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Best way to change UI, working with activity and fragments

So I am trying to integrate Google Maps into my application, I came across a concept that I don't entirely understand. I have seen that adding google maps into an app and it seems the most common way to do so is with an activity.
I found some websites and a SO question showing how to put Google Maps in a fragment, but would that be an issue if the user is constantly clicking on profiles and going back? Causing the map to be recreated or resumed constantly. Would that performance be better if the map was an activity instead?
Basically, Im not sure the best way to transition from an activity GUI to a fragment? I've had an app that only used 1 activity, I just used multiple different fragments changing them with this code
FragmentManager fm = getFragmentManager();
FragmentTransaction ft = fm.beginTransaction();
Fragment fragment = getFragmentManager().findFragmentById(R.id.framecontainer);
if (fragment == null) {
ft.add(R.id.framecontainer, frag, tag);
} else {
ft.replace(R.id.framecontainer, frag, tag);
}
ft.addToBackStack(null);
ft.commit();
I am confused because when I created my main activity, I called
setContentView(R.layout.baselayout);
This layout contained only a frame container, I would then add in a HomeScreenFragment right away and when I needed to change, I would use the FragmentTransaction code above.
However, if my new MapActivity used setContentView(R.layout.maplayout); how would I best change screens? If R.id.maplayout does not contain a framelayout, is it best to start a new activity that uses many fragments like the one I mentioned before? I remember hearing that calling setContentView more than once or outside onCreate() is bad practice.
It seems I am missing something because so far it seems like there is 2 ways of using activities with different layouts
Starting a new activity every time and just trying to minimize the amount of activities.
Make an activity with a FrameLayout and just swap fragments everytime
To address my actual problem
I want my users to click another user marked on the map which will bring them to a profilelayout and view that user's profile, should I use one of the 2 methods above or how should I go about doing so?
Do you guys have any input to point me in the best direction? Thanks!

If your current application is already fragment heavy, have you considered using MapFragment? I think if you're cleaning up your objects/resources appropriately it shouldn't really be a performance issue.
Also according to the documentation it says the following about the MapFragment:
It's a wrapper around a view of a map to automatically handle the necessary life cycle needs.
I think it's also good to note that it's possible for you to do layout manipulation by adding/removing views using the LayoutInflater.

What Fragments am I hosting and displaying?

Is there a way to know which Fragment is currently displayed in a given <fragment> container of an Activity without keeping track of all the changes via the onAttachFragment callback?
Is it even possible to know which fragments are displayed when fragment transactions can take place when the user presses the back key? In this latter case, i.e. when a Fragment is re-displayed due to a back, the onAttach is not called.

In my experience, the only way to know for sure which fragment is being displayed is to keep track of that carefully yourself.
For example, you could make a variable in your Activity:
Fragment mCurrentDisplayedFragment;
and then whenever the user requests a different fragment do:
mCurrentFragment = (Fragment) userRequestedFragment;
fragmentManager.replace(container, mCurrentFragment, tag);
Then, whenever you needed to do things to the currently displayed fragment, you could triage it by try/catching a cast or with instanceof.
You could also handle the back pressed behavior by overriding that method in the activity:
#Override
public void onBackPressed() {
int stackSize = fragmentManager.getBackStackEntryCount();
// This counts up from the bottom so the most recent fragment is the biggest number/size
backFragId = fragmentManager.getBackStackEntryAt(stackSize);
// Get a handle on the fragment that is about to be popped
mCurrentFragment = fragmentManager.findFragmentById(backFragId);
super.onBackPressed();
}
Also, are you sure that onAttach is not called when a fragment is popped off the stack? I seem to remember that it will be, and you can call through the interface created there (if you have one and the activity implements it) to register the fragment as the current fragment in the activity at the time.
But to directly answer your question, there isn't a built in way to just know what fragment is currently displayed (and there could be more than one!). The implementation details of that are up to you. Hopefully I've given you some ideas of how it could be handled though. You might also find the FragmentManager documentation helpful.

