Fragment replace makes root layout visible. How to fix? - android

I am experiencing the following issue:
I have a single activity and a fragment container inside this activity layout. After user presses a button from the single activity root layout I call:
supportFragmentManager.beginTransaction()
.setCustomAnimations(R.anim.custom_fade_in, R.anim.custom_fade_out)
.replace(R.id.single_activity_container, firstFragment, FIRST_FRAGMENT)
.commitNow()
It works well. However, if I need to add another fragment on top of existing I use same code block. The issue is that previous fragment gets removed and user can see root view for a split second. This is really a bad UX and I found no way to solve it. I need smooth transition, without revealing root layout again.
I specificcally need to use replace in order to trigger Fragments onPause and onResume, because calling add(), does not trigger lifecycle events.
How should I structure my presentation logic to fix this UX issue?

Related

Does adding fragments with tags cause them to not be destroyed when their parent is destroyed?

I have an android application that uses one activity and a number of fragments to build a ui dynamically
The base activity has a simple LinearLayout in it that has nothing (BaseActivity)
I add a fragment to it that only contains a drawer layout with an actionbar a framelayout and a navigation bar (BaseFragment)
To that I add one of two fragments, one shows all children as lists (SerialFragment) , the other in a wizard style (WizardFragment)
Each of those can add one (in case of a wizard) or many (in case of a list) fragments (QuestionFragment)
When I navigate away from BaseActivity then the BaseFragment's onDestroy() gets called, but not the onDestroy() of any of the child fragments
I add the child fragments like so
FragmentTransaction trans = parent.getFragmentManager().beginTransaction();
set_default_animation(trans); //this just adds a custom animation
trans.replace(R.id.wizard_content, QuestionFragment.NewInstance(),question_id.toString()); //in case of a wizard
trans.add(R.id.list_content,QuestionFragment.NewInstance(), question_id.toString());//in case of a list
trans.commit();
The only difference between the BaseFragment (which gets destroyed) and the others, is that in the others I add a tag to them (section_id or question_id) so that I can retrieve them using findFragmentByTag.
Yet when the user navigates away from the activity only BaseFragment's onDestroy() is called.
Is the reason for this the fact that , that fragment is the only one I haven't added using a tag?
Note that I am not using a support fragment manager, the normal one, so I use tags to locate the fragments I want , since the non-support fragment manager does not contain getFragments().
Also note that I have not set the retain instance flag to true on any of the above mentioned fragments
I could test the above by removing tags and adding references to the fragments on the parents, but that means a LOT of refactoring which I would like to avoid if that is not the problem.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide
After refactoring everything, it seems that the tags weren't the problem (though I still removed them)
What fixed it for me, is using getChildFragmentManager() instead of getFragmentManager() to update the gui
That way when the base view gets destroyed its children are removed aswell
Hope it helps someone

Show nested fragment on screen rotation without showing parent fragment

When rotating the screen my nested fragment is shown but for some brief moments, the parent fragment is also shown.
I have my MainActivity that has a FrameLayout with ID activity_base_container.
I'm doing this when my activity starts:
Fragment initialFragment = getInitialFragment();
mFragmentManager.beginTransaction()
.add(R.id.activity_base_container, initialFragment, initialFragment.getClass().getSimpleName())
.commit();
That initialFragment initial fragment is responsible to check some conditions and depending them will launch one of two possible fragments:
fragmentManager.beginTransaction().replace(R.id.activity_base_container, fragment, fragment.getClass().getSimpleName()).commit();
Lets assume it launches FragmentF (whit a root FrameLayout with id fragment_f_root). This fragments layout has a set of options. When the user clicks one of those options, the corresponding fragment is created and is launched like this:
//The example here is an option that displays a google map.
fragment = FragmentMapMultipleActivity.newInstance();
fragmentManager.beginTransaction()
.replace(R.id.fragment_f_root, fragment)
.addToBackStack(fragment.getClass().getSimpleName())
.commit();
At this point all is working as expected. The problem is when I rotate the screen. FragmentF appears briefly and then immediately FragmentMapMultipleActivity, the nested fragment, appears.
Is it possible after rotating the screen show only the nested fragment or I should change my "architecture" to something else?
should change my "architecture" to something else?
Probably, you should.
The brightest Android-minds from Square are even advocating to avoid simple fragments everywhere it's possible: Advocating Against Android Fragments
Nested fragemnts, in its turn, increase complexity exponentially. The only good pattern of using them I've seen so far is ViewPager with it's FragmentPagerAdapter. In majority of other cases, consider using Custom Views instead.
It keeps your app's lifecycle cleaner and more predictable.
I don't think you can do much with this blinking you see, apart from:
setRetainInstance(true) and avoid full re-creation of the Fragment in Activity, so you keep you fragment's data during change of the configuration (and then pass same retained fragment to the fragment manager)
keeping layouts as lightweight as possible
avoid re-creation of already initialized variables
keep onViewCreate() as lightweight as possible
Good luck!

