Develop Reference

Saving/loading an Android layout with previously programmatically added buttons

I have a very simple question about loading layout in main activity. I have a simple layout defined in activity_main.xml which is loaded in MainActivity's OnCreate() using
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main).
Then on a button click, I add another view item (button) which shows up correctly.
But when the app is closed and opened again, I need to retain what was added last time when the app closed. How do I do that?
I searched some questions here, but most of them talk about saving values using SharedPreferences or saving state, but it is not clear if the layout can be saved as well.
Thanks in advance.

I think the best solution is saving latest state values by using SharedPreferences, because it is a good way to save any simple data for long term.
Saving state via using saveInstanceState is a short term solution and if you close your app completely, saved instance will be gone forever.
Possible solution:
First, you cannot save a layout as you think, but you can get the layout's parameters and other features as variables, then you can save these by using SharedPreferences.
Secondly, you should check if there is any saved layout states when you start the activity. If any, you can use the pre-saved parameters for adding your layout dynamically/programmatically.

In Android,How to save a "dynamically created layout" and load back when I reopen app?

When app is running, users adds some views in the Layout. I want to store this Layout, so that when i reopen the app it should return the same state.
How can I achieve that?

Use onSaveInstanceState() and onRestoreInstanceState() callbacks to save and restore your views.
More at Managing the Activity Lifecycle and Recreating an Activity.
[EDIT] - As per #kadatt comment.
I think what you are trying to do is possible duplicate of android-saving-state-of-dynamically-changed-layout.
I dont think there is any standard way of doing this. You will have to implement your own functionality to save state of dynamic UI in some form which can be loaded again.

Android save programmatically created button

In my program i create buttons programmatically on OnTouch event but when i reopen the app or activity get restarted these button do not appear
Can any one suggest me how can i create buttons programmatically those will stick to the layout even after the activity gets restart or app gets restart

Use SharedPreferences to store coordinates value.

As suggested in Comments saving state in shared preferences is good option .
So you can go with this links to know more about this topic, I think it will be more clear when you will look into all this .
Save instance of dynamically generated views when we switch back and forth between activities
How do you save a (user-created) dynamic Layout in Android?
android save programmatically created views
Android - How to save a programmatically created view and restore it on app restart

Drag and Drop Items from Listview into Activity

In my app, I want the user to be able to follow this list of instructions to be able to put a link to their installed android apps into a widget that I am creating.
In the widget, when the user taps the widget it opens up a new activity which contains all of their apps. To add new app links to that activity, I want the user to be able to pull out a kind of scrolling tab that would hold a list of all of their applications they have on their device (I already know how to do this). The user would then be able to press and hold on a app from that listview and then drag it into the droppable area in the widget that would hold their app. Please note the picture below to get a better idea of what I mean (sorry for poor quality):
How could I turn a listview object into something that is able to do this? I would have to make the listview have a touch listener attribute and then make the droppable area have a drag event, that much I am sure of (somewhat from just looking around on how to make things drag and droppable).
How could I do this? Any ideas or comments on improvements are appreciated!

You could use setOnItemLongClickListener to set a listener waiting for a long click then when it is fired begin the drag process.

