Creating Mobile Apps with Python Using Kivy: Tutorial #1

Welcome to our Kivy tutorial series! In this first tutorial, we will show you how to create mobile apps with Python using the Kivy framework. Kivy is an open-source Python library for rapid development of multi-touch applications, which can run on Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

To get started with Kivy, you will need to have Python installed on your computer. If you don’t already have Python installed, you can download it from the official website: https://www.python.org/. Once you have Python installed, you can install Kivy using pip, which is the Python package installer. Open up your terminal or command prompt and type the following command:

pip install kivy

This will install the Kivy library on your computer. Once Kivy is installed, you can start creating your first mobile app. To create a new Kivy project, you can use the Kivy project template. Open up your terminal or command prompt and type the following command:

python -m kivy kivy example

This will create a new folder called "example" with all the necessary files for a Kivy project. You can then navigate to the "example" folder and open it in your favorite code editor.

Inside the "example" folder, you will find several files, including a main.py file, which is the main Python script for your app, and a example.kv file, which is the Kivy language file for defining the user interface of your app.

Let’s start by editing the main.py file. In this file, we will define the main functionality of our app. You can start by defining a simple Kivy app class that inherits from the App class. Here is an example of a simple Kivy app class:

from kivy.app import App
from kivy.uix.label import Label

class MyApp(App):
    def build(self):
        return Label(text='Hello, World!')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    MyApp().run()

In this code, we have defined a simple Kivy app class called MyApp, which inherits from the App class. We have also defined a build method that returns a Label widget with the text "Hello, World!".

Next, let’s edit the example.kv file. In this file, we will define the user interface of our app using the Kivy language. Here is an example of a simple Kivy language file for our app:

<MyApp>:
    Label:
        text: 'Hello, World!'

In this code, we have defined a MyApp rule that creates a Label widget with the text "Hello, World!". This rule will be applied to our main app class defined in the main.py file.

To run your app, navigate to the "example" folder in your terminal or command prompt and type the following command:

python main.py

This will launch your app, and you should see a window with the text "Hello, World!" displayed. Congratulations, you have created your first mobile app with Python using the Kivy framework!

In this tutorial, we have covered the basics of creating mobile apps with Python using the Kivy framework. In the next tutorial, we will dive deeper into the features of Kivy and show you how to create more complex mobile apps. Stay tuned for more Kivy tutorials!