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When using Jetpack view binding, should I keep referring to ids through R.id.something, or use binding.something.id instead?

I want to retrieve the id of a Layout inside of one of my layout xmls, and it's possible to use both
R.id.* and the binding for this - details below.
Which is the preferred way?
Given the following structure:
app
|-- java.org.romco.appname
| |-- MainActivity.kt
|-- res.layout
| |-- main_activity.xml
| |-- main_content.xml
Let's say my main_activity.xml is a CoordinatorLayout and includes the main_content.xml with a defined id of "main_content", such as:
android:id="#+id/main_content"
layout="#layout/content_main" />
My content_main.xml then contains a FrameLayout with a defined if of "task_details_container", such as:
<FrameLayout
android:id="#+id/task_details_container" />
Following the official guides, the binding in MainActivity.kt would be created as:
class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
private lateinit var mainActivityBinding: ActivityMainBinding
override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
mainActivityBinding = ActivityMainBinding.inflate(layoutInflater)
setContentView(mainActivityBinding.root)
}
If I now want to refer to the FrameView inside of my content_main.xml, how do I go about it?
Should i use what I'd normally use, so R.id.task_details_container, or is it preferred to use the binding to retrieve the ID now that I have it available? If I try to log it in onCreate, the output is the same:
val id1 = R.id.task_details_container
val id2 = mainActivityBinding.mainContent.taskDetailsContainer.id
Log.d("MainActivity", "R id = $id1, binding id = $id2")
Log output:
D/MainActivity: R id = 2131231072, binding id = 2131231072
From what I've found so far:
here's a video where they introduce view binding, but they only mention it as a way to avoid using findViewById: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td3Kd7fOROw&t=1756s
This article walks us through using view binding, in both activities and fragments, but again, seemingly only as a way to avoid findViewById. https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/use-view-binding-to-replace-findviewbyid-c83942471fc
The official doc covers pretty much the same as the article: https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/view-binding
But none of these talk about whether using the bound id is better than using R.id..
My guess is that using R.id. is preferred, since not all elements have to be view-bound and therefore, for the sake of consistency, I can use R.id.* everywhere, where as I possibly can't use binding where the property is not accessible. But as I said, it's just a guess and I'd like to hear a wiser opinion on this.

You should always use View Binding. It is more efficient than findViewById. Every time you call findViewById(), the Android system traverses the entire view hierarchy at runtime to find the view. Whereas View Binding traverses the view hierarchy only once. For a large view hierarchy, using findViewById can noticeably slow down the app for the user.
If you are using view ids for anything other than calling findViewById(), is safe to use R.id.view_id instead binding.view.id. Both have the same performance characteristics

Android LayoutPosition is -1 causing OutOfBoundsException

I've created an app that has a list of cards within a RecyclerView that each have functionality of their own. I wanted to have each card choose the next color from an array defined in my colors.xml. In order to accomplish this, within my ViewHolder initialization, I set the background color of the card using cardContainer.setBackgroundColor(colors[this.layoutPosition % colors.size]. This would make it so that the colors would be cycled when more cards are created. However, I seem to be encountering the issue where my layout position is negative despite there being a set number of cards (25) created at the beginning.
While trying to search around and find the cause, I read here that if you call notifyDataSetChanged() the adapterPosition will become -1. While I am not using adapterPosition here, I thought that maybe it would be a similar issue, however, I am not adding any additional data at the time of the creation of the list items.
My ViewHolder code can be seen below. This is where the issue arises, but if any additional code is necessary feel free to ask.
class ViewHolder(itemView : View, private val listener: HabitClickListener) : RecyclerView.ViewHolder(itemView) {
val habitTitle: TextView = itemView.habitTitle
val streak: TextView = itemView.dayCounter
val cardContainer: LinearLayout = itemView.cardContainer
private val decreaseCounterButton : Button = itemView.decreaseCounterButton
private val increaseCounterButton : Button = itemView.increaseCounterButton
init {
chooseCardColor() // Choose the color for each card from the available colors
itemView.setOnClickListener {
listener.onCardClick(this.layoutPosition)
}
decreaseCounterButton.setOnClickListener {
listener.onDecrease(this.layoutPosition)
}
increaseCounterButton.setOnClickListener {
listener.onIncrease(this.layoutPosition)
}
}
private fun chooseCardColor() {
val colors = itemView.resources.getIntArray(R.array.cardColors)
cardContainer.setBackgroundColor(colors[this.layoutPosition % colors.size])
}
}

