Tools every Android developer must know by heart Series

Daniel Nzuma
2 min readAug 19, 2024

#1 Retrofit

Photo by Rubaitul Azad on Unsplash
  1. Retrofithttps://square.github.io/retrofit/

Developed by square Retrofit is a type-safe HTTP client for Android and Java.
It allows developers to develop API requests in a simplified way.

Through annotations a developer can describe there HTTP requests:

  • URL parameter replacement and query parameter support
  • Object conversion to request body (e.g., JSON, protocol buffers)
  • Multipart request body and file upload

Components

  1. Request method

Every method must have an HTTP annotation that provides the request method and relative URL. There are eight built-in annotations: HTTP, GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, OPTIONS and HEAD.

@GET("users/list")

@POST("users/updateProfile")

2. URL manipulation

A request URL can be updated dynamically using replacement blocks and parameters on the method. A replacement block is an alphanumeric string surrounded by { and }. A corresponding parameter must be annotated with @Path using the same string.

@GET("group/{id}/profile")
Call<List<User>> groupList(@Path("id") int groupId)…

--

--

Daniel Nzuma

Android developer | iOS developer | LeetCode | DSA | Sharing the insights I've acquired throughout my journey as a developer. These views are my own.