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Development with Android Gingerbread and Eclipse This tutorial describes how to create Android applications with Eclipse. It is based on Eclipse 3.7 (Indigo), Java 1.6 and Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).
Table of Contents 1. What is Android? 1.1. Android Operation System 1.2. Google Play 1.3. Security and permissions 2. Android components 2.1. Activity 2.2. Views and ViewGroups 2.3. Intents 2.4. Services 2.5. ContentProvider 2.6. BroadcastReceiver 2.7. (HomeScreen) Widgets 2.8. Other 3. Android Development Tools 3.1. What are the Android Development Tools? 3.2. Dalvik Virtual Machine 3.3. How to develop Android Applications 4. Android Application Architecture 4.1. AndroidManifest.xml 4.2. R.java and Resources 4.3. Assets 4.4. Activities and Layouts 4.5. Reference to resources in XML files 4.6. Activities and Lifecycle 4.7. Configuration Change 4.8. Context 5. Installation 5.1. Eclipse 5.2. Pre-requisites for using a 64bit Linux 5.3. Install ADT Plug-ins and Android SDK 5.4. Manually install Android SDK 5.5. Install a specific Android version 5.6. Android Source Code 6. Android virtual device - Emulator 6.1. What is the Android Emulator? 6.2. Google vrs. Android AVD 6.3. Emulator Shortcuts 6.4. Performance 6.5. Hardware button 7. Tutorial: Create and run Android Virtual Device 8. Error handling and typical problems 8.1. Clean Project 8.2. Problems with Android Debug Bridge (adb)
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Tutorials Trainings Books Social 8.5. Timeout during deployment 8.6. Install failed due to insufficient storage 8.7. Debug Certificate expired 8.8. Error message for @override 8.9. Missing Imports 8.10. Eclipse Tips 9. Conventions for the tutorials 9.1. API version, package and application name 9.2. Warnings Messages for Strings 9.3. Android Exercises and Tutorials 10. Your first Android project 10.1. Create Project 10.2. Two faces of things 10.3. Create attributes 10.4. Add UI Elements 10.5. Edit UI properties 10.6. Code your application 10.7. Start Project 11. Starting an deployed application 12. Menus and Action Bar 12.1. Definition of menu entries 12.2. Action bar tabs 12.3. Context menus 13. Tutorial: Menus and Action Bar 13.1. Project 13.2. Add a menu XML resource 14. Preferences 15. Tutorial: Preferences 15.1. Using preferences 15.2. Run 16. Layout Manager and ViewGroups 16.1. Available Layout Manager 16.2. LinearLayout 16.3. RelativeLayout 16.4. Gridlayout 16.5. ScrollView 17. Tutorial: ScrollView 18. Styling 18.1. Overview 18.2. Example 19. Supporting different screen sizes 19.1. Using device independent pixel 19.2. Using resource qualifiers 20. Fragments 20.1. Overview 20.2. When to use Fragments 21. Fragments Tutorial 21.1. Overview 21.2. Create project 21.3. Create layouts for portrait mode 21.4. Create Fragment classes 21.5. Create layouts for landscape mode 21.6. Activities 21.7. Run 22. DDMS perspective and important views 22.1. DDMS - Dalvik Debug Monitor Server 22.2. LogCat View 22.3. File explorer 23. Shell 23.1. Android Debugging Bridge - Shell 23.2. Uninstall an application via adb 23.3. Emulator Console via telnet 24. Deploy your application on a real device 25. Thank you 26. Questions and Discussion 27. Links and Literature 27.1. Source Code 27.2. Android Resources 27.3. vogella Resources
1. What is Android?
1.1. Android Operation System
Android is an operating system based on Linux with a Java programming interface. The Android Software Development Kit (Android SDK) provides all necessary tools to develop Android
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run Android programs. Android is currently primarily developed by Google. Android allows background processing, provides a rich user interface library, supports 2-D and 3-D graphics using the OpenGL libraries, access to the file system and provides an embedded SQLite database. Android applications consist of different components and can re-use components of other applications, if these applications declare their components as available. This leads to the concept of a task in Android; an application can re-use other Android components to archive a task. For example you can write an application which integrates a map component and a camera component to archive a certain task.