I will try to simplify this further, you should use the getAdapterPosition of ViewHolder
In recyclerview, storing the data and displaying the data are two separate things(Notice how you can use different managers(LinearLayoutManager, GridLayoutManager) to present the data in a different way.When some data changes in recyclerview, it notifies the ui to change what is shown in the screen. Even though it is really small, there is a delay between the change in the content of recyclerview and change in layout, that's why these two behave differently.
My information in this may be outdated but also don't just use the position variable as it can be inconsistent when another element is added/deleted to recyclerview due to how onBindViewHolder()(existing variables position wasn't updated when a new element is added/deleted) behaves. Instead use getAdapterPosition().
Edit: Quick fix if you don't want to deal with viewHolder gimmicks.
Add a new field to your custom object which decides what color it should be. Then make this calculation in your fragment/activity by looking at the index of your object in the list instead of doing the calculation in the viewHolder. Now you can set the color you want inside the viewHolderby looking at your object's new field. Of course you should be careful when adding/deleting a new object when you do this, but same holds true when you do it via viewHolder

How to customise Header Item of Row in android leanback library?

I am new in Android TV development.
I use android leanback library for this. Also I I use BrowseSupportFragment and RowsSupportFragmen.
Here I want to customise the HeaderItem shown in the picture.
Specially I want to change its font. I check lots of things but not getting proper solution for this.
Thank You.

If you use BrowseSupportFragment you can use method setHeaderPresenterSelector() and register own presenter for headers. It should inherard from RowHeaderPresenter
If you want to override all header at once then you can create file
res/values/layout/lb_row_header.xml and redefine layout for default header presenter.

Try this:
override fun onBindRowViewHolder(holder: RowPresenter.ViewHolder?, item: Any?) {
super.onBindRowViewHolder(holder, item)
val textView = holder?.headerViewHolder?.view?.findViewById<RowHeaderView>(R.id.row_header)
textView?.run {
setTextColor(Color.WHITE)
setTextSize(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_SP, 12.5f)
isAllCaps = true
setFontFamily(context, R.font.hind_bold)
}
}

Newbie question about Android Studio and button not syncing in main activity

Here is the tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=289&v=OGfZpfn-dGI
In my android studio it doesn't recognize the button iv'e name them
android:id="#+id/top_button"
android:text="top button"
android:text="button 2"
android: android:id="#+id/button_2"
top_button.setOnClicklistner {
println(top button was clicked)
Button_2.setOnClicklistner {
println(Button)

We're missing a lot of context here that would probably help us help you.
A few things first though:
- The android:id property in your XML layout is how you name the View in question. This is most often how you will reference the View in code.
- The android:text property is the user visible text on views like TextView.
- In order for top_button to refer to your desired View in your XML layout file, it needs to be bound in code. There's a couple of normal ways of doing it findViewById() and data-binding.
I'm going to assume, for now, that the last step is what you are missing (it seems the most likely culprit at this point)... Here's a few ways to bind it:
Method 1: when using an Activity class
If you're binding top_button to your View from an Activity class, this should work:
private lateinit var top_button // replace View here with your widget's type
fun onCreate(...) {
super.onCreate(...)
setContentView(R.layout.<i>your_layout_file_name_here</i>)
top_button = findViewById(R.id.top_button)
...
}
Method 2: when using a Fragment class
If you're binding top_button to your View from a Fragment class, it's more like this:
private lateinit var top_button: View // replace View here with your widget's type
fun onCreateView(...): View {
val rootView = layoutInflater.inflate(R.layout.<i>your_layout_file_name_here</i>)
top_button = rootView.findViewById(R.id.top_button)
...
return rootView
}
Method 3: when using data-binding
I prefer this method myself, but you should Google how to setup data-binding in Android as you'll need changes in your build.gradle and all.
First, change your XML layout to be:
<layout>
<!-- your existing layout XML here -->
</layout>
Then in your Activity/Fragment, let's say your XML layout file is named activity_my_cool_screen.xml, you can do:
val binding = ActivityMyCoolScreenBinding.inflate(getLayoutInflater())
binding.topButton.setOnClickListener(...)
Notice here that the ActivityMyCoolScreenBinding class is auto-generated for you. If it turns red at first, then first verify you've accurately setup data-binding in your project, then if that's good to go, make sure to import the ActivityMyCoolScreenBinding class. If you change your XML layout's filename, then the ActivityMyCoolScreenBinding class name will change to match automatically. But, I'd recommend if you do change the name, that you use Android Studio's refactoring/renaming tools as it'll search your codebase and update it everywhere. Otherwise, you have to do it by hand (doable, but potentially tedious and error prone).
Good luck!