Activities, Views and Dialogs in Android. Proper application structure for game

I was in the midsts of tinkering in android with the goal of trying to make this small exploration game. I actually got pretty far so far: a nice sprite system, a title screen with a main menu that is all in game code (no UI buttons or anything) that launch various activities. An activity that loads this cool map view, that when clicked on will load up another view of a more detailed "zoomed in" action part of a map. It all works pretty well but now I am left wondering how well I am going about this.
(What happens to a view when you instantiate and then move the set the context to a new view? I am guessing as long as the activity is alive all the instantiations of various views that an activity uses are still good? And in an activities onPause is when id have to save the data thats changed in these views to persist the state in the event the user quits the game etc.. ?)
I have three menu options at the start of the game. The main one is:
New Game
The new game, I launch my main map
activity that can launch three views:
First two are a loading screen for
the second, a map screen.
Third view is a more detailed action
orientated part that uses this sprite
engine I developed.
It all works pretty good as in the map view you click on a cell it tells the Calling Activity through a listener to start the detailed action view, and passes in the ID of the cell (so it knows what objects to load in the detailed view based on the cell clicked in second view). (This took me awhile to figure out but someone helped here on another question to get this.) Reference that helped me on this part here. I also used the various information here on ViewSwitcher.
I got even a yes no dialog box in the second view that asks if they really wanna goto that cell when they click on it, a yes tells the calling activity to set the new view. What helped me to get this working was this reference here. I also had to fiddle with the calls to getContext and that, I am still not 100% sure what getResources and getContext do for me.
So is it bad practice to call and load a dialog from a view? If it is, then I don't understand how if I have an event in the view that needs to pop up a dialog how I do that? Call back to the activity and let the activity handle it the dialog response and then call a method on the view for the response?
So far all this works great, I did have a bit to learn about threads too. I spawn a different thread for my MenuView (handles the detection of button clicks and responses), my CellMap view which handles the cool big map that users can click on to see the indepth view which is my SystemView view.
So basically the activity call list is like this:
Home.Activity -> ScrollMap.activity which listens to CellMap wher ethe Yes/No dialog apperas (in the view of CellMap) and if the answer is yes to the question, then the onTouchEvent starts up the SystemView view using
private CellMap.MapClickedListener onTouchEvent=
new CellMap.MapClickedListener() {
#Override
public void onMapClick(int id) {
setContentView(new SolarSystem(theContext,id));
}
};
To help anyone else, that listener had to be defined in my CellMap class. Then in the ScrollMap activity when I am about to start the CellMap I just call a method to CellMap sets the map click listener. So far this is the only way I have been able to get data from a dialog (in this case a it was clicked so set the new view) back to the calling activity. Is this proper practice?
Now my biggest question is, I have a playerObject class I want to initialize on new game event (I know how to detect that push) and that then is available to any view in any activity for the life time of the cycle. So far the game activity has just two (3 if you count the loading progress bar) views. I want to get the players name, is that another activity or view? I cannot find a decent tutorial of just how to make a simple input dialogg box that would return a string.
How do i go about passing this stuff around? After I get the players name from wherever that edit box is to be loaded, I want to set the players name in the class and pass that class instance off to another view or activity so they may get at that data. Everything I have searched on this seemed like overkill or not the right way. Whats the best way to pass this "playerClass" around so that I can access it from other views (to say display the players name in every view).
I also have my Home Activity that waits for an onClick on 3 buttons, it then launches their activity that shows the view. I realize a continue game and new game are the same activity and will just change in data loaded off the drive to restore a save game. When the new game button is clicked I would love to get the players name they want to use and of course set the member of the playerClass to this name so it persists.
Where do I call (an edit dialog is it?) the edit dialog from? (more over how do I build one that can take an okay button and input from keyboard etc). Id also like to make it pretty, maybe I could have a simple view that has one edit box in it and a nice image background (though I haven't figured out how to place the edit boxes to fit nicely matching a background i draw for it. I guess id like an edit dialog I can skin to look how i want it to and fit the look of the game).
I am actually kinda happy what I got so far its looking not to bad, just not sure about some specifics like getting user input for a name of the player. Storing that information and passing it then to other activities and views.
Is it better to have one GameMain activity, and a ton of views:
Map view
Character sheet view
inventory view etc etc?
Or Should there be diff activities in there somewhere as well?

You've written a lot here, so I'm go gonna go ahead and answer the questions I think you're asking.
First, how can one share information between activities and views? If you're just sharing it between views in a single activity, store it in the instance of the Activity subclass.
Sharing between activities requires a little bit more. Instead of using an instance of the default Application class, you can create a subclass of Application and use that instead. Put your data in fields of that subclass. To tell your app to use your subclass, modify the app manifest like so:
<application
....
android:name=".YourAppClassNameHere">
....
</application>
As for getting user input, the simple answer is use the built-in EditText view. since you seem to want to give your game a more "custom" style, though, you may need to go about creating your own editable textbox. That and buttons should allow for most sorts of basic user input.
Now, good practice vis-a-vis activities and views. I'm not aware of a standard for this, but when designing I generally try to think of activities as more conceptually separate elements, whereas views are conceptually interwoven. the line between the two is dependent, in part, on the scope of the app; an app with a narrow focus can afford to break more actions down into different activities than can one with a much broader focus.
Your "GameMain" example is a bit on the fence, but I think you've made the right choice: the activity is "playing the game," as opposed to a menu or high-scores table, and the views present different aspects of the game being played.