2. Android components
The following gives a short overview of the most important Android components.
2.1. Activity
Activity represents the presentation layer of an Android application. A simplified (and slightly incorrect)
description is that an Activity is a screen. This is slightly incorrect as Activities can be displayed as Dialogs or can be transparent. An Android application can have several Activities.
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A ViewGroup is responsible for arranging other Views e.g. a ViewGroup is a layout manager. The base class for a layout manager is android.view.ViewGroups. ViewGroup also extends View. ViewGroups can be nestled to create complex layouts. You should not nestle ViewGroups too deeply as this has a negative impact on the performance.
2.3. Intents
Intents are asynchronous messages which allow the application to request functionality from other
components of the Android system, e.g. from Services or Activities. An application can call a component directly (explicit Intent ) or ask the Android system to evaluate registered components for a certain Intent (implicit Intents ). For example the application could implement sharing of data via an Intent and all components which allow sharing of data would be available for the user to select. Applications register themselves to an Intent via an IntentFilter.
Intents allow to combine loosely coupled components to perform certain tasks.
2.4. Services
Services perform background tasks without providing a user interface. They can notify the user via the
2.5. ContentProvider
ContentProvider provides a structured interface to application data. Via a ContentProvider your
application can share data with other applications. Android contains an SQLite database which is frequently used in conjunction with a ContentProvider to persist the data of the ContentProvider.
2.6. BroadcastReceiver
BroadcastReceiver can be registered to receive system messages and Intents. A BroadcastReceiver
will get notified by the Android system, if the specified situation happens. For example a BroadcastReceiver could get called once the Android system completed the boot process or if a phone call is received.
display some kind of data and allow the user to perform actions via them. For example a Widget could display a short summary of new emails and if the user selects an email, it could start the email application with the selected email.
2.8. Other
Android provide many more components but the list above describes the most important ones. Other Android components are "Live Folders" and "Live Wallpapers". Live Folders display data on the homescreen without launching the corresponding application.
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applications. Dalvik uses an own bytecode format which is different from Java bytecode. Therefore you cannot directly run Java class files on Android, they need to get converted in the Dalvik bytecode format.
The package attribute defines the base package for the Java objects referred to in this file. If a Java object lies within a different package, it must be declared with the full qualified package name. Google Play requires that every Android application uses its own unique package. Therefore it is a good habit to use your reverse domain name as package name. This will avoid collisions with other Android applications.
android:versionName and android:versionCode specify the version of your application. versionName is
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value by one, if you roll-out a new version of your application. The tag <activity> defines an Activity, in this example pointing to the Convert class in the
de.vogella.android.temperature package. An intent filter is registered for this class which defines that
application directory on the Android device. The @string/app_name value refers to resource files which contain the actual value of the application name. The usage of resource file makes it easy to provide different resources, e.g. strings, colors, icons, for different devices and makes it easy to translate applications. The "uses-sdk" part of the "AndroidManifest.xml" file defines the minimal SDK version for which your application is valid. This will prevent your application being installed on devices with older SDK versions.
R.java is automatically created by the Eclipse development environment, manual changes are not necessary and will be overridden by the tooling.
4.3. Assets
While the res directory contains structured values which are known to the Android platform, the assets directory can be used to store any kind of data. In Java you access this data via the AssetsManager and the
getAssets() method .
If a View needs to be accessed via Java code, you have to give the View a unique ID via the android:id attribute. To assign a new ID to a View use @+id/yourvalue. The following shows an example in which a
Button gets the "button1" ID assigned.
By conversion this will create and assign a new yourvalue ID to the corresponding View. In your Java code you can later access a View via the method findViewById(R.id.yourvalue).
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definition. It also allows the definition of different layouts for different devices. You can also mix both approaches.
