Users expect to access Liferay DXP content from their mobile devices. As an intrepid developer, you naturally want to turn these expectations into reality. Thankfully, Liferay provides a way for your mobile apps to access Liferay DXP content and applications with Liferay Screens! Screens contains native components called Screenlets that can call Liferay DXP’s remote services and display the results in your app. Each Screenlet comes complete with its own fully pluggable UI that you can customize to your liking. Although the Screenlets included with Screens only work with Liferay DXP’s built-in remote services, you can write your own Screenlets that work with your custom portlets’ remote services.
If you’re an experienced Android developer but need a start-to-finish guide on how to integrate Android apps with Liferay DXP, you’re in the right place. This Learning Path walks you through the creation of an Android app that interacts with the Guestbook portlet developed in the Developing a Web Application Learning Path. Since this is a custom portlet, you’ll write your own Screenlets that let your app retrieve and display guestbooks and their entries.
You should note that although this Learning Path provides complete code snippets of the app, not every aspect of Android development is explained in detail. Focus is instead placed on the code that leverages Liferay Screens. Therefore, you must have significant Android development experience before attempting this Learning Path. Otherwise, you’ll likely be confused. Google provides extensive documentation of the Android APIs as well as some basic tutorials on developer.android.com.
Experience in Android development is all you need to start working. You needn’t have completed the Liferay MVC Learning Path to obtain a working Guestbook portlet. The complete Guestbook portlet’s modules are provided for installation into your local Liferay DXP instance.
Now that you know what you’ll be doing here, it’s time to move on to the first series of articles: Beginning Android Development for Liferay DXP. These articles walk you through the steps required to get started developing an Android app that interacts with Liferay DXP.