Lab #4: Red Button

Overview

Congratulations! 🎉 You have been selected by your dream company to participate in a debugging challenge that was designed to find the best talents in Android Development. The winners of this challenge will be granted a full-time offer in the company's Mobile Software Engineering department - this is a once in a lifetime opportunity!

🎯 Goals

By the end of this lab you will be able to...

• Debug an app using Android Studio
• Understand Views and view hierarchies
• Understand interaction through click listeners
• Understand View type casting

Resources

• Debugging in Android Studio
• Debug your Layout with Layout Inspector
• Write and View Logs with Logcat

Lab Instructions

Lab Setup

Before diving into the challenge, we need to clone the starter version of the app:

https://github.com/driuft/redbutton-debugging-challenge.git

Challenges

Step 0: App Crashes

In this step, the app crashes automatically when launching.

• Check Logcat for crash-related errors - are there any blue hyperlinks pointing to specific lines of code?
• Make necessary changes in the code to allow the app to run

Step 1: Something Is Preventing Clicks

The app should now launch successfully, but there is something preventing interaction with the Blue button. Usually there is a Ripple Animation that occurs when the button is clicked, but nothing seems to be happening.

• Open activity_main.xml
• Find any View that might be obstructing our Button from being clicked and modify/delete it
• Re-run the app

Step 2: A Wild Blue Button Appeared!

The blue button decided to celebrate Halloween early this year with a costume of the red button. It is telling us to check our layout file. Let's try to change the visibility of the blue button.

• Open activity_main.xml
• Change the visibility of the Button with id blue_button to gone
• Re-run the app

Step 3: That Is One Tiny Yellow Button

There is now a tiny yellow button shown. It's a bit small to be interacted with, so let's try to increase its size.

💡 PRO TIP: Press and hold the tiny button if you are feeling lucky today

• Open activity_main.xml
• Find the Button with id tiny_yellow_button
• Change its size to allow easier interactivity
• Re-run the app
• Press and hold the Button to trigger its longClickListener()

Step 4: The Red Button

Is this the real red button? Has our journey finally come to an end? Only one way to find out.

• Tap the red button

🎉 Congratulations, you've successfully completed the challenge! 🎉 You have shown that you are more than capable as an Engineer, and the company will be extending an offer. Now go change the world! 🚀