Develop Reference

TextView.setMaxLines not working?

In my app I have a screen where I display some text and then a photo. The text is variable in length (sometimes none at all, sometimes a lot), so I wanted to have it set up so the text never takes up more than a few lines (but can be scrolled) leaving enough room for the image below.
My view component for this part is created programatically, and I've adjusted the code to have the following (currently in my text-setting method, but the same thing happens if it's in the initial view-create code)
public void SetDescription(String description)
{
mTxtDescription.setText(Html.fromHtml(description));
mTxtDescription.setClickable(true);
mTxtDescription.setMaxLines(5);
mTxtDescription.setLines(5); //this makes no difference either!
mTxtDescription.setSingleLine(false);
mTxtDescription.setScrollbarFadingEnabled(true);
mTxtDescription.setScrollBarStyle(VERTICAL);
mTxtDescription.setMovementMethod(ScrollingMovementMethod.getInstance());
mTxtDescription.invalidate(); //adding this made no difference...
}
However it doesn't work- long text still fills the whole screen and the image has vanished due to being pushed down to a height of 0. How can I get the text to never be more than 5 lines?

Try removing the call to setSingleLine. And use setInputType(InputType.TYPE_TEXT_FLAG_MULTI_LINE). It'd also put this call before the setMaxLines and setLines call to be sure.
Note: setLines overrides the settings of setMaxLines and setMinLines.
The TextView has many issues surrounding the various calls to how it should display multiple, ellipses, etc.

The setSingleLine(false) seemes to reset the setMaxLines command. Try to move the setSingleLine command before the setText. That worked for me.

The below code is working fine for me
txt = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview);
txt.setMaxLines(5);
txt.setMovementMethod(new ScrollingMovementMethod());
txt.setScrollContainer(true);
txt.setText("Example Text");
txt.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
txt.setScrollbarFadingEnabled(true);
in xml inside textview
android:scrollbars="vertical"

Displaying an array of objects, one at a time through a single dialog... instead of several dialogs

In my application I have a list of questions stored in an ArrayList, and I want to display a dialog that shows one question, and then continues to the next one after the question is answered. The way that I'm currently doing it (iterating through a loop) hasn't been working because it just layers all of the dialogs on top of one another all at once which causes a host of other issues. What I'm looking for is a way to still iterate through the questions, but just change the layout of the dialog each time until it has finished each question in the list. Can anyone give me a good pointer for how to get this going?

You can make a function that takes title and message as parameters and shows a dialog.
showDialog(String title, String message){ // Show dialog code here}
Within that dialog's answer button's listener call another function (showQuestion(currentQuestion)) that iterates the arrayList till it is over
int currentQuestion=0;
ArrayList<QuestionObject> questionList;
showQuestion(int i){
if(i<questionList.size()){
showDialog(questionList.get(i).getTitle,questionList.get(i).getMessage);
currentQuestion++;
}else{
//quiz is over
}
}

I assume you mean that you just want to change 1 single layout(created within XML i.e main.xml). In order to do this, make sure that the class your working on is pointing to that layout. From there (assuming your using an Event listener for when the user submits an answer) you can change do as you want by the following:
TextView txt = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView); // references the txt XML element
and in your Event listener, if the answer is correct then change(Have i be a global variable thats initially set to 0).
if(i<arrayList.size()){
txt.setText(arrayList.get(++i));
}else{
txt.setText("You Finished");
}
From there, in the else statement, you can change arrayLists and reset i to 0;

If you are trying to use the positive, neutral, and negative buttons; then you may have problems with multiple dialogs. Try defining a customized layout with your own TextViews, ListViews, and Buttons. You can implement listeners and everything else like a regular layout. Then just pass your customized layout to the dialog through AlertDialog.Builder.setView().
PS If you include code examples of what you are currently doing we can provided answers that are less vague.

Android displaying items on screen on that come from a remote db

I am facing an issue of having a screen which gets an id from the SharedPreferences and then I call a remote database, and then I have to display that data on the screen.
Is it possible to do that with ViewText or is there another way to place text on the screen after a remote db call is made?
Whats the best way to do that and how do I accomplish it?
Thanks!!

Use a loader for your db call. Once the data has loaded use onLoadFinished to either add a TextView to your layout or replace the text in an existing layout.
My suggestion would be to create a TextView in your layout in xml so that you can position it exactly as you wish, then replacing the text after your database call using myTextView.setText(databasetext)

The way you display data from a database is completely independent of the way you're getting that data. If it's simply text you need to display, then a TextView seems to be a logical view element to use.
In simple terms, the steps you should be taking would likely be:
Get ID from SharedPreferences
Query database with ID for result
Pass the result to your view layer
Use a TextView to display the result
It's best (and required since 4.0) to make network calls in a thread separate from the UI thread. The best way is probably using an AsyncTask. For example:
private class GetDbItemTask extends AsyncTask<Integer, Void, MyDbItem> {
protected MyDbItem doInBackground(Integer... ids) {
return mDbService.load(ids[0]);
}
protected void onPostExecute(MyDbItem result) {
mTextView.setText(result.toString());
}
}

Have you tried a custom alert dialog this link?
This allows you to have a textview on your screen without changing your activity.
I hope I answered this correctly since you ask
"Is it possible to do that with ViewText or is there another way to
place text on the screen after a remote db call is made?".
Then there is the option of refreshing the screen using onResume() on the activity lifecycle.

