Set up the development environment

- [Voiceover] In order to complete this course and the associated exercises, you will need to set up your development environment. Here's the main things you'll need to do. First, get the latest version of Android Studio and install at least one Android SDK. Second, set up a Google Account if you don't already have one. We're going to need a Google Account in order to enable certain server side Firebase APIs later. And third, once you've installed Android Studio, you'll need to create one or more virtual devices in the Emulator.

You can use a physical device along with this course if you want to, but I'll be demonstrating the various Firebase features in the Emulator. Okay, first, you'll need to get the latest version of Android Studio. In this course, I'll be using Android Studio 2.1, but it's okay if you're using a later version. If you don't have Android Studio installed, you can download it from developer.android.com/tools, and that will direct you to the right download page for your platform. I'm using a Mac in this course, but Android Studio also works on both Windows and Linux.

If you don't already have Android Studio, download the installer and then run it for your OS. Then launch it once it's installed. In addition to Android Studio, you'll have to make sure that you've installed one or more Android SDKs to build Android apps. Click on the Tools menu, go down to Android, and then select the SDK Manager item. This brings up the Android Studio SDK Manager. For this course, I suggest installing at least the Android 6 and 5.1 SDKs.

In the SDK Tools tab, make sure you have Google Play services selected. We'll need this for the course. So select your SDKs and Play services, and then click OK. If you need more in-depth details on installing Android Studio and associated SDKs, take a look at Android App Development Essential Training here on Lynda.com. To be able to use the Firebase console, you'll need to have a Google Account. If you already have one, then you can just proceed to the next step. If you need to create one, go to accounts.google.com and click on Create Account, and follow the process to create one.

Then make sure you're logged in to that account. Once you're logged in, go to console.firebase.google.com. This will take you to the developer console for Firebase. It's here that we will set up the project on the server side and enable APIs for some of the exercises in this course. For now, you can leave this as you see it, and we'll come back to it later as we need to. Now let's set up our virtual devices. So switch back to Android Studio. You can use a real physical device if you happen to have one handy, but the exercise in this course can be completed just by using the Android Studio Emulator.

In Android Studio, you'll need to open the Android Virtual Device Manager. You can do that from under the Tools menu, under which you can go to the Android sub-menu and choose AVD Manager, or you can just click this icon right here in the Android Studio toolbar. Depending on which SDK versions you have installed, you will be able to create different kinds of virtual devices. To make a new one, click on Create Virtual Device. When I do this, Android Studio presents me with a dialogue that lists many common Android hardware profiles.

You can select one. I'll choose Nexus 6P, and then I'll click Next. Since I've installed the SDKs for both Android 6 Marshmallow and Android 5.1 Lollipop, I get those options listed here in the Recommended tab. Also notice that in the Target column, the OS is listed along with the words, "with Google APIs." If you don't see "with Google APIs," then you didn't install the Google Play services library in the SDK Manager, so go back and do that. Choose the x86_64 architecture for best performance, and then click Next.

Here, give your virtual device a name or just leave it as is. Click on Advanced Settings and make sure that Enable Keyboard is selected, so that we can use our computer's keyboard. Then just click Finish, and Android Studio creates the virtual device. You can create as many of these as you want. I'm gonna click Cancel because I've already done this, and you can see that I have made two here. Once you've completed this step, your development environment should be ready to go.