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Creating a content provider is no easy feat, and it has many components. Many developers have struggled with this, so naturally, someone created a library to simplify this process. Check out Schematic for an example of such a library.

Loading images over the network is a challenge since it depends heavily on network availability and consumes a lot of battery. There are many libraries that help with this, including robust features such as caching, configured timeouts and more. See Picasso for an example of such a library.

Barcode scanning is a feature that is available in many different applications, so that should give you a hint that there are libraries that help with that. The Google Mobile Vision library includes API’s for scanning barcodes.

Complex logging needs can also be addressed using Libraries. The default logger falls short if you need to modify what kind of things you need displayed in the debugger depending on what version of your app is Running. Timber includes this, and many more features.

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This blog post is written in response to the Top 5 Android libraries every Android developer should know about by Dario Penić. He gave 5 libraries for features that every Java developer, not just Android developers, should import into his/her applications to ease development. However, I want to make some modifications to his list to suit my own and include one or two libraries which others may find more to their styles or needs.

1. Gson – Passing information between clients and servers using JSON is kind of the standard now and Gson is just the library to convert Java Objects into their JSON representation.
2. Retrofit – If you are dealing with REST API, this library will turn it into a Java interface for calling with parameters filled.
3. Otto – I find Otto slightly easier to use than EventBus recommended by Dario and since it is by the developers of Retrofit too, it makes it easier to ask questions as a whole when needed.
4. Realm – I list Realm, a database ORM, here even though it is an iOS library is because the developers said they are launching the Android version soon. So for developers building on both platforms, they may not have to learn an additional API.
5. Picasso – Even though Dario said that Picasso lacks customisation that Universal Image Loader provides, I don’t find it a deterrent as I don’t think most developers will need that. Besides, Picasso comes from the same developers as Retrofit and Otto and I like my libraries to be from the same family. Makes it easier to deal with them.

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