Android Studio code depending on SDK

Question

I am developing an Android application with Android Studio which will use industrial devices with barcode scanners. Some of them (different models from different companies) use a special SDK (I have to compile with a special SDK, not just API 23 for example).

My problem is that when I switch to an other device and I have to compile with an other SDK (or just API 23 for example), I have some code that doesn't work anymore : the imports don't exist so the objects and methods I use for a specific device neither.

My code looks like this :

if(Build.MANUFACTURER.equals(COMPANY_NAME)){
    // do some stuff that won't compile with an other sdk
}else if (Build.MANUFACTURER.equals(COMPANY_NAME)){
    // do some other stuff that compile with a specific sdk too...
}else if (...){
    ...
}

I don't want to remove the code or put it in commentaries since it will be executed only on specific devices (and I don't want to come back uncomment some code each time I want to compile for a specific SDK).

How can I do to keep my code (and not necessarly put it in commentaries) without showing errors for others SDK?

What I have found so far :

• compileSdkVersion seems to not be able to be set in product flavors

• we can put the compileSdkVersion depending on a condition like this :

  if (condition) {

   compileSdkVersion 23
  

  } else {

  compileSdkVersion 'Datalogic:Datalogic SDK v1:23'
  

  }

But the condition can't be from product flavors since it's executed after that. A "solution" is to put the condition in gradle.properties as mentionned here but it has to be changed every time I compile manually and doesn't solve my problem hanving some code that don't compile on a specific SDK version.

Answer 1

You should use different flavors if you have code which is depending on a special device.

productFlavors {
    normal {
        resValue "string", "someApiKey", "1111"
    }

    samsung {
        applicationId 'com.example.special' // change the package name

        resValue "string", "someApiKey", "2222"
    }
    instantTest {
        minSdkVersion 21
    }
}

Then you can store your special code in src/samsung/java instead of src/main/java. The someApiKey above can be accessed by using BuildConfig.someApiKey.

Your dependencies will get a special prefix so instead of

compile 'something:general:0.0'

use

samsungCompile 'something:forSamsung:0.0'

Regarding API-levels you should use always the latest version as target and check with a runtime check if the method is available and add some fallback in that case:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP) {
    // ...
}

Regarding the issue with different sets of build dependencies you could try this:

buildscript {
  dependencies {
    if(!this.properties['target'].equals('datalogic')) {
      compile '...'
    } else {
      // ...
    }
  }
}

You can specify that "target" via -Ptarget=datalogic, e.g. try this command: ./gradlew -Ptarget=datalogic assambleRelease.