4.8. Context
The class android.content.Context provides the connections to the Android system. It is the interface to global information about the application environment. Context also provides access to Android Services, e.g. the Location Service. Activities and Services extend the Context class and can therefore be used as
Context.
5. Installation
5.1. Eclipse
The following assume that you have already Java and Eclipse installed and know how to use Eclipse. For an introduction into Eclipse please see the following tutorial: Eclipse IDE Tutorial. The tutorial above also describes how to install new components into Eclipse. This is required to install the Android Development Tools. You find the necessary steps described in the following section of the tutorial: Eclipse Update Manager. The author of this text has also published a Kindle book on the usage of the Eclipse IDE, which can be found here: Eclipse IDE Book for Kindle.
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The Android SDK is 32bit, therefore on an 64bit Linux system you need to have the package ia32-libs installed. For Ubuntu you can do this via the following command.
apt-get install ia32-libs
Please check your distribution documentation, if you are using a different flavor of Linux.
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The dialog allows you to install new packages and also allows you to delete them. Select "Available packages" and open the "Third Party Add-ons". Select the Google API 15 (Android 4.0.3) version of the SDK and press "Install".
Press the "Install" button and confirm the license for all packages. After the installation completes, restart Eclipse.
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5.6.2. Prior to Android 4.0 For earlier versions Haris Peco maintains plugins, which provide the Android Source code code. Use the Eclipse update manager to install the Android Source plugin from the following update site: "http://adtaddons.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/source/com.android.ide.eclipse.source.update". More details can be found on the project website.
6.4. Performance
The graphics of the emulator are rendered in software, which is very slow. To have a responsive emulator use a small resolution for your emulator, as for example HVGA. Also if you have sufficient memory on your computer, add at least 1 GB of memory to your emulator. This is the value "Device ram size" during the creation of the AVD. Also set the flag "Enabled" for Snapshots. This will save the state of the emulator and let it start much faster.
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We can also select the box "Enabled" for Snapshots. This will make the second start of the virtual device much faster. At the end press the button "Create AVD". This will create the AVD configuration and display it under the "Virtual devices". To test if your setup is correct, select your device and press "Start". After (a long time) your AVD starts. You are able to use it via the mouse and via the virtual keyboard of the emulator.
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8.3. LogCat
The "LogCat" View shows you the log messages of your Android device and help you analyze problems. For example Java exceptions in your program would be shown here. To open this view, select Window Show View Other Android LogCat.
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"de.vogella.android.example.test". The Application name, which must be entered on the Android project generation wizard, will not be predefined. Choose a name you like.
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While "res" contains structured values which are known to the Android platform the directory "assets" can be used to store any kind of data. In Java you can access this data via the AssetsManager and the method getAssets().
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Add also the following "String" attributes. String attributes allow the developer to translate the application at a later point. Table 1. String Attributes
Name celsius fahrenheit calc Value to Celsius to Fahrenheit Calculate
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Right-click on the text object Hello World, Hello! in the layout. Select Delete on the popup menu to remove the text object. Then, from the Palette view, select Text Fields and locate Plain Text. Drag this onto the layout to create a text input field. All object types in the section "Text Fields derive from the class "EditText", they just specify via an additional attribute which text type can be used. Now select the Palette section Form Widgets and drag a RadioGroup object onto the layout. The number of radio buttons added to the radio button group depends on your version of Eclipse. Make sure there are two radio buttons by deleting or adding radio buttons to the group. From the Palette section Form Widgets, drag a Button object onto the layout. The result should look like the following.
Switch to "main.xml" and verify that your XML looks like the following.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <EditText android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/editText1" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:text="EditText"></EditText> <RadioGroup android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/radioGroup1" android:layout_width="match_parent"> <RadioButton android:text="RadioButton" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/radio0" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:checked="true"></RadioButton> <RadioButton android:text="RadioButton" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/radio1" android:layout_height="wrap_content"></RadioButton> </RadioGroup>
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From now on I assume you are able to use the properties menu on the UI elements. You can either edit the XML file or modify the properties via right mouse click. Set the property "Checked" to true for the first RadioButton. Assign "calc" to the text property of your button and assign "myClickHandler" to the "onClick" property. Set the "Input type" property to "numberSigned" and "numberDecimal" on your EditText.
