Retrofit Android Tutorial

In this tutorial, we are going to see Retrofit Android tutorial to get data from server.
In previous post, we have seen android JSON parsing tutorial which was very simple.
If you are not aware about Retrofit, it is android http library used to handle HTTP request.You can treat it as a replacement of AsyncTask in previous tutorial.

Why to use Retrofit rather than Volley or AsyncTask.

It is better than Volley and AsyncTask. It takes care of HTTP call, JSON parsing, efficient network management. Retrofit has all the features which you need to call web services. You will directly get Response which you can use to populate data.

Example :

I have already implemented restful webservices json example. I am going to use same json response for rendering it in custom listview.
You can use below link.
https://cdn.rawgit.com/arpitmandliya/AndroidRestJSONExample/master/countries.json
You will get below Json response from above URL:

We are getting above JSONArray from rest web service. If you are not familiar with JSON, you can go through Json tutorial. We are going to render above JSON response to android custom listview as below:

Lets code this example now:

Source code:

Step 1 :Creating Project

Create an android application project named “RetrofitAndroidExample”.

Step 2 : Add Retrofit and json gradle dependency

For using Retrofit library, we need to add Retrofit and volley dependency. Your build.gradle (Module : app )will look as below

Step 3 : Creating Layout

Change res ->layout -> activity_main.xml as below:

We have one button and listview. When you click the button, we are going to populate data in listview by calling restful web services and render it on the listview.

Step 4: Creating layout for Row

As We have declared ListView widget in activity_main.xml. Now we need to provide layout for individual row.
  • Go to res -> layout
  • right click on layout
  • Click on New -> File.
  • Create a file named “row_item.xml” and paste below code in row_item.xml.

Step 5 : Creating model object Country :

If you notice, we are getting Json array from restful web service which has 4 items. Each item have two attributes id and countryName. We are going to create country object for each item.

Step 6:  Creating BaseAdapter for ListView

Before creating MainActivity, we need to create CustomCountryList class for custom ListView row.
This class is used to populating data for ListVIew. getView method is get called for drawing each row.

Step 7 : Creating interface for making HTTP call using Retrofit.

We need to create an interface for making HTTP calls.
We have defined get request in above interface. We do not have to include base url, it is part after base url which we have use. We are going to get List of countries as response here.

Step 8 : Creating MainActivity

Steps for Retrofit call :

  • Create retrofit instance using base url. Retrofit will implicitly use gson to convert JSON to corresponding object. You need to define gson library explicitly in Retrofit 2.0
  • Create api with retrofit’s create method and call getCountries method.
  • Enqueue the request and onResponse will get called if your call is successful else onFailure will get called.

Change src/main/packageName/MainActivity.java as below:

Step 8: Add internet permission in AndroidManifest.xml

Copy following code:

Put it in AndroidManifest.xml

Done, we have added internet permission to AndroidManifest.xml. Your application must be able to access internet now.

Step 9 : Running the app

When you run the app, you will get below screen:

When you click on above button, you will get below screen.

We are done with Android Retrofit tutorial. If you are facing any issue, please comment.

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