​Tantalum by ​Paul Houghton (and team!) is a very lightweight and elegant back end utility library for mobile Java. It includes (at time of writing): Clean utility model threading, Simplified XML and JSON parsing into value objects, HTTP GET with automatic retry, RAM and RMS caching to enable online-offline apps which start and run really quickly, and Logging convenience classes.

The library was originally written by Paul (a Nokia Certified Trainer) to show students the proper way to address these use cases with minimal code. The library has now evolved through its second major revision (having been in consistent development since the end of 2010) and is used in a number of commercial apps.

We really like this project because these are tools many developers will need time and time again. Weighing in at only 30Kb, with an elegant API, example code, a permissive open source license, a lot of project members, and the fact that its been used “in anger” on commercial apps, makes choosing to use the library an easy decision.

The project has a number of milestones and tickets open, so there are a few small features that community members can work on already. We’d love to see more enhancements in the queue and for these to be assigned milestones so we can get a better idea of the great features coming. We’d also love to see some more user documentation in the wiki, although this is not vital given the good quality of the example code.

We recommend you check this library out. The project team are interested to hear your feedback, proposals, and sutiable contributions.