Each time when you add/replace fragment to the container, use tag for it:
FragmentTransaction ft = getFragmentManager().beginTransaction();
ft.add(R.id.container, fragment, tag).commit();
then you can find out the fragment is current visible or not:
Fragment fg = getFragmentManger().findFragmentByTag(tag);
if(fg.isVisible())
//fg is the current visible fragment
Hope this help!

How to destroy a Fragment that is on Backstack?

I am trying to implement a method where I want to return to the previous fragment and destroy the current one. However, when I add the fragment to the Backstack it doesn't get destroyed anymore afterwards.
Is there any way to destroy it? Or maybe to return to the previous fragment without using the Backstack?
Edit:
I want to use the backwards navigation as well.

Firstly if you are using the BackStack, it is not typical to need to specifically manually remove Fragments, which suggests you might want to have another think about your design.
That said, to specifically manually remove a Fragment, Override onBackPressed in your Activity which is showing the Fragments, manually remove the Fragment there.
To make it easy to determine which Fragment is currently showing, you can give it a Tag when you show it. For example:
fragTrans.replace(android.R.id.content, myFragment, "MY_FRAGMENT_X");
Then in the onBackPressed function of your Activity
#Override
public void onBackPressed()
{
FragmentManager fragMan = getFragmentManager();
// Check if that Fragment is currently visible
MyFragment myFragment = (MyFragment)fragMan.findFragmentByTag("MY_FRAGMENT_X");
boolean myFragXwasVisible = myFragment.isVisible();
// Let the Activity pop the BackStack as normal
super.onBackPressed();
// If it was your particular Fragment that was visible...
if (myFragXwasVisible)
{
FragmentTransaction trans = fragMan.beginTransaction();
trans.remove(myFragment).commit();
}
}
Note: When it comes to specifically destroying your Fragment object, that is what Java's garbage collection is for. You don't need to worry about that yourself, Java will take care of destroying it when it needs to. That's the whole point.

Android Fragment View State Loss When Using FragmentTransaction.replace()

I am having a pretty big issue and I am not quite understanding what is happening. I am developing an application that uses Fragments (from the support library) and am using FragmentTransaction.replace() to place new Fragments on to the back stack and replace the old one. The code looks as follows:
FragmentManager fm = getSupportFragmentManager();
FragmentTransaction ft = ft.beginTransaction();
// Animations in my res/anim folder
ft.setCustomAnimations(R.anim.slide_in_right, R.anim.slide_out_left, R.anim.slide_in_left, R.anim.slide_out_right);
ft.replace(R.id.fragment_container, newFragment, tag);
ft.addToBackStack(null);
ft.commit();
This is successful in replacing my fragment. My issue is the following. In one Fragment, I have a list of items that is built from user input. Now, when the user clicks next and then clicks the back button (to return to the list), the list is empty because the view is destroyed. Now, I have noted the following:
onSaveInstanceState is not called. I believe this is because that is only called when the parent Activity tells it to. Based on the docs: " There are many situations where a fragment may be mostly torn down (such as when placed on the back stack with no UI showing), but its state will not be saved until its owning activity actually needs to save its state.". Apparently, performing a replace on the FragmentTransaction is not one of those times. Does anyone have confirmation on this or a better explanation?
setOnRetainInstanceState(true) is not helpful in this situation. Again, I believe this has to do with info from the docs: "Control whether a fragment instance is retained across Activity re-creation (such as from a configuration change)". I am not performing any action in re-creating the activity so this is of no use.
So, I guess my main question is: is there a way to preserve the View state (simply retain the Fragment) when using replace? There is FragmentTransaction.add(), but there are a few issues with this as well. One being that the exit animation is not performed, thus the animation is not correct. Another is that the new Fragment that the old fragment (the one that is being put into a non-visible state) is still clickable. For example, if I have a ListFragment, and I place a content fragment on top of that by using add, I can still click the list items in the ListFragment.