The logic would that I would use is to build your screen in XML and have a Textview named myTextView
in your activity declare a Textview
TextView name_field;
String name;
....
.
.
.
//call my database info
//this example get a variable and pass it into String variable name and then display it in your text view
name_field = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.myTextView);
name_field.setText(name);

How to correctly use TextSwitcher in ListView?

My TextSwitcher for each record in ListView should display first value (text1) and then another value (text2), then first value again and so on. It should happen only if text2 not empty. Otherwise text1 should be always shown (without any changes and animation).
I've created Runnable(), which changes boolean variable (time2) to then call items.notifyDataSetChanged(). It works as expected and in result setViewValue() for my ListView is called.
Here is the code:
items.setViewBinder(new SimpleCursorAdapter.ViewBinder() {
#Override
public boolean setViewValue(View view, Cursor cursor, int columnIndex) {
int viewId = view.getId();
switch(viewId) {
case R.id.timetext:
TextSwitcher itemTime = (TextSwitcher) view;
if (itemTime.getChildCount() != 2) {
itemTime.removeAllViews();
itemTime.setFactory(new ViewSwitcher.ViewFactory() {
#Override
public View makeView() {
TextView t = new TextView(MyActivity.this);
t.setTextSize(18);
t.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD);
t.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
return t;
}
});
itemTime.setAnimateFirstView(true);
itemTime.setInAnimation(AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(MyActivity.this,
R.anim.push_up_in));
itemTime.setOutAnimation(AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(MyActivity.this,
R.anim.push_up_out));
}
if (!text2.equals("")) {
if (!time2) {
itemTime.setText(text1);
} else {
itemTime.setText(text2);
}
} else {
itemTime.setCurrentText(text1);
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
} );
It works almost as expected. With one minor item - when text2 should be shown, it changes displayed value to some other value first (from another record!) and then animation is played. Change of text2 to text1 happens correctly.
My understanding that the reason is the following - before displaying text2, all views of itemTime are removed and hence it is recreated and that is why some other value is shown for a second. But why does it show value from some other record?
Actually text2 and text1 are values from the database, for ex.
text2 = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(DbAdapter.KEY_TIME_2)), probably, something is wrong here and setViewValue called with wrong parameters?
Upd. text1 and text2 are read from the database at setViewValue. Here is example of the full code:
itemTime.setText(cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(DbAdapter.KEY_CLOSE_TIME_1)) + " - " + cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(DbAdapter.KEY_OPEN_TIME_1)));

I know this might not answer the question directly, but I'm going to respond to your comment about creating a Runnable() to do the work of switching for you because I suspect that it is probably messing with your data (hard to tell when you cant see the full code).
I advise you to use a ViewFlipper instead of a TextSwitcher. The reason for doing that is that once you added the TextView's inside your ViewFlipper, you can just set your flip interval and then start the flipping and it will do it automatically for you.
As simple as this:
/* Add your items to your ViewFlipper first */
myViewFlipper.setFlipInterval(1000); //time in millseconds
myViewFlipper.startFlipping();
In your current method that you described, when you call items.notifyDataSetChanged() you incur a huge performance hit because all items of your database are going to be re-read and your list will be "re-drawn" again. You should only do that if your actual data really changed rather than using it to switch between text that you already have and doesn't change from creation time.
As a nice surprise, you might notice that your problem goes away because you don't have to re-read everything from you DB again and reduces the chances of mix-up of item1 and item2 since you will only need to read them once when the row is created in your ListView
Just my 2 cents.
Let me know how it goes.

I think I see what's going on here, and it's because of the way ListView works.
ListView recycles all of its views internally so that you only have as many views created as can be displayed on the screen. However, this also means that when you bind values to a view in your setViewValue method, you are not always given the view that was in the same position in the list before.
Say you have three list items: itemA, itemB, itemC in that order. Each contains text1, text2, and text3 respectively at first.
When you call items.notifyDataSetChanged(), ListView recycles all those list items however it feels like, so you may get a new order of itemC, itemA, itemB; and the text would then read text3, text1, text2.
As a result, when you change the text of the first list item to "text2", you will in fact see "text3" change to "text2" instead of a transition from "text1" to "text2" like you are expecting.

Are text1 and text2 stored in the resources file (res/values/strings.xml)? If so, Android will sometimes confuse variables. Simply running Project > Clean on this project may fix the problem.

This worked for me :
myViewFlipper.setFlipInterval(1000);
myViewFlipper.startFlipping();

TextView.setText() followed by TextView.invalidate() doesn't update text in view

I have no idea why this doesn't work. The TextView is defined from an tag in the view. The base TextView doesn't have text set and I want to set it in the View on display.
I have tried placing the below in onCreate and onStart but it doesn't seem to work. The last two lines are just for debugging. I can verify that the header does get the text. The thing is, the TextView doesn't actually get updated. Any ideas?
TextView header=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.acheader);
header.setText(R.string.accounts);
header.invalidate();
header=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.acheader);
String blah=(String) header.getText();

Try again removing the text in 4th line
header=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.acheader);

header.invalidate() is not needed.
Instead of String blah = (String) header.getText() try
String blah = heager.getText().toString();
And why are you verifying a "setText()" on text view using code? Why can't you check the
actual output?
The above code might not work the way you are trying to use it, because the redraw of text view is handled by the framework and generally it tries to group item updates (Dirty rectangles to be specific) and update them all at once. It may do it well after your function exits, Try to validate visually, thats the best way.