I'm used to using a 3rd party library for implementing a navigation drawer (sliding menu) in Android, but I want to use the native version from now. I went through the tutorial (http://developer.android.com/training/implementing-navigation/nav-drawer.html) which is pretty straight forward.
I typically extend the 3rd party navigation drawer to each activity by defining the configuration in a base class. The new nav drawer, however, swaps fragments in and out, which my research indicates is the standard way of managing your displays.
This seems fine, but my app has a fairly complex hierarchy of pages and navigation. Like most apps, it contains more fragments than just the ones in the menu.
So if I have 3 nav drawer items for fragments A, B, and C, and I can only load fragment D from fragment C, do I handle that navigation logic in the activity where I configure the nav drawer? It seems like kind of a nightmare to have one container to swap out an indefinite number of fragments, especially if the work flow is deep.
From what I can gather on Stack, there seem to be a lot of people who are familiar with extending a 3rd party drawer in each Activity, but when they switch over to the native version there is confusion.
So to summarize, I understand the fragment swapping aspect of the navigation. I just don't understand how the rest of the work flow navigation would work, say if I had several detail screens below a nav item fragment. If anyone can give me some hints on how best to approach this scenario, maybe I can experiment and post some code for future readers.
For navigation in Android there is always one thing you have to remember:
If you stay on the same level of the navigation hierarchy, for
example when swiping through pages, you use Fragments.
When you move up and down in the navigation hierarchy, for example
going to a detail view, you would start a new Activity and displayed the
Fragment with the detail content in it.
A NavigationDrawer is used for top level navigation in your app to quickly navigate between different parts of your app. It's kind of like a main menu. With that in mind you need to determine if a NavigationDrawer makes sense in your app. It's all about how the user should navigate through the content. If there is just one path for the user to follow for example if you start out with just one screen and from then on the user can just go deeper and deeper in the navigation hierarchy from one detail view to the next than a NavigationDrawer does not make much sense. But if there are multiple paths the user can take that lead into different, independent parts of your app without one dedicated start screen on which everything else depends than a NavigationDrawer sounds pretty reasonable.
You can look at Google apps like Gmail, Drive or Google+ to see how a NavigationDrawer is supposed to be used.
Related
OBS: Though still no first class support (as of writing this), Google has now updated their samples with an example of how they think this should be solved: https://github.com/googlesamples/android-architecture-components/tree/master/NavigationAdvancedSample
The Android Codelab for Navigation does a good job describing how to use the architecture component Navigation together with a BottomNavigationView. But let's say I have 2 tabs in the BottomNavigationView, Tab1 and Tab2. And let's say that in Tab1 you navigate through the fragments Frag1 --> Frag2. Now, whenever I go to Tab2, and then back to Tab1, the fragment back stack of Frag1,2 is gone, and replaced with the starting point Frag1 again.
What do I have to do in an app so that a BottomNavigationView together with Navigation keeps its back stack intact even though I change tabs? And, also keeping the back/up button behaviours in sync with the guidelines.
Previously I've done this with the use of ViewPager and managing the back stack my selfe, but that doesn't feels like the right approach with the new Navigation.
Thanks in advance!
Edit:
There's a more elaborate answer here.
The major reason is you only use one NavHostFragment to hold the whole back stack of the app.
So the solution is each tab should hold its own back stack.
In your main layout, wrap each tab fragment with a FrameLayout.
Each tab fragment is a NavHostFragment and contains its own navigation graph in order to make each tab fragment having its own back stack.
Add a BottomNavigationView.OnNavigationItemSelectedListener to BottomNavigtionView to handle the visibility of each FrameLayout.
If you don't want to keep all the fragments in memory, you can use app:popUpTo and app:popUpToInclusive="true" to pop out the ones you don't want to keep.
This is currently not supported in the new Navigation Architecture. I was also pretty bummed by this, as it is a very basic feature in today's apps, and a lot of the apps are now using the bottom navigation. There is a running thread, if you wanna keep an eye on it. They are saying they will come up with a long term solution for this, but for the shorter run, they are gonna give a sample on how to tackle this. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/80029773#comment25
I had an app which was developed 2 years back, now I want to add navigation drawer to that app, but the problem is in that app there are 15 Activities, so do I need to apply the Navigation drawer for all 15 Activities? or is there best way to implement this.?
The navigation drawer items are common for whole app.
Can anyone suggest me the best way to implement this.
A way you can do it, since Navigation Drawers are just list fragments, is create a list fragment and recall that same fragment in all the activities that you want it in. You can do this using the XML Layout Editor to place the fragment in the layout.
Having so many activities, however, makes it a lot of work (especially if your app is designed for multiple sizes and each activity has a layout).
I was reading about Navigation Drawer and it was not until now that I came into this question: If my top views are going to be accessible through the Navigation Drawer, should I code each of them as Fragments or as Activities?
I want to know the way it was intended to be used, with Fragments or with Activities
The best way is to use Fragments.
When you click on an item, you should always replace the Fragment of your Main Activity without adding the elements in the Back Stack. This will create a seamless dynamic navigation instead of launching new activities and managing the drawer into them.
Here are some references
Google's design guidelines
Google's development guidelines
I am looking to replicate the iOS app my company makes and on tablet in landscape they have a second nav drawer slide out from the first for the second level of categories.
e.g. in the first level they have clothes, shoes, accessories, then if you click clothes a second one appears scrolling to the right from the far right of the first nav bar, that then shows things like shirts, t-shirt, jeans, jumpers etc.
Is this possible in android? And if so, is it the accepted way of doing things?
Thanks
on tablet in landscape they have a second nav drawer slide out from the first for the second level of categories.
That's not a nav drawer, then, at least as defined by Google.
Is this possible in android?
Sure, just not using DrawerLayout. Execute a FragmentTransaction to slide in the second list adjacent to the first list, neither of which are in a DrawerLayout.
And if so, is it the accepted way of doing things?
For a two-tier structure, I suspect that you will see other patterns used:
ExpandableListView
tabs for the first tier, and simpler master-detail for the second tier
action bar list navigation for the first tier, and simpler master-detail for the second tier
etc.
I can't even rule out DrawerLayout as being the implementation of the first tier (with traditional master-detail for the second tier), though the stuff in that list does not strike me as fitting the usage pattern for a navigation drawer.
Sure, It is possbile. But it is not a practise using in android.
If you want to implement this design, the best way is to use two fragments instead of navigation drawer and use FragmentTrasation to provide the animations.
I have an existing application that has about 25 activities that are navigated to from a "dashboard". I would like to switch and start using the Navigation drawer and fragments. I have gone thru the Nav Drawer design pages online and the example app. My question is what is the best way to convert (structure) my app to fit the Nav Drawer pattern. If I switch my activities to be fragments and use a main activity to replace each fragment as navigation happens, but not sure if that is good b/c for a tablet layout, I might want multiple fragments on my view and not sure if this will limit me. If I go with the other direction I was thinking, keep all my activities and just switch the necessary ones to fragments for tablets but I would need each activity to create the navigation drawer (I think ?) which in my case the drawer is dynamic based on server data. Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks
Brandon
Navigation drawer has to be created for each activity, although you could inherit Activity and create a parent class that handles navigation drawer specific code if code duplication is a concern.
Using a drawer does not limit you to use one fragment per screen, just listen to onClick in drawer and initiate as many fragment transactions as you need.
When it comes to structuring your app, there is no universal advice, I would recommend you to watch Google I/O 2013 talk - Structure in Android App Design. Navigation Drawer is kind of the main theme of the talk.