Valentine Gatwiri
Nerd For Tech
Published in
3 min readApr 19, 2022

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Jetpack Compose Basics

Jetpack Compose is a modern toolkit for building native Android UI. It combines a reactive programming model with the conciseness and ease of use of the Kotlin programming language. It is fully declarative, meaning you describe your UI by calling a series of functions that transform data into a UI hierarchy.This blog will help you get started with jetpack compose

How Is Android Jetpack Useful For Android App Development?

Focus for Developers: With the use of the Android Jetpack, it is much easier to focus on the requirements of the applications. Therefore, the modern business chooses to hire android developer for easily implementing new features.

Enhances Productivity: Android Jetpack is mainly suitable for updating the features with more adaptable and it is built with the work cohesively. Many android application development professionals use the Kotlin language as it has more advantage for the productivity.

No Boilerplate Code: the Android Jetpack mainly helps to easily withstand event the toughest activities such as the lifecycle management, background tasks, and navigation.

Creating High-Quality Applications: Android Jetpack helps the developers to easily integrate the modern design practices with easily eliminating more possibilities on the crashes as well as lesser memory leaked having backward-compatibility.

Advantages of Android Jetpack:

Allow apps to run on all Android platform versions

Independent functionality

Backward compatibility

Google features up-to-date design techniques

Productivity features

Better test-ability

Enhances process of app development

Integrated to resolve issues

Well functioning

Disadvantages of Android Jetpack:

No Plugin Bloat

Auto-activation without notice

Asking your self how to get started ?

here is how

To begin, download the most recent version of Android Studio ArcticFox from developer.android.com/studio , and create an app using the Empty Compose Activity template.

Creating a new jetpack compose project in android studio

Launch the IDE and select the Empty Compose Activity template in the new project panel. Give your project any name and hit next/finish.

Composable functions

A composable function is a regular function annotated with @Composable. This enables your function to call other @Composable functions within it.

syntax

@Composable

fun FunctionName()

}

example

@Composable    fun Message(name: String) {
Text(text = "Hello $name!")
}

Compose in an Android app

With Compose, Activities remain the entry point to an Android app. Main Activity is launched when the user opens the app . You use setContent to define your layout, but instead of using an XML file as you’d do in the traditional View system, you call Composable functions within it.

example

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
setContent {
Message("Android")
}
}
}
@Composable
fun Message(name: String) {
Text(text = "Hello $name!")
}

Preview your function in Android Studio

Android Studio lets you preview your composable functions within the IDE, instead of installing the app to an Android device or emulator. The composable function must provide default values for any parameters. For this reason, you can’t preview the Message() function directly. Instead, let’s make a second function named PreviewMessage(), which calls Message() with an appropriate parameter. Add the @Preview annotation before @Composable.

Example

@Composable
fun Message(name: String) {
Text(text = "Hello $name!"
}
@Preview
@Composable
fun PreviewMessage() {
Message("Android")
}

happy coding😎

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Valentine Gatwiri
Nerd For Tech

Just curious.I love solving problems using software development and represent Data in a meaningful way. I like pushing myself and taking up new challenges.