Without being able to see the code of your fragments this is a bit of a guess, but in the past I've run into this same issue and I've found that resetting the adapter in your ListFragment in onViewStateRestored seems to do the trick.
public void onViewStateRestored (Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
super.onViewStateRestored (savedInstanceState);
setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter(Activity, R.layout.nav_item, objects));
}
Which is weird considering the documentation states that this method is called after onActivityCreated but before onStart. But it seems that it is also called at other times because when the most recent fragment transaction is popped off the back stack this method is called before the previously replaced fragment is displayed. The activity that owns the fragments has not been paused or obscured in any way, so according to the docs onViewStateRestored should not be called since just the fragments were modified. But this seems to work anyway.

It sounds like you simply need to make sure you have properly implemented onCreateView and onDestroyView. The situation you are describing seems to indicate that when the list fragment is put on the back stack (as a result of the replace transaction) Android is calling onDestroyView to free up some resources. However, it apparently has not destroyed the list fragment because when you tap back you are getting back the same instance of the fragment.
Assuming this is all true then, when the user taps back Android will call onCreateView. Any state that you have stored in the fragment's instance variables should still be there and all you need to do is repopulate the view...perhaps set the adapter on the ListView or whatever.
Also make sure your onSaveInstanceState() callback actually does save any instance state that you need to rebuild the view. That way if the fragment actually does get completely destroyed the FragmentManager can restore the state when it needs to recrete the fragment later.

Android: correct way of jumping between fragments

This is a design question, rather than a technical one.
General case: I want an UI event in a Fragment to make Activity-wide changes.
Specific case: I have two fragments, hosted in the same activity. When the user clicks a button in one of those fragments, I want it to be replaced by the other.
I don't want, however, my Fragments touching my activity. I may want to change the behavior later (maybe, in a bigger screen, show both fragments instead of replacing the first), and I don't want my Fragment code to have that logic.
What I did was implement a Listener class in my fragments, that reports events back to the Activity. This way, if I want to use another Activity class with different display behavior, I can just change the listener and leave the Fragment code untouched.
Is this a good way to go about it? Is there a standard good practice, or a better design pattern?

Using listeners is the recommended way of communicating between Fragment and your activity.
See this Android documentatin section for infromation. Long story short they just implement a listener interface by the Activity class and cast getActivity() result in a fragment to a listener.
From my personal experience this is very convenient because lets you to:
Easilly switch underlying activity (e.g. you host entire fragment in a wrapper activity for compatibility in pre-3.0 and host this fragment along with others in 11+)
Easilly control if the wrapper activity supports callbacks or not. Just check is it does implement the listener and do your app specific actions if it doesn't.

You are right on about using a Listener. This is something I also had to deal with in a project at work. The best way to handle it is to make the Fragment stand-alone in nature. Anything wishing to interact with the Fragment should use its public API and/or set listeners for specific events. If you are familiar with Design Patterns, this is the Observer pattern. The events can be general or specific as well as contain data or no data.
As an example of my project, I had two Fragments. A ListFragment and an InfoFragment that displayed the selected ListItem. The ListFragment already has a Listener interface for my Activity to hook into, but the InfoFragment does not since its your basic Fragment. I added a Listener interface to the InfoFragment that would be notified when the Fragment wanted to close. For the Fragment, this could be by a button press, or specific action occured, but as far as my Activity is concerned, when the Event is triggered, it would close up the Fragment view.
Don't be afraid to use a lot of Listeners for Fragments, but also try to group them by a specific action using data parameters to individualize them. Hope this helps!

A technical answer for:
I have two fragments, hosted in the same activity. When the user clicks a button in one of those fragments, I want it to be replaced by the other.
FragmentTransaction ft = this.getFragmentManager().beginTransaction();
Fragment mFragment = Fragment.instantiate(this.Activity(), Fragment2.class.getName());
ft.replace(android.R.id.content, mFragment);
ft.commit();

public class Example_3_Mainfile extends Activity {
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.example_3_mainfile);
Fragment fr ;//make class that extend to thefragment
fr = new Act_2_1();
FragmentManager fm = getFragmentManager();
FragmentTransaction fragmentTransaction = fm.beginTransaction();
fragmentTransaction.replace(R.id.fragment_place, fr);
//id get of fragment tag from xml file there decelar
fragmentTransaction.commit();
}
}