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LinearLayout. Right-click on an empty space in Graphical Layout mode, then select Other Properties All by Name Background. Select Color and then myColor in the list.
Switch to the "main.xml" tab and verify that the XML is correctly maintained.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:background="@color/myColor"> <EditText android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/editText1" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:inputType="numberDecimal|numberSigned"></EditText> <RadioGroup android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/radioGroup1" android:layout_width="match_parent"> <RadioButton android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/radio0" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="@string/celsius" android:checked="true"></RadioButton> <RadioButton android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/radio1" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="@string/fahrenheit"></RadioButton> </RadioGroup> <Button android:id="@+id/button1" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="@string/calc" android:onClick="myClickHandler"></Button> </LinearLayout>
public class ConvertActivity extends Activity { private EditText text; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); text = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText1); } // This method is called at button click because we assigned the name to the // "On Click property" of the button public void myClickHandler(View view) { switch (view.getId()) { case R.id.button1: RadioButton celsiusButton = (RadioButton) findViewById(R.id.radio0); RadioButton fahrenheitButton = (RadioButton) findViewById(R.id.radio1); if (text.getText().length() == 0) {
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Type in a number, select your conversion and press the button. The result should be displayed and the other option should get selected.
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The option menu and the action bar of your activity is filled by the method onCreateOptionsMenu() of your activity. The ActionBar also shows an icon of your application. You can also add an action to this icon. If you select this icon the onOptionsItemSelected() method will be called with the value android.R.id.home. The recommendation is to return to the main Activity in your program.
// If home icon is clicked return to main Activity case android.R.id.home: Intent intent = new Intent(this, OverviewActivity.class); intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP); startActivity(intent); break;
In this method you can create the menu programmatically or you can use a pre-defined XML resources which you inflate via the MenuInflator class. Each Activity has already an instance of the class available and this instance can get accessed via the getMenuInflator() method. The onCreateOptionsMenu() method is only called once. If you want to influence the menu later you have to use the onPrepareOptionsMenu() method.
discarded after its usage. The Android platform may also add options to your View, e.g. EditText provides context options to select text, etc.
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Select your project, right click on it and select New Other Android Android XML File to create a new XML resource. Select the option "Menu", enter as File "mainmenu.xml" and press the button "Finish".
This will create a new file "mainmenu.xml" in the folder "res/menu" of your project. Android provides a nice editor to edit this file, unfortunately this editor is not always automatically used due to bugs in the ADT. If that happens, you can open this editor manually. Right-click on your menu file and select Open with Android Menu Editor. Switch if necessary to the "Layout" tab of the editor. Press Add and select "Item". Maintain the following value. This defines the entries in your menu. We will also define that the menu entry is displayed in the action bar if there is sufficient space available.
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Change your Activity class "OverviewActivity" to the following. The OnCreateOptionsMenu method is used to create the menu. The behavior in "onOptionsItemSelected" is currently hard-coded to show a Toast and will soon call the preference settings. In case you want to disable or hide menu items you can use the method "onPrepareOptionsMenu" which is called every time the menu is called.
package de.vogella.android.socialapp; import import import import import import android.app.Activity; android.os.Bundle; android.view.Menu; android.view.MenuInflater; android.view.MenuItem; android.widget.Toast;
public class OverviewActivity extends Activity { @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); } @Override public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) { MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater(); inflater.inflate(R.menu.mainmenu, menu); return true; } @Override public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) { Toast.makeText(this, "Just a test", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); return true; } }
Run your application. As there is enough space in the action bar your item will be displayed there. If there would be more items you could press "Menu" on the emulator to see them. If you select the menu item you should see a small info message.
