Mobile App Architecture: Principles, Evolution, and Implementation Practices

Preface

The author defines architecture as a consensus reached between product and technology, shares personal learning experiences, and sets three goals: summarise architecture learning, discuss mobile app architecture, and promote architectural awareness among developers.

1. Emergence

Initially viewing architects as mysterious, the author realised that mere refactoring is insufficient; true architecture requires planning and design to guide development.

2. Initial Understanding of Architecture

2.1 Reading "The Beauty of Architecture" – Theory of Architecture

The book highlights architecture as a trade‑off, focusing on quality vs. cost, satisfying requirements, separating concerns, providing a comfortable design for all stakeholders, avoiding over‑design, and influencing system health.

2.2 Industry App Architecture Evolution

Examples from Ele.me, Ctrip, Nuomi, Suning illustrate why architectures evolve (expanding requirements, team growth, new technologies, higher quality) and how they evolve (module decoupling, shared components, hybrid frameworks, React‑Native, hot‑patch, SDKisation, performance monitoring, etc.), bringing benefits such as modularity, clearer organization, better performance, and higher quality.

2.3 Google Search Keywords: Architecture Design

References to Keegan Lee’s blog series provide a knowledge overview and personal summary, dividing architecture into planning, design, and construction phases.

3. Definition of Architecture

Architecture is described from two perspectives: the compositional view (components + interactions) and the decision view (a set of important decisions). For mobile apps, the author defines architecture as a consensus between product and technology.

4. Product

Product design must be understood by architects, including user groups, core ideas, iteration planning, development resources (team, data, budget), third‑party resources, quality aspects (user experience, performance, security), risk mitigation, and delivery strategies.

5. Technology

Focuses on Android development, covering platform choices, tools (Android Studio, Gradle, Git, CI), languages (Java, Kotlin), development patterns (MVC, MVP, MVVM, Clean), and popular open‑source libraries (OkHttp, Retrofit, Dagger, Glide, GreenDao, RxJava, Bugly, LeakCanary, etc.).

5.1 Business Splitting

Business is divided into common basic services, generic technical services, and specific feature services, each with its own modularisation strategy.

5.2 Architecture Design (Separation of Concerns & Abstraction)

Emphasises separating concerns, abstracting interfaces, and applying various design mindsets (procedural, object‑oriented, aspect‑oriented, service‑oriented) along with principles such as high cohesion, low coupling, and appropriate design scope.

5.3 Design Solutions

Guiding model, model decomposition, horizontal modularisation, vertical layering (presentation, business, data), interface communication, and unified management are presented with illustrative diagrams.

5.4 Development Implementation

Discusses project packaging strategies, abstract interfaces, data storage options (SQLite, SharedPreferences, files), performance management, special handling (conflicts, extreme operations, network issues, null checks), logging conventions, refactoring, and compatibility adaptation.

5.5 Software Testing

Highlights the importance of testing, advocating automated unit tests to improve stability and quality.

5.6 Development Standards

Stresses consistent design, clear code, and effective documentation.

5.7 Daily Work

Mentions routine tasks such as bug fixing, monkey testing, performance optimisation, and code quality improvement.

6. Development Drivers

Describes Test‑Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior‑Driven Development (BDD) as driving forces, with agile practices emphasizing continuous communication, iterative design, and consensus building among all roles.

7. Summary

The author reflects that architecture combines decision‑making and component composition, acknowledges remaining gaps in understanding, and hopes to deepen insights in future work.

References

Lists articles, blogs, and books such as "The Beauty of Architecture", "Software Architecture Design", and various case studies of app architecture evolution.

Conclusion

Architecture principles can be applied beyond software to personal life, encouraging separation of concerns and clear goal setting.

+ app
    +main
        +com.jfg
            +common //常用基础业务
                +util
                +wedget
                +base
            +function //通用技术业务
                +camera
                +sensor
            +module //特定功能业务
                +moduleA
                    +model
                    +presenter
                    +view
                +moduleB
                    +model
                    +presenter
                    +view
                +moduleC
            +demo //主程序
                +app
                +activity