Setting RecyclerViews itemAnimator to null does not remove animations

My outer RecyclerView crashes either with
IllegalArgumentException: Scrapped or attached views may not be recycled. isScrap:false isAttached:true...
or
IllegalStateException: The specified child already has a parent. You must call removeView() on the child's parent first.
Like the title suggests I have an RecyclerView in the list item layout of the first RecyclerView. This layout is used to display messages and the
inner RecyclerView to display attachments that come with the message. The inner RecyclerViews visibility is set to either GONE or VISIBLE depending whether the message has any attachments or not. The simplified outer list item layout looks like this
ConstraintLayout
TextView
TextView
TextView
RecyclerView
And the part of the adapter that handles the inner RecyclerView looks like this
private fun bindFiles(message: Message?) = with(itemView) {
if (message != null && message.attachments.isNotEmpty())
{
sent_message_attachments.setAsVisible()
sent_message_attachments.layoutManager = GridLayoutManager(this.context,Math.min(message.attachments.size,3))
sent_message_attachments.adapter = AttachmentAdapter(message.attachments)
sent_message_attachments.itemAnimator = null
sent_message_attachments.setHasFixedSize(true)
}
else{
sent_message_attachments.setAsGone()
sent_message_attachments.adapter = null
sent_message_attachments.layoutManager = null
}
}
The bug has something to do with the way I fetch the attachments in the inner adapter since once I disable the part that start the download process, everything is fine. There's no problem when loading images from the device, but once I start the download process, everything goes to hell. This is the part that handles images and kicks off the download process in the inner adapter. I have functions for videos and for other file types that are pretty much the same exact thing but use slightly different layout.
private fun bindImage(item: HFile?) = with(itemView) {
if (item != null)
{
if (item.isOnDevice && !item.path.isNullOrEmpty())
{
if (item.isGif)
{
attachment_image.displayGif(File(item.path))
}
else
{
attachment_image.displayImage(File(item.path))
}
}
else
{
//TODO: Add option to load images manually
FileHandler(item.id).downloadFileAsObservable(false)
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
.subscribe(
{ progress ->
//TODO: Show download process
},
{ error ->
error.printStackTrace()
//TODO: Enable manual retry
},
{ notifyItemChanged(adapterPosition)} //onComplete
)
}
}
}
I use the same structure as above in my DiscussionListAdapter to load discussion portraits (profile pictures etc.) and it does not have the same issue.
These are the extensions functions used to inflate the viewHolders and to display the images
fun ViewGroup.inflate(layoutRes: Int): View
{
return LayoutInflater.from(context).inflate(layoutRes, this, false)
}
fun ImageView.displayGif(file:File){
GlideApp.with(context).asGif().load(file).transforms(CenterCrop(), RoundedCorners(30)).into(this)
}
fun ImageView.displayImage(file:File){
GlideApp.with(context).load(file).transforms(CenterCrop(), RoundedCorners(30)).into(this)
}
I've been on this for the past couple of days and just can't get my head around it. Any help in any direction is greatly appreciated. I know my explanations can be a bit all over the place so just ask for clarification when needed :)
UPDATE
I have now been able to produce this with a GridLayout as well as with RecyclerView. It's safe to assume that the nested RecyclerViews were not the culprit here. I even tried to ditch the Rx-piece that handled loading the images and created an IntentService for the process, but the same crashes still occur.
With GridLayout I mean that instead of having another adapter to populate the nested RecyclerView I use only one adapter to populate the message and to inflate and populate views for the attachments as well and to attach those views to the nested GridLayout.
The crash happens when I start to download a file and then scroll the view, that is supposed to show the downloaded file, out of the screen. That view should get recycled but for some reason the download process (which in my test cases only takes around 100ms-400ms) causes the app to throw one of the two errors mentioned in the original question. It might be worth noting that I'm using Realm and the adapter takes in a RealmResults<Message> list as it's dataset. My presenter looks for changes in the list and then notifies the adapter when needed (changed due to the implementation of IntentService).
This is how I'm capable to reproduce this time and time again:
