01_introduction.md

Introduction

Overview

In this tutorial, you will create a simple Android application using AWS Amplify, a set of tools and serverless services in the cloud. In the first module, you’ll build a simple Android application. Through the remaining modules, you will initialize a local app using the Amplify Command Line Interface (Amplify CLI), add user authentication, add a GraphQL API and a database to store your data, and update your app to store images.

What you Will Learn

This tutorial will walk you through the steps to create a simple Android application discussed above. You will learn to:

• Manage serverless cloud backend from the command line

• Add auth to your app to enable sign-in and sign-out

• Add a GraphQL API, database, and storage solution

• Share your backend between multiple projects

Modules

This tutorial is divided into five short modules. You must complete each module in order, before moving on to the next one.

• Create an Android App (10 minutes): Create an Android app and test it in the Android simulator.

• Initialize a Local App (10 minutes): Initialize a local app using AWS Amplify.

• Add Authentication (10 minutes): Add auth to your application.

• Add a GraphQL API and Database (20 minutes): Create a GraphQL API.

• Add the Ability to Store Images (10 minutes): Add storage to your app.

You will be building this Android application using the Terminal and Google's Android Studio IDE.

Side Bar

Info	Level
✅ AWS Level	Beginner
✅ Android Level	Beginner
✅ Swift Level	Beginner
⏱ Time to complete	1h
💰 Cost to complete	Free tier eligible

Tutorial pre-requisites

This tutorial has been developed and tested on macOS but should work also on Windows and Linux.

To follow this tutorial, you need the following tools and resources:

• Android Studio 4.x or more recent.
• an AWS Account with at least these permissions (an Administrator role or root account will also work, but we recommend a least-privileges approach).
• NodeJS 10.x or more recent.
• AWS Command Line Interface AWS CLI 2.0.x or more recent.

On Linux and Mac, you can install these tools following these instructions:

# file available at https://github.com/sebsto/amplify-android-getting-started/blob/main/install_prerequisites.sh 

# install brew itself
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

# install python3 and pip3
brew install python3

# install the AWS CLI
brew install awscli

# install Node.js & npm
brew install node

#
# Verification (Actual version might be more recent)
#

brew --version
# Homebrew 2.5.1
# Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 405765; last commit 2020-09-18)

python3 --version
# Python 3.8.5

aws --version
# aws-cli/2.0.54 Python/3.8.5 Darwin/19.6.0 source/x86_64

node --version
# v14.11.0

Next : Create an Android App.