How Can Modularization Boost Your Android Mobile App Development Process?

Posted by Anshul Sharma on June 20th, 2019

Do you know? When it comes to big Android mobile app development projects, the duration is the most critical element that needs to be monitored regularly. It’s because the big android projects contain many codes along with the dependencies to various libraries, and several big libraries can be vast and also a complicated reason stays in a few regions of your project.

Developers and programmers will keep adding new features by an app. Lots of codes imply not only extended build times but prolonged incremental time to build an app.

For an Android App Design Company with more significant projects, needing for the new builds might take up to 10 to 15% of their working day. It does not just spoil the precious time of developers but also make development more tedious that can hurt the quality of codes.

Why Should I Modularize My App?

If you ever create an android mobile app, then you already know that you want to see the result of your work every time. You need to build and then run your app.

This obviously can take some time and additionally rely on the developer machine’s power, although there are lots of things that developers can do to speed up the process.

Modularizing the app is one of it, and you need to learn how you can utilize it to simplify and improve the speed of your development.

Modularization offers numerous benefits that an Android App Design Company can get. For example –

• Clean application architecture;

• Quick understanding of your app functions, when you don’t know enough about the code base;

• Simpler app refactoring;

• Avoid merging the conflicts if other developers are also working on the project you have;

• Enhance the time to build your application;

• Enhance the tests run as well as build time;

• Create your immediate app;

• Reuse the parts of codes in multiple apps (same as a library);

• Get rid of from complicated to the changed monolith software;

I don’t want to go deep into particular numbers and statistics about the build time we may have along with 3 or 5 modules. You will get lots of guides and tutorials on it, for example –

Instead, it’s better to discuss the concept that a development team must follow to achieve the best modularization to get the answer to how does a modularized app look like?

Note – If you are not familiar with code or android studio, you can hire the best Android App Design Company to get your project done.

Let's begin

Before wasting your precious time, I am going to show you some practical information.

Firstly, you need at least one app module into your android mobile app development project. Then, the android studio will build one and the build.gradle file of your app module will have this line –

apply plugin: ‘com.android.application.’

Once you successfully build and run the module, then you will get a .apk file that can be used to install these files on emulators or devices. This .apk file only is developed once you start building your android app module, yet not library module also not Kotlin/Java module.

• In case you created one library module, then you will get a .aar file which is known as ‘Android Achieve File.’

• But when you are on Kotlin or Java module, then you will get a .jar file that is known as ‘Java Achieve File.’

• We need to create a division between various modules, and also we must know about to select a particular module that is right for your project.

• In Android app module or library module, you may have a blend of Kotlin/Java and classes to build your app.

• If I am talking about pure Kotlin/Java modules, then you will have to be restricted to use only Kotlin/Java classes’ not android classes.

Thus, the most important thing that we should know is, An Android app module doesn't rely on another Android app module. However, it may depend on a pure Kotlin/Java or Android Library.

If you want to create a module for your android library, then you’re the build.gradle file of your android module needs to apply the gradle library file of your module needs to implement a Gradle library plug-in for it.

apply plugin: ‘com.android.library’

For your Kotlin/Java module, your build.gradle file needs to use the Kotlin/Java plug-in just like that –

apply plugin: ‘java’

or

apply plugin: ‘kotlin’

What Can Monolith Do with Your Module?

For this situation, we can put the majority of the feature classes in separate modules, where this will do clean duties regarding these modules. So, the application module size could be decreased.

In this way, when we alter something little inside one of the element modules and run your project to analyze the modifications, the development procedure needs re-development of the influenced feature modules as well as the application module.

However, not the rest of the features module, also not it's a base module. By applying this, we can see that the measure the timeframe for the development procedure will be diminished with the help of the heavy old monolith, as the standard of your work to be completed is lesser.

The Concept

Here, I might want to refer to a touch of hypothesis about the development procedure for a library or app module that we already have in our project.

You may know or may not, yet Gradle runs projects in following forms just if the information isn't the equivalent, which implies that it wouldn't revamp the module if it hasn't been altered.

So this is great if we have multiple modules. Here are approximately five stages that could be spoken to with some Gradle task.

Let's analyse the 5 phases here –

1. Preparation of Dependencies — Here, Gradle will have to watch that all conditions for the specific module are prepared. If the particular module relies upon another, that module must also be developed along with its dependencies.

2. Combining assets and handling Manifest – After this stage, assets and Manifest are prepared to be bundled into a result file. This procedure will happen just for the modules of Android, yet not for unadulterated Kotlin/Java modules since they don't have Manifest the file and resources.

3. Compiling — This stage begins with the Annotation Processors (if you use it within your app), and after that, the source code will be incorporated into the byte code

4. Post-processing — Every Gradle errands with the prefix " transform " needs to be executed on this stage. Perhaps the most significant chores here are transformClassesWithDex as well as transformClassesWithMultidexlist. These undertakings will create the app .dex documents.

5. Bundling then publishing — if I am talking about the libraries, then this phase means making a .aar file at last, and for the app, it means making a .apk file.

Read More: Know About Golden Rules to Boost Android App Development with Infographics

Whenever you decide to run some unit tests, and you applied to instant application, at the point, you should rebuild your corresponding module. When we have a single monolith module in our project, then it will be going to take lots of time.

Wrapping Up

I hope you will get some useful information by reading this module guiding principles post. If you feel I have left anything else, do let me know. I would love to add that information. Please share your valuable feedback in the comment section. I would be happy to know your point of views.