AWS SDK for Android

For existing customers planning to migrate to the new Amplify Android v2, we recommend reviewing our migration guide.

For new projects, we recommend using the latest v2 version of AWS Amplify Library for Android to quickly implement common app use cases like Authentication, Storage, Push Notifications and more.

Note: v2 of Amplify Library for Android (currently GA) is built on top of the AWS SDK for Kotlin. You can access this underlying SDK via the Escape Hatch from AWS Amplify.

You can also use AWS Amplify with your existing AWS cloud resources. If you are unable to find features you are looking for in Amplify, please open an issue in the Amplify Library for Android GitHub repo and we will be happy to consider you request.

If you still wish to use the AWS SDK for Android directly, you can refer to the AWS SDK Documentation here and follow the installation instructions below.

The AWS SDK for Android is a collection of low-level libraries for direct interaction with AWS backend services. For use cases not covered by the Amplify Framework, you may directly integrate these clients into your Android app.

Installation

The AWS SDK for Android can be directly embedded via .aar files, or you can download it from the Maven Central repository, by integrating it into your Android project's Gradle files.

From Maven

We recommend obtaining the dependency from Maven. To do so, add a dependency to your app's (module-level) build.gradle, in the dependencies section:

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.amazonaws:aws-android-sdk-SERVICE:2.x.y'
}

Above, SERVICE might be s3, ddb, pinpoint, etc. A full list is provided below.

Available Modules

• apigateway-core
• auth-core
• auth-facebook
• auth-google
• auth-ui
• auth-userpools
• chimesdkidentity
• chimesdkmessaging
• cloudwatch
• cognitoauth
• cognitoidentityprovider
• cognitoidentityprovider-asf
• comprehend
• connect
• connectparticipant
• core
• ddb
• ddb-document
• ddb-mapper
• ec2
• iot
• kinesis
• kinesisvideo
• kinesisvideo-archivedmedia
• kinesisvideo-signaling
• kms
• lambda
• lex
• location
• logs
• machinelearning
• mobile-client
• pinpoint
• polly
• rekognition
• s3
• sagemaker-runtime
• sdb
• ses
• sns
• sqs
• testutils
• textract
• transcribe
• translate

SDK Fundamentals

There are a few fundamentals that are helpful to know when developing against the AWS SDK for Android.

• Never embed credentials in an Android application. It is trivially easy to decompile applications and steal embedded credentials. Always use temporarily vended credentials from services such as Amazon Cognito Identity.
• Unless explicitly stated, calls are synchronous and must be taken off of the main thread.
• Unless explicitly stated, calls can always throw an AmazonServiceException or an AmazonClientException (depending on if the exception is generated by the service or the client respectively).
• The SDK will handle re-trying requests automatically, but unless explicitly stated will throw an exception if it cannot contact AWS.
• We are always looking to help, please feel free to open an issue.

Versioning

The Android SDK is versioned like 2.x.y. 2 is a product identifier that never changes. x is bumped when there are breaking changes. y is bumped for not-breaking bugfixes, or for the introduction of new features/capabilities.

Building the SDK

Pre-requisites

The AWS Core Runtime (aws-android-sdk-core) module builds against Android API Level 23. Please download and install Android API Level 23 through SDK Manager in Android Studio, before building the SDK.

Set the ANDROID_HOME environment variable, to the root directory of your Android SDK installation.

For example, on a Mac OS X where Android Studio has been installed, the SDK comes bundled with it.

export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Library/Android/sdk"

Build

./gradlew build

Consuming Development Versions

Once you've built the SDK, you can manually install the SDK by publishing its artifacts to your local Maven repository.

The local Maven repository is usually found in your home directory at ~/.m2/repository.

To publish the outputs of the build, execute the following command from the root of the amplify-android project:

./gradlew publishToMavenLocal

After this, you can use the published development artifacts from an app. To do so, specify mavenLocal() inside the app's top-level build.gradle(Project) file:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenLocal() // this should ideally appear before other repositories
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.1'
    }
}

allprojects {
    repositories {
        mavenLocal() // this should ideally appear before other repositories
    }
}

Then, find the VERSION_NAME of the library inside gradle.properties file.

Use the above version to specify dependencies in your app's build.gradle (:app) file:

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.amazonaws:aws-android-sdk-SERVICE:VERSION_NAME'
}

Talk to Us

Come chat with us on our Discord Channel.

Report bugs to our GitHub Issues page.

Author

Amazon Web Services

License

See the LICENSE.txt for more info.