How to share a view across various activities - android

Is there any way to share the same object of the View across various activities? For example myApp has 4 activities, and every activity shows a Logo at the top of the screen. Now each activity will initiate 4 copies of the same Logo. So is there any way to get around this? And if 3 out of 4 share the same logo?

I can't say that it is completely impossible for you to do that. What I can say with almost certainty is that you should not attempt it or expect anything good to happen if you do manage it. Don't fight the framework, let it work for you. If the duplication is that much of an issue you create an abstract class that your Activities inherit from.
Also, since View's maintain a reference to the Context they were created in. If you did manage to pass a View from one Activity to another you would be creating a memory leak. Since the View would hold a reference to the old Activity via the Context it was created in.

Use seperate layout to make your logo.
Ex: title.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:background="#drawable/headercon" >
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/headerView"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:scaleType="centerInside"
android:src="#drawable/header" />
</LinearLayout>
This layout can be included in any other layout by using include tag
Ex:
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
...
<include layout="#layout/title" />
...
</RelativeLayout>

Related

Overlay view like YouTube app

I am creating an app which does some tracking on a map. The tracking part works great inside my activity.
However, I want to have some kind of small overlay in the bottom right corner (like the minimalised video playback in the YouTube app) that stays there, even when I switch activities.
I have looked at this, but it's not really what I need. I don't need it to be moveable, and I think this is impossible to keep when switching activities.
Is there some kind of class that I can implement (Widget, Fragment, ...) that would fit my needs?
Thank you,
DebboR
This is a bit late and probably not relevant to you anymore, but maybe somebody else will find this helpful.
I don't think it's possible to switch activities and keep a certain view on screen. How I think this should be done is have a main activity with fragments that swap and in the activity's layout have a view overlay on top of the fragments container.
For example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context=".MainActivity">
<!-- Container for the fragments -->
<FrameLayout
android:id="#+id/fragment_container"
android:layout_below="#id/toolbar"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"/>
<!-- This view will overlay the fragment in the bottom right corner -->
<View
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>
</RelativeLayout>

How to use two activites in a single screen in android?

I want to display two different activities in a single screen how can i do that in android?Please if anybody has idea share it.And I don't wanna use fragments.
I want to display a screen which contains some fields and below(at the bottom of the screen) I want another screen with some buttons.
Is this possible in android?
If so, How can i do this ?
You can't have two activities in one screen. You can have only one. So, ultimate solution is Fragments.
An activity is not directly a visual component, so I'm thinking that what you're really asking is how to have a single activity display different views.
There's nothing that says you can't rerun setContentView() with a different layout/view ID. But there's another non-fragments way of doing what your probably want.
You can define more than one full-size (match_parent) view in a layout. What you want to do is set the visibility for one of them to "visible" with android:visibility="visible" and all the others to "gone" with android:visibility="gone".
Then when you want to switch the displayed view, you'll run setVisibility(View.GONE) on the outgoing view and setVisibility(View.VISIBLE) on the incoming. It's important to use GONE and not INVISIBLE or the layouts won't render correctly.
Sample layout file:
<FrameLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context=".MainActivity" >
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/img"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:visibility="visible" />
<SurfaceView
android:id="#+id/video"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:visibility="gone" />
<WebView
android:id="#+id/web"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:visibility="gone" />
</FrameLayout>
Sample Code to switch view:
video.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
img.setVisibility(View.GONE);
web.setVisibility(View.GONE);
That said, you probably want to learn how to use fragments since you can handle switching the view along with other state in a single unit of work (a transaction). But the above approach above does work for simple view changes.

How do you determine which layout was last used by an activity that switches between multiple layouts?

I'm just starting to use fragments in my app and the idea is one column for screens of a certain width (or less) and two for wider screens. So I have two separate layout files and in the onCreate method of MainActivity I choose which one to show based on the screen width. Since I am interested in the screen width rather than the orientation I can't use the simpler option of 'layout-land'. Both layouts use the same fragments but they can't be hard coded into the layout files because some of them need to be add
added and removed at runtime - thus I use a fragment transaction in the onCreate method to (at the moment) just add the fragments.
The problem comes when the activity is destroyed and recreated. If I don't check for whether savedinstancestate is null, it adds the fragments again (which is to be expected) and everything is doubled up. But if I only do the create code when it's null - as you would if there was only one layout - then when I test screen width again and just use setContentView(one or the other layout) it recreates the one that was shown with no problem but the other is blank. Again that's to be expected because the second one hasn't been instantiated yet. So is it possible to determine from the savedinstancestate which layout was in use when the activity was destroyed? And if it is, is it possible (or safe) to use the information in that to create the other layout - or should I just run the create code again? In other words does the standard savedinstancestate persist all the data I need when more than one layout is in use or will I have to do it all myself?
You can still use resource buckets to contain your layouts. i.e:
use /layout-sw600dp/ that is layout smallest width of 600 dip
From the official documentation
http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/screensizes.html#TaskUseSWQuali
res/layout/main.xml, single-pane (default) layout:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
<fragment android:id="#+id/headlines"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:name="com.example.android.newsreader.HeadlinesFragment"
android:layout_width="match_parent" />
</LinearLayout>
res/layout-sw600dp/main.xml, two-pane layout:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:orientation="horizontal">
<fragment android:id="#+id/headlines"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:name="com.example.android.newsreader.HeadlinesFragment"
android:layout_width="400dp"
android:layout_marginRight="10dp"/>
<fragment android:id="#+id/article"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:name="com.example.android.newsreader.ArticleFragment"
android:layout_width="fill_parent" />
</LinearLayout>