Re-inflate different layout View in same Fragment in onResume

I have a Fragment, MainFragment, which can contain two, three, or four nested fragments. The specific fragments that will be shown can be changed by the user in the settings.
There is a different layout for each number of fragments. For instance, layout_3 is used when the user chooses three nested fragments.
What I need to do is dynamically update MainFragment's layout, and which fragments will be nested within that layout, in onResume() (i.e. Once the user comes back from the settings). There are about 10 fragments the user can choose from, and I need to be able to swap them in and out of MainFragment dynamically.
I'm having trouble doing this. The only way to update the layout/view once I return from the settings is to leave MainFragment and then come back (which calls onCreateView()).
Here is an example of what I do in onCreateView() to initialize the layouts (two nested fragments is the default):
mView = mInflater.inflate(R.layout.layout_2, mParent, false);
getChildFragmentManager().beginTransaction().add(R.id.fragmentContainer1, fragment1).commit();
getChildFragmentManager().beginTransaction().add(R.id.fragmentContainer2, fragment2).commit();
return view;
Suppose the user then goes to the settings and chooses to have three nested fragments. This is what I've tried in onResume(), to no effect:
mView = mInflater.inflate(R.layout.layout_3, mParent, false);
getChildFragmentManager().beginTransaction().add(R.id.fragmentContainer1, fragment1)).commit();
getChildFragmentManager().beginTransaction().add(R.id.fragmentContainer2, fragment2).commit();
getChildFragmentManager().beginTransaction().add(R.id.fragmentContainer3, fragment3).commit();
I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong. Ideally, I would just force MainFragment to call onCreateView() again, but none of the solutions for that problem seem to work.
Any ideas? Thanks for the help.
Edit: I believe the problem is with inflating the new View, rather than replacing the fragments.
For instance, suppose the default screen is layout_4, with four fragment containers. The user then goes to the settings un-checks all four default fragments, and chooses three new fragments. In onResume(), we try to inflate layout_3, and then add the fragments. I think layout_3 never inflates, but because my fragment containers have the same style id across layouts (i.e. fragmentContainer1 - fragmentContainer4), the first three fragment containers are updated. The fourth one remains as it was, since I assumed we were in layout_3 and did not try to update it.
This behavior is confirmed and results in a crash when the user tries to increase the number of fragments, rather than decrease. Above, when the user switched from four fragments to three fragments, there was no crash because all three fragment containers I tried to update exist in layout_4. But if the user is in layout_2 and then goes to the settings to select a third fragment, we'll try to add a fragment to fragmentContainer3 when we resume. This results in a crash because layout_3 fails to inflate.
java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to resume activity
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No view found for id 0x7f0c005f
Any ideas how to fix this? The call to re-inflate mView in onResume() does not seem to have any effect.
Edit 2: I've tried calling mParent.addView(mView) after inflating, but still experience the same behavior as above, for the most part.
When you return from the settings, onResume() should be called in the MainFragment and subsequently any nested fragments that were already loaded in the MainFragment. Can you not include any update logic in the nested fragments' onResume() instead of only in onCreateView()?
Otherwise you can create a different code path and put update logic there: make public methods in the classes for fragment1, fragment2, fragment3 that include all your update logic, and call those methods from somewhere in MainFragment. (You could create an interface and have the nested fragment classes inherit that interface, if they are different classes and you want to have a cleaner design.)
Be careful about whether or not the nested fragments have been resumed yet—calling methods on View objects when nested fragments' onResume() hasn't been called yet could be problematic.

Situation where you would use FragmentTransaction.replace instead or show/hide or detach/reattach?

After spending a fair bit of time figuring out that the reason my fragments chosen from a drawer layout weren`t displaying sometimes due to the choreographer skipping frames (I was using transaction.replace rather than show/hide) it made me wonder -- what are the situations where one would want to use replace rather than show/hide or detach/reattach? My problem went away when I switched to using show/hide btw.
Taken from this thread I got this on what happens when you call FragmentTransaction.replace():
Android will effectively perform a sequence of
FragmentTransaction.remove(...) (for all Fragments currently added to
that container) and FragmentTransaction.add(...) (for your supplied
Fragment). Removing a Fragment from the FragmentManager will cause the
Fragment to be destroyed and its state will no longer be managed. Most
noticeably, when you re-add the Fragment all of the views will have
been reset. Note: since you are reusing the same Fragment instance,
the Fragment will still keep the value any instance variables.
and from this thread I got that it is probably better to show/hide rather than replace if you plan on using that fragment again. My question is, in which situations do you use FragmentTransaction.Replace()? The only place I could see it really being useful is for something you know you won`t need again, kind of like a dialog picker with options but I use dialog fragments for those situations.
Does anyone use FragmentTransaction.replace regularly, and if so, why did you choose that over another method? Cheers
It maybe useful, for example, when implementing a deep fragments hierarchy in Multi-pane pattern (when click on item in the right fragment moves it to the position of the left).
Also, since hiding a Fragment keeps it in FragmentManager, it maybe expensive if you have a heavy content in it or hide multiple instances. Calling remove() or replace() and properly saving fragment's state is more Android-way, I think.

Fragment LIfecycle in Custom Tab View

I have a custom widget that performs FragmentTransaction.replace when buttons are pressed. Currently, my code is set up such that the first time a fragment is created, it attaches a bunch of stuff to the view that isn't originally part of the xml layout file.
When the app first launches, all my fragments show stuff correctly, however, let's say I start on Fragment A. I can then transition to Fragment B (with B showing up correctly), however, when I transition back to Fragment A, all the stuff I have attached to the view of Fragment A is now gone. I know this happens because onCreateView is called which probably means the Fragment's view is re-generated when FragmentTransaction.replace is called.
Is there a way where I can keep my fragments around instead of having them re-generate their views when FragmentTransaction.replace is called?
Thanks!
Instead of using fragmentTransaction.replace, use fragmentTransaction.show and fragmentTransaction.hide.
That will keep your fragments from being destroyed.

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