How to Launch an Android AppWidget's configuration Activity from another activity? - android

Well this is driving me crazy. I have developed an App-widget. Everything is working fine.
I have a configuration activity which launches every time a widget is added on the home screen and works beautiful. I save the user settings per widget id etc.
The widget has some buttons, one of them launches an activity with about information, the "About Activity".
The "About Activity" has a button which I want to use to launch the configuration activity for the widget id that launched the "About Activity". The reason I want to do that is because I want the user to be able to configure the contents of any instance of my widget without having it removed and added again (in order to launch the configuration activity).
The configuration activity needs the AppWidgetManager.EXTRA_APPWIDGET_ID in order to make the job (save the user settings for this specific widgetid) so I must somehow pass this extra when I 'm calling it from another activity. The obvious think to do is this:
startActivity(new Intent(context,act_configure.class).putExtra(AppWidgetManager.EXTRA_APPWIDGET_ID, ??? ));
Now my question is where is the widgetid? I found a million ways to get the widgetids (the array) but not a single clue on how to get the specific widgetid which launched the "About Activity"
Any help about this will make the hours I spent to find a solution, worth something. Thank you in advance.
p.s. Please forgive my English as they are not my native language...

Thanks to Cory Chaltron here is the solution to my problem.
In the widget provider onUpdate method I should create a "unique" intent to pass to the pending intent which handles the launch of the about activity. Because of the way Android compares Intents, passing the WidgetID in the extras IS NOT ENOUGH, you should also pass it as data to the intent in order to be unique. So here is the code:
Intent aboutIntent = new Intent(cx, act_about.class);
aboutIntent.putExtra(AppWidgetManager.EXTRA_APPWIDGET_ID, widgetIds[i]);
// Make this unique for this appWidgetId
aboutIntent.setData(Uri.withAppendedPath(Uri.parse("customuri://widget/id/"), String.valueOf(widgetID)));
PendingIntent aboutPendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(cx, 0, aboutIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK), PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);
views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.cmdabout, aboutPendingIntent)
Although I answer my own question I am not accepting it because it is based on Cory's answer. Thank you all for the help...

How are you setting your widget views? I have an app where I iterate over the active widgets and configure set the RemoteView there. You could set your widget id in the onClick you are attaching to the "About" button.
final AppWidgetManager widgetManager = AppWidgetManager.getInstance(this);
final ComponentName widgetName = new ComponentName(this, WidgetProvider.class);
final int[] widgetIds = widgetManager.getAppWidgetIds(widgetName);
for (int widgetId : widgetIds) {
final RemoteViews remoteViews = new RemoteViews(getPackageName(), R.layout.widget);
// This is the important part :-D
remoteViews.findViewById(R.id.your_about_button).setOnClickListener(... a listener to start your about activity that puts the widget id in the extra like you suggest in your question ...);
widgetManager.updateAppWidget(widgetId, remoteViews);
}

Related

How to open launcher's widget picker?

I want to open the launcher's widget picker (for example, the one we get when we long press on home screen) from my Activity. What I want to achieve is, I want to take the user to my widget so that there are more chances that he will consider adding it.
Programmatically adding the widget to home screen will be the best case. But, because that is not possible, I want to go as closer as possible to make user add the widget.
I tried the following but that only opens a dialog (not the launcher's) with all the widgets and by selecting one nothing happens.
Intent pickIntent = new Intent(AppWidgetManager.ACTION_APPWIDGET_PICK);
pickIntent.putExtra(AppWidgetManager.EXTRA_APPWIDGET_ID, 0);
startActivityForResult(pickIntent, 1234);
How to make this work? Any suggestions on this scenario are much appreciated.
It's possible to pin widget to homescreen (official doc) on API 26+:
AppWidgetManager mAppWidgetManager =
context.getSystemService(AppWidgetManager.class);
AppWidgetProviderInfo myWidgetProviderInfo = new AppWidgetProviderInfo();
ComponentName myProvider = myWidgetProviderInfo.provider;
if (mAppWidgetManager.isRequestPinAppWidgetSupported()) {
Intent pinnedWidgetCallbackIntent = new Intent( ... );
PendingIntent successCallback = PendingIntent.createBroadcast(context, 0,pinnedWidgetCallbackIntent);
mAppWidgetManager.requestPinAppWidget(myProvider, null,
successCallback.getIntentSender());
}