Open a discussion that has messages with attachments
Start to scroll upwards for more messages
Pass a message with an attachment and scroll it off screen while it's still loading
Crash
There is no crash if I stop and wait for the download to complete and everything works as intended. The image/video/file gets updated with a proper thumbnail and the app wont crash if I scroll that out of view.
UPDATE 2
I tried swapping the nested ViewGroup for a single ImageView just to see is the problem within the nestedness. Lo and behold! It still crashes. Now I'm really confused, since the DiscussionListAdapter I mentioned before has the same exact thing in it and that one works like a charm... My search continues. I hope someone, some day will benefit from my agony.
UPDATE 3
I started to log the parent of every ViewHolder in the onBindViewHolder() function. Like expected I got nulls after nulls after nulls, before the app crashed and spew this out.
04-26 21:54:50.718 27075-27075/com.hailer.hailer.dev D/MsgAdapter: Parent of ViewHolder: android.view.ViewOverlay$OverlayViewGroup{82a9fbc V.E...... .......D 0,0-1440,2168}
There's a method to my madness after all! But this just poses more questions. Why is ViewOverlay used here? As a part of RecyclerView or as a part of the dark magicians plans to deprive me of my sanity?
Sidenote
I went digging into RecyclerViews code to check if I could find a reason for the ViewOverlaymystery. I found out that RecyclerView calls the adapters onCreateViewHolder() function only twice. Both times providing itself as the parent argument for the function. So no luck there... What the hell can cause the item view to have the ViewOverlay as it's parent? The parent is an immutable value, so the only way for the ViewOverlay to be set as the parent, is for something to construct a new ViewHolder and supply the ViewOverlay as the parent object.
UPDATE 4
Sometimes I amaze myself with my own stupidity. The ViewOverlay is used because the items are being animated. I didn't even consider this to be an option since I've set the itemAnimator for the RecyclerView as null, but for some odd reason that does not work. The items are still being animated and that is causing this whole charade. So what could be the cause of this? (How I chose to ignore the moving items, I do not know, but the animations became very clear when I forced the app to download same picture over and over again and the whole list went haywire.)
My DiscussionInstanceFragment contains the RecyclerView in question and a nested ConstraintLayout that in turn contains an EditText for user input and a send button.
val v = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_discussion_instance, container, false)
val lm = LinearLayoutManager(context)
lm.reverseLayout = true
v.disc_instance_messages_list.layoutManager = lm
v.disc_instance_messages_list.itemAnimator = null
v.disc_instance_messages_list.adapter = mPresenter.messageAdapter
This is the piece that handles the initialization of the RecyclerView. I'm most definitely setting the itemAnimator as null, but the animations just wont stop! I've tried setting the animateLayoutChanges xml attribute on the root ConstraintLayout and on the RecyclerView but neither of them worked. It's worth mentioning that I also checked whether the RecyclerView had an itemAnimator in different states of the program, and every time I check the animator, it is null. So what is animating my RecyclerView?!

I have faced the same issue
Try this in your child RecyclerView it works for me
RecyclerView childRC = itemView.findViewById(R.id.cmol_childRC);
layoutManager = new LinearLayoutManager(context);
childRC.setItemAnimator(null);
childRC.setLayoutManager(layoutManager);
childRC.setNestedScrollingEnabled(false);
childRC.setHasFixedSize(true);
now set your Adapter like this
ArrayList<Model> childArryList = new ArrayList<>();
childArryList.addAll(arrayList.get(position).getArrayList());
ChildOrderAdapter adapter = new ChildOrderAdapter(context, childArryList);
holder.childRC.swapAdapter(adapter, true);
hope this helps

I finally figured out what was causing this. In my DiscussionInstanceView I have a small view that is animated into and out of view with ConstraintLayout keyframe animations. This view only shows the download progress of the chat history and is used only once, when the discussion is first opened. BUT since I had a call to hiding that view every time my dataset got updated, I was forcing the ConstraintLayout to fire of an animation sequence thus making everything animate during the dataset update. I just added a simple check whether I was downloading the history or not and this problem got fixed.