Android: Is it possible to create both Bottom and Top tabs on the screen?

I would like to know if its possible to have different tabs on the top and bottom that lead to different activities when clicked. Googled it but didnt find anything about it.
Thanks
The good thing with Android is that almost everything you want to do should be possible. If we were to alter your XML we would change it to something like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TabHost xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#android:id/tabhost"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent" >
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:orientation="vertical" >
<TabWidget
android:id="#android:id/tabs_top"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_weight="0" />
<FrameLayout
android:id="#android:id/tabcontent"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="0dip"
android:layout_weight="1" />
<TabWidget
android:id="#android:id/tabs_bottom"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_weight="0" />
</LinearLayout>
</TabHost>
Notice that I've changed the ID's of the TabWidgets.
This is only half of the problem. The other half is how the source code for the core class TabHost should altered to accommodate this change.
You can review the source of the original TabHost here. Looking at the source it's pretty obvious the code has a single mTabWidget and this is initialized using the very specific ID = tabs (com.android.internal.R.id.tabs). We've changed the ID's so we should be mindful of this.
So, how can we alter the original source? One approach is to make our own class and extend the core TabHost. This will not be easy because half of the functions and members inside the original TabHost are private (why aren't they protected?!?). Anyways, since you have the source code and it's pretty simple, it's possible to do it.
Let's say your new extended class is MyTabHost (potentially place it in the same package as the original TabHost just so you can access variables/functions which have no private or public), then you can replace in the XML the word TabHost with MyTabHost or com.yourpackage.MyTabHost actually) and then your class will be used in the XML instead of the original.
From looking at the source code, it's obvious that this feature isn't supported by default. But - I think that if you really want to make it happen, you can see a way.

Declaratively defining fragments inside ViewPager

I have 5 unique pages of xml that are fairly complex. I want to put the 5 pages inside a ViewPager. All of the samples I can find simply put identical contents in each page via code. I want to declaratively define the xml in the viewpager like the xml pasted below. But this does not work - the app stops with this xml.
If I can't declaratively define it, then can I load individual xml pages into the viewpager? I can find no examples that do this.
thanks,
Gary Blakely
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<fragment >
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical" >
<ImageView android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" android:id="#+id/imageView1"
android:src="#drawable/flashright" android:adjustViewBounds="true" android:scaleType="fitXY">
</ImageView>
</LinearLayout>
</fragment>
<fragment >
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical" >
<ImageView android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" android:id="#+id/imageView1"
android:src="#drawable/flashleft" android:adjustViewBounds="true" android:scaleType="fitXY">
</ImageView>
</LinearLayout>
</fragment>
If I follow, you want to declare everything in XML and avoid any programmatic initialization from within your Activity containing the ViewPager. The only way I can think of doing this would be to define 3 different Fragment classes which reference 3 different xml layouts. You could then embed them in your above xml, replacing each <Fragment> element with <FragmentX> <FragmentY> <FragmentZ> etc. Personally, I would rather write 3 xml layouts and create a single Fragment implementation that takes a single int argument to designate which layout to load, and then do the small amount of programmatic initialization necessary to make such a solution work. The rationale being that there is less duplicated code.
EDIT:
Another approach that might more fully address your requirements is to replace your <Fragment> tags with <Layout> tags and give them id's. Then in your Activity code, store refs to them, remove them from the View in onCreate() and finally add each of the stored references into programmatically created instances of Fragment which you then add to your ViewPager. Very ugly but thats the only way I know of to declaratively define everything in XML. You'll still have the problem that its not clear from the XML that these elements are nested within a ViewPager so personally I don't see the point. ListView and ListFragment operate with the same kind of implicit association though so its not unprecedented.

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