Some 3rd party widgets stop updating after application upgrade

My application hosts user installed widgets, same as a launcher application.
Once I bind the widget, everything works fine. Widgets are created, updated automatically, I can click to navigate inner views.
Everything keeps working fine, until I update my application from Play store (or manually with a signed APK).
After the update, the widgets still show but they won't update anymore. Some widgets function when I click on them but the view is stuck and never gets updated until I re-create the widget (get a new ID and bind it).
I tried forcing an update using
Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setAction(AppWidgetManager.ACTION_APPWIDGET_UPDATE);
intent.setComponent(appWidgetInfo.provider);
intent.putExtra(AppWidgetManager.EXTRA_APPWIDGET_IDS, new int[]
{appWidgetId});
context.sendBroadcast(intent);
but that doesn't help...
I wanted to try a forced update on click but I couldn't find any way to get the widget's RemoteViews (as this is not my widget, I just host it).
RemoteViews views =
new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(),R.layout.mywidget_layout);
Intent updateIntent = new Intent();
updateIntent.setAction(AppWidgetManager.ACTION_APPWIDGET_UPDATE);
updateIntent.putExtra(myWidgetProvider.WIDGET_IDS_KEY, ids);
PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(
context, 0, updateIntent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);
views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.view_container, pendingIntent);
Also implemented an AppWidgetProvider to listen to widgets' ID changes (APPWIDGET_HOST_RESTORED) but it doesn't get called on my application update.
My next step would be to re-create all widgets after application update, but I really prefer not to do so.
Would appreciate any help!
Solved.
The last thing I wanted to do, was probably the first thing I should have tried.
I moved on to re-creating the widgets and I found that I don't have to fully re-create them, just re-call bindAppWidgetIdIfAllowed() with the same Widget ID I already have.
The method will return true if everything is still OK and if not, the widget may not be installed anymore or you need to trigger its configuration screen.
Certain Android functionality will break if the widget is installed on the SD Card. Try moving it to the device storage and re-test.
make sure you use unique keys with putExtra(MyWidgetProvider.WIDGET_ID_KEY, ids);
Do not use putExtra(AppWidgetManager.EXTRA_WIDGET_IDS, ids);

Android - Communications between a widget and its app

I have a widget that shows various images with text below, and the same UI set up in the app itself. I want the widget to not only be able to open the app, but to open the app based on which picture is showing in the widget and then show that same image in the app. However, I am having a tough time getting this to work.
Thanks.
Let's say there are several images in the ui, you can set different Intent for each image, and these intents each will target a different activity.
This post: http://rxwen.blogspot.com/2012/10/communication-between-android-widget.html may give you some hints.
Add this code in widget.java file to launch your application. instead of MainActivity.class you can call any activity
static void updateAppWidget(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager,
int appWidgetId) {
RemoteViews views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(),R.layout.mywidget_provider);
Intent openApp = new Intent(context,MainActivity.class);
PendingIntent pIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context,0,openApp,0);
views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.btnOpenApp,pIntent);
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}

Find home screen widget id

I wrote a widget that sits on my home screen.
There is also a configuration activity which can be started from the widget or from the launcher.
When started from launcher, I don't have the widget id.
Is it possible to find it somehow?
The reason is that I want to send an update message from the activity to the widget.
Something like this seems to work for me:
Context context = getApplicationContext();
ComponentName name = new ComponentName(context, MyWidgetProvider.class);
int [] ids = AppWidgetManager.getInstance(context).getAppWidgetIds(name);

Removing AppWidgets programmatically

I'm having the hardest time figuring out how to remove home screen AppWidget's programmatically (i.e. without the user actually dragging one into the trash). As an example, consider an app that can have multiple accounts, with any number of widgets for each account - once an account is removed, widget should be deleted as well.
I've tried following an obscure example from http://www.netmite.com/android/mydroid/cupcake/frameworks/base/services/java/com/android/server/AppWidgetService.java, but that doesn't seem to even trigger OnDeleted, much less remove the AppWidget from the home screen.
Intent intent = new Intent(AppWidgetManager.ACTION_APPWIDGET_DELETED);
intent.setComponent(info.componentName); // references AppWidgetProvider's class
intent.putExtra(AppWidgetManager.EXTRA_APPWIDGET_ID, widgetId);
sendBroadcast(intent);
Does anyone have any advice on how this can be accomplished? An example would be the bee's knees. Thanks.
You cannot add or remove app widgets from the home screen. Only the user can do that.
Any app widgets tied to a deleted account could show a different account, or adopt some "(account deleted)" look that would trigger the user to get rid of the app widget or reconfigure it.
I'm pretty sure this should work:
int[] appWidgetIds = appWidgetManager.getAppWidgetIds(new ComponentName("com.example",
"com.example.Widget"));
AppWidgetHost host = new AppWidgetHost(ctx, 0);
host.deleteAppWidgetId(appWidgetIds[0]);

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