Extra Content

Now that you have created the majority of a functioning chat app, here are some next steps and ideas that you can use a launching points for new and larger projects.

Improvements to this app

• Add a way to check for new chats every X minutes.
  • Maybe you could use this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6242268/repeat-a-task-with-a-time-delay
• Add a way for the user to provide a name and room.
  • You could add more EditTexts
  • You could have a form of Login activity
    • Google has a tutorial on launching new activities here: https://developer.android.com/training/basics/firstapp/starting-activity.html
• Make the message's author display in the list
  • Edit the adapter and item view layout to add a profile picture or Author TextView.
• Make clicking a message open up that message's details in a new Activity
  • Google has a tutorial on launching new activities here: https://developer.android.com/training/basics/firstapp/starting-activity.html
  • Here is a tutorial for doing something when an individual item in a RecyclerView is clicked: http://antonioleiva.com/recyclerview-listener/

Applying what you have learned

Using what you have learned from this tutorial you should now be able to pull data from an API and have it display in your app.

You should also be able to take user input and do things with it.

That functionality is the core of most Android applications and should get you started on many of your ideas.

Now that you have completed this tutorial, Google has a useful getting started guide that you can use to learn more:

https://developer.android.com/training/index.html

I also recommend Vogella, which provides many useful Android tutorials.

http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/android.html

Sigapp also has some old tutorials againable here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0ByBsXZAwFI0qSzY4NGFWeUZqeEU

Good luck! Happy hacking!