Building the UI for Your Messaging App

In this first chapter, we’re going to start building a messaging app called WhatsPackt (referring to a popular messaging app that you probably already know about). At this point in the project, we must make some important technical decisions and create the structure needed to build it. This is what we will be focusing on, as well as working on the app’s user interface.

By the end of this chapter, you will have hands-on experience creating a messaging app from scratch, organizing and defining the app modules, deciding which dependency injection framework you will use, using Jetpack Navigation to navigate between the app features, and using Jetpack Compose to build the main parts of the user interface.

This chapter is organized into the following topics:

• Defining the app structure and navigation
• Building the main screen
• Building the chats list
• Building the messages list