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The two "Preference" buttons are not yet active. We will use them in the next chapter.
14. Preferences
Android supports the usage of Preferences to allow you to save data for your application. Preferences are stored as key values. The definition of Preferences can also be done via an XML resource. Android provides the class "PreferenceActivity" which extends the class Activity. PreferenceActivity supports the simple handling of preferences. This activity can load a preference definition resources via the method addPreferencesFromResource(). To communicate between different components Android uses Intents. Typically the PreferenceActivity is started from another activity via an Intent. In your application you can access the preference manager via the following:
SharedPreferences preferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);
Values can get access via the key of the preference setting.
String username = preferences.getString("username", "n/a");
To create or change preferences you have to call the edit() methods. Once you have changed the value you have to call commit() to apply your changes.
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Open the file via right-mouse click and Open-with Android XML Resource Editor. Press Add, add a "PreferenceCategory" and add two preferences "EditTextPreferences" to this category : "User" and "Password".
You can also enter values for other properties of EditTextField, e.g. the inputMethod.
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Create the class MyPreferencesActivity which extends PreferenceActivity. This Activity will load the "preference.xml" file and will allow the user to change the values.
package de.vogella.android.socialapp; import android.os.Bundle; import android.preference.PreferenceActivity; public class MyPreferencesActivity extends PreferenceActivity { @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.preferences); } }
To make this class available as an activity for Android you need to register it in your "AndroidManifest.xml" file. Select "AndroidManifest.xml" and the tab "Application". Scroll to the botton of the view and add your new activity via the "Add" button.
To make use of our new preference activity and the preference values we adjust the "OverviewActivity". The first button will show the current values of the preferences via a Toast and the second button will revert the maintained user name to demonstrate how you could change the preferences via code.
package de.vogella.android.socialapp; import import import import import import import import import import import import android.app.Activity; android.content.SharedPreferences; android.content.SharedPreferences.Editor; android.os.Bundle; android.preference.PreferenceManager; android.view.Menu; android.view.MenuInflater; android.view.MenuItem; android.view.View; android.view.View.OnClickListener; android.widget.Button; android.widget.Toast;
public class OverviewActivity extends Activity { SharedPreferences preferences; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); Button button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.Button01); // Initialize preferences preferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this); button.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { String username = preferences.getString("username", "n/a"); String password = preferences.getString("password", "n/a"); showPrefs(username, password); } }); Button buttonChangePreferences = (Button) findViewById(R.id.Button02); buttonChangePreferences.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { updatePreferenceValue(); }
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To open the new preference Activity we will use the onOptionsItemSelected() method. Even though we currently have only one option in our menu we use a switch to be ready for several new menu entries. To see the current values of the preferences we define a button and use the class PreferenceManager to get the sharedPreferences.
@Override public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) { MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater(); inflater.inflate(R.menu.mainmenu, menu); return true; } // This method is called once the menu is selected @Override public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) { switch (item.getItemId()) { // We have only one menu option case R.id.preferences: // Launch Preference activity Intent i = new Intent(OverviewActivity.this, MyPreferencesActivity.class); startActivity(i); // Some feedback to the user Toast.makeText(OverviewActivity.this, "Enter your user credentials.", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); break; } return true; }
15.2. Run
Run your application. Press the "menu" hardware button and then select your menu item "Preferences". You should be able to enter your user settings then press the back hardware button to return to your main activity. The saved values should be displayed in a small message windows (Toast) if you press your first button. If you press the second button the username should be reversed.
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All layouts allow the developer to define attributes. Children can also define attributes which may be evaluated by their parent layout.
AbsoluteLayoutLayout is deprecated and TableLayout can be implemented more effectively via GridLayout
16.2. LinearLayout
LinearLayout puts all its child elements into a single column or row depending on the android:orientation attribute. Possible values for this attribute are horizontal and vertical, horizontal is the default value. LinearLayout can be nested to achieve more complex layouts.
