ActiveAndroid is lightweight ORM library for Android, which we use in few of our projects. I'll demonstrate how to setup the library, and conclude with few examples of its usage.

1. ActiveAndroid
Željko Plesac

2. Content
• Introduction!
• Setup!
• Usage!
• Pros & cons!
• Conclusion

3. 1.Introduction
• ActiveAndroid is an active record style ORM !
• allows you to save and retrieve SQLite database
records without ever writing a single SQL
statement. Each database record is wrapped neatly
into a class with methods like save() and delete().!
• developed by Michael Pardo

4. 2. Setup - JAR file(1)
• Obtain JAR file by cloning the source or
downloading it, you can build the jar file by running
ant in the root folder. Your ActiveAndroid.jar, which
is what we need, will be in the dist folder. Add
this .jar file to your project’s build path

5. 2. Setup - Maven (2)
• clone the source from Git and install the package to
your local repository!
• After the project builds successfully, add the
following dependency to your pom.xml

6. 2.3. Configuration(1)
• 2 - step configuration process:!
• add AA_DB_NAME and AA_DB_VERSION to
AndroidManifest.xml!

7. 2.4 Configuration(2)
• If you are using a custom Application class, extend
com.activeandroid.app.Application instead of
android.app.Application!
• If you are already using this to utilize another library,
initialise and dispose ActiveAndroid in Application class

8. 3. Usage - data models (1)
• Why is primary key not defined?

9. 3. Usage - data models (2)
• ActiveAndroid assigns automatically primary key to
every database object!
• All primary keys are of type Long, and their name is
“Id”

10. 3. Usage - data models(3)
• Relationships - one to one
• Relationships - one to many

11. Usage - data models(4)
• Database tables are created when you firstly save your
database model(based on current class structure) !
• Once the database schema has been created, it can’t be
automatically changed(but new models can be added)!
• Whenever your database schema changes, you must:!
• increment the database version number, either through
Configuration or AA_DB_VERSION meta-data.!
• provide a script <NewVersion>.sql in /assets/migrations.

12. Usage - data models(5)
• Example of <NewVersion>.sql script

13. 3. Usage - CRUD operations(1)
• Create
• Delete

14. 3. Usage - CRUD operations(2)
• Select
• Update - make changes and call save() method

15. Usage - CRUD operations(3)
• Transactions - speed up execution by a factor of around 100

16. 3. Usage - other supported actions
• crossJoin()!
• innerJoin()!
• join()!
• leftJoin()!
• outerJoin()!
• limit()!
• groupBy()!
• orderBy()!
• having()!
• toSql()!
• offset()

17. 4. Pros & Cons (1)
• Pros!
• quick and easy setup!
• easy maintenance!
• separation between data models and DAO objects!
• can be used in combination with GSON!
• custom type casters!
• pre populated databases

18. 4. Pros & Cons (2)

19. 4. Pros & Cons (3)
• Cons!
• not suitable for big data - even wrapped in transactions,
CRUD actions can take a lot of time!
• it doesn’t provide real administration privileges!
• problems with Proguard!
• it doesn’t support lambda expressions!
• it only supports code-first approach

20. 5. Conclusion
• Highly recommended in combination with GSON!
• It doesn’t provide so much tools and options like
competition (ORMLite and Springles)!
• Easy and simple to use

21. www.activeandroid.com
https://github.com/pardom/ActiveAndroid