principles (mobile-csp.org) course for the new Advanced Placement (AP) course is US high schools.

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 APP Inventor2.2014