16.3. RelativeLayout
RelativeLayout allow to position the widget relative to each other. This allows for complex layouts.
A simple usage for RelativeLayout is if you want to center a single component. Just add one component to the RelativeLayout and set the android:layout_centerInParent attribute to true.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:orientation="vertical" > <ProgressBar android:id="@+id/progressBar1" style="?android:attr/progressBarStyleLarge" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_centerInParent="true" />
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16.4. Gridlayout
GridLayout was introduced with Android 4.0. This layout allows you to organize a view into a Grid. GridLayout
separates its drawing area into: rows, columns, and cells. You can specify how many columns you want for define for each View in which row and column it should be placed and how many columns and rows it should use. If not specified GridLayout uses defaults, e.g. one column, one row and the position of a View depends on the order of the declaration of the Views.
16.5. ScrollView
ScrollViews can be used to contain one view that might be to big to fit on one screen. If the view is to big the ScrollView will display a scroll bar to scroll the context. Of course this view can be a layout which can then contain other elements.
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package de.vogella.android.scrollview; import import import import android.app.Activity; android.os.Bundle; android.view.View; android.widget.TextView;
public class ScrollView extends Activity { /** Called when the activity is first created. */ @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); TextView view = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.TextView02); String s=""; for (int i=0; i < 100; i++) { s += "vogella.de "; } view.setText(s); } }
The attribute "android:fillViewport="true"" ensures that the scrollview is set to the full screen even if the elements are smaller then one screen and the "layout_weight" tell the android system that these elements should be extended.
18. Styling
18.1. Overview
Styles in Android allow to define the look and feel of Android application in external files. These styles can get assigned to the complete Applications, Activitities or Views. You can define styles in XML and assign them to these elements. This way you only have to set common attributes once and can later change the look in one central place.
18.2. Example
The following "styles.xml" XML file would be created in the "/res/xml" folder.
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You assign the style attribute to your elements, for example to the text elements via style=@style/text.
20. Fragments
20.1. Overview
Fragment components allow you to organize your application code so that it is easier to support different sized
devices.
Fragments are components with their own lifecycle and their own user interface. They can be defined via
stopped; if an Activity is destroyed its Fragments will also get destroyed. If a Fragment component is defined in an XML layout file, the android:name attribute points to the
Fragments class.
The base class for Fragments is android.app.Fragment. For special purposes you can also use more special classes, like ListFragment or DialogFragment. The onCreateView() method is called by Android once the Fragment should create its user interface. Here you can inflate an layout. The onStart() method is called once the Fragment gets visible.
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add the action to the history stack of the Activity, i.e. this will allow to revert the Fragment changes in the
Activity via the back button.
handsets (phones) and multi-pane layouts for tablets. This is not limited to tablets; for example you can use Fragments also to support different layout for landscape and portrait orientation. But as tablets offer significantly more space you typically include more views into the layout and Fragments makes that easier. The typical example is a list of items in an activity. On a tablet you see the details immediately on the same screen on the right hand side if you click on item. On a handset you jump to a new detail screen. The following discussion will assume that you have two Fragments (main and detail) but you can also have more. We will also have one main activity and one detailed activity. On a tablet the main activity contains both Fragments in its layout, on a handheld it only contains the main fragment. To check for an fragment you can use the FragmentManager.
DetailFragment fragment = (DetailFragment) getFragmentManager(). findFragmentById(R.id.detail_frag); if (fragment==null || ! fragment.isInLayout()) { // start new Activity } else { fragment.update(...); }
To create different layouts with Fragments you can: Use one activity, which displays two Fragments for tablets and only one on handsets devices. In this case you would switch the Fragments in the activity whenever necessary. This requires that the fragment is not declared in the layout file as such Fragments cannot be removed during runtime. It also requires an update of the action bar if the action bar status depends on the fragment. Use separate activities to host each fragment on a handset. For example, when the tablet UI uses two Fragments in an activity, use the same activity for handsets, but supply an alternative layout that includes just one fragment. When you need to switch Fragments, start another activity that hosts the other fragment. The second approach is the most flexible and in general preferable way of using Fragments. In this case the main activity checks if the detail fragment is available in the layout. If the detailed fragment is there, the main activity tells the fragment that is should update itself. If the detail fragment is not available the main activity starts the detailed activity. It is good practice that Fragments do not manipulate each other. For this purpose a Fragment typically implements an interface to get new data from its host Activity.
