Getting started with the Android SDK

This section gives an introduction to the core features of the Flowplayer Android SDK and lists all the requirements for adding the SDK in an Android Project. This guide assumes that you have basic understanding of Android development and that you are familiar with Android Studio and Gradle.

Introduction

The Flowplayer Android SDK is a native media player, written entirely in Kotlin and provides an easy-to-use API which enables developers to create beautiful Android applications which play audio and video both locally and over the Internet. The Flowplayer Android SDK uses ExoPlayer in its core and therefore takes advantage of all its powerful and well-tested features. The SDK supports adaptive streaming technologies such as DASH, HLS, and SmoothStreaming, as well as the most popular single container formats, such as MP4, MP3, WebM, and several more.

Our demo application is available open source on Github and it will help you to better understand how to include the Flowplayer Android SDK in your Android project.

Supported features

Some of the most important features of the Flowplayer Android SDK include but are not limited to:

DASH, HLS, SmoothStreaming, MP4, WebM, MP3 video formats.
Chromecast
Fullscreen playback and configurable device orientation management.
Callbacks for monitoring a wide range of player events.
IMA3 based VAST and VMAP ads.
DRM-protected media playback.
Customizable user interface.
Analytics for Flowplayer platform videos (Flowplayer-hosted and registered remote assets) with the Analytics plugin

Prerequisites

In order to be able to compile and run your application using the Flowplayer Android SDK, the following few requirements need to be met.

Minimum Android SDK

The minimum required Android SDK version is 19. Set the minSdkVersion in your app level module as follows:

android {
    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 19
     }
}

AndroidX

If your project does not use any older version of the Support Library, then simply enable AndroidX by setting the following attributes inside your gradle.properties file.

android.useAndroidX=true
android.enableJetifier=true

If, however, your project already uses an older version of the Support Library, then you will have to migrate to AndroidX. This can be easily achieved using Android Studio and by simply following these AndroidX migration instructions.

Java 8

The Flowplayer Android SDK is written using Java 8 features. In order to make your project compatible with Java 8, you need to configure the targetCompatibility in your app level build.gradle file as follows:

android {
    compileOptions {
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
     }
}

Add the SDK to your project

Once you have met all the prerequisites, you are ready to add the Flowplayer Android SDK to your project and start developing.

Download dependencies

First, add Flowplayer's repository in your project by setting a new maven repository in your project level build.gradle as follows:

allprojects {
    repositories {
        maven {
            url 'https://dl.bintray.com/flowplayer/maven/'
        }
    }
}

Finally, add the SDK as a dependency in your app level build.gradle and replace "x.x.x" with the latest version as noted below:

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.flowplayer.android.player:flowplayer-core:x.x.x'
}

Mandatory configuration

In your application's AndroidManifest.xml there are two things that need to be configured.

Configure Player Token

In order to use the SDK you need to configure a player token. It's done by addding it to AndroidManifest.xml with a <meta-data> tag:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
          package="com.flowplayer.player.demo">

    <application>
        <!-- other configuration -->
        <meta-data
                android:name="com.flowplayer.accessToken"
                android:value="eyJraWQ...XOFctHrQ" />
    </application>
</manifest>

Flowplayer tokens can be created and revoked from the Flowplayer Dashboard

Obtain token

Prevent orientation changes destroying the activity

In every <activity> that will contain the player, add android:configChanges="keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|screenSize" in order to prevent the Activity from being destroyed on orientation changes.

<application>
    <!-- Other configuration -->
    <activity
        android:name="com.my.package.MyAwesomePlayerActivity"
        android:configChanges="keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|screenSize" />
</application>

That's it - now we are ready to initialize the player.