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Change the existing "main.xml" file. This layout will be used by MainActivity in landscape mode and shows two Fragments.
<?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="fill_parent" android:orientation="horizontal" > <fragment android:id="@+id/listFragment" android:layout_width="150dip" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:layout_marginTop="?android:attr/actionBarSize" class="de.vogella.android.fragments.ListFragment" ></fragment> <fragment android:id="@+id/detailFragment" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" class="de.vogella.android.fragments.DetailFragment" > <!-- Preview: layout=@layout/details --> </fragment> </LinearLayout>
public class ListFragment extends android.app.ListFragment { @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); } @Override public void onActivityCreated(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onActivityCreated(savedInstanceState); String[] values = new String[] { "Android", "iPhone", "WindowsMobile", "Blackberry", "WebOS", "Ubuntu", "Windows7", "Max OS X", "Linux", "OS/2" };
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public class DetailFragment extends Fragment { @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); Log.e("Test", "hello"); } @Override public void onActivityCreated(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onActivityCreated(savedInstanceState); } @Override public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) { View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.details, container, false); return view; } public void setText(String item) { TextView view = (TextView) getView().findViewById(R.id.detailsText); view.setText(item); } }
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Also create the "details_activity_layout.xml" layout file. This layout will be used in the DetailActivity which is only used in portrait mode. Please note that we could have create this file also in the "layout" folder, but as it is only used in portrait mode it is best practise to place it into this folder.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:orientation="vertical" > <fragment android:id="@+id/detailFragment" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" class="de.vogella.android.fragments.DetailFragment" /> </LinearLayout>
21.6. Activities
Create a new Activity called DetailActivity with the following class.
package de.vogella.android.fragments; import import import import android.app.Activity; android.content.res.Configuration; android.os.Bundle; android.widget.TextView;
public class DetailActivity extends Activity { @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); // Need to check if Activity has been switched to landscape mode // If yes, finished and go back to the start Activity if (getResources().getConfiguration().orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE) { finish(); return; } setContentView(R.layout.details_activity_layout); Bundle extras = getIntent().getExtras(); if (extras != null) { String s = extras.getString("value"); TextView view = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.detailsText); view.setText(s); } } }
package de.vogella.android.fragments; import android.app.Activity; import android.os.Bundle; public class MainActivity extends Activity { /** Called when the activity is first created. */ @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); } }
21.7. Run
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to switch the orientation. In horizontal mode you should see two Fragments. If you select an item in portrait mode a new Activity should get started with the selected item. In horizontal mode your second Fragment should display the select item.
23. Shell
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You can access your Android emulator also via the console. Open a shell, switch to your "android-sdk" installation directory into the folder "tools". Start the shell via the following command "adb shell".
adb shell
You can also copy a file from and to your device via the following commands.
// Assume the gesture file exists on your Android device adb pull /sdcard/gestures ~/test // Now copy it back adb push ~/test/gesture /sdcard/gestures2
This will connect you to your device and give you Linux command line access to the underlying file system, e.g. ls, rm, mkdir, etc. The application data is stored in the directory "/data/data/package_of_your_app". If you have several devices running you can issue commands to one individual device.
# Lists all devices adb devices #Result List of devices attached emulator-5554 attached emulator-5555 attached # Issue a command to a specific device adb -s emulator-5554 shell
For more information on the emulator console please see Emulator Console manual
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version on your phone. To select your phone, select the "Run Configurations", select "Manual" selection and select your device.
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Android Developer Homepage Android Issues / Bugs Android Google Groups Android Live Folder
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