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Mastering Android Widget Development - Part5 - Final

Fri, 04/23/2010 - 07:15 | by gabor
SDK Version: 
M3

In this last part of the tutorial we will implement buttons to the appWidget, which will directly interact with the appWidget functionality.
We will have 2 buttons, a plus button to add one more day to the target date, and a minus button to decrease time left by one day.

First add the buttons to the countdownwidget.xml layout:

  1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  2. <LinearLayout
  3.   xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  4.   android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  5.   android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:orientation="vertical">
  6.  
  7. <TextView android:id="@+id/TextView01" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Time left"></TextView>
  8. <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/LinearLayout01"; android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:orientation="horizontal">

Mastering Android Widget Development - Part4

Fri, 04/16/2010 - 03:07 | by gabor
SDK Version: 
M3

As described in the previous part, we will use a Service to update the appWidget.
So we will have the Service below, which gets the command (right now we have only the update command), ant the appwidgetId, reads the date from sharedPreferences and updates the widget.

  1. package com.helloandroid.countdownexample;
  2.  
  3. import java.util.Date;
  4.  
  5. import android.app.Service;
  6. import android.appwidget.AppWidgetManager;
  7. import android.content.Intent;
  8. import android.content.SharedPreferences;
  9. import android.os.IBinder;
  10. import android.widget.RemoteViews;
  11.  
  12. public class CountdownService extends Service {
  13.         // command strings to send to service
  14.         public static final String UPDATE = "update";
  15.  
  16.         @Override
  17.         public void onStart(Intent intent, int startId) {
  18.                 //a command, to define what to do, will be important only in the next tutorial part, now there is only update command
  19.                 String command = intent.getAction();
  20.                 int appWidgetId = intent.getExtras().getInt(

Mastering Android Widget Development - Part3

Fri, 04/09/2010 - 08:58 | by gabor
SDK Version: 
M3

I just come to a new discovery regarding widgets. I was developing an appwidget, which - just like the widgets we are trying to make in this series of tutorials - and tried it out multiple phones. Unfortunatelly on one of our test phones it didn't function properly. For random intervals it stopped to refresh, and it din't responded to button presses on the widget, only after 1-2 minutes. After hard work I discivered the following:

Buttons on appwiget can have their onclick flunctionality thorough RemoteViews.setOnClickPendingIntent(). This method gets a PendingIntent ap parametes to bound to a button. PendingIntent's can have 3 types created with

getActivity(Context, int, Intent, int)


getBroadcast(Context, int, Intent, int)


and getService(Context, int, Intent, int).

Mastering Android Widget Development - Part2

Fri, 04/02/2010 - 07:32 | by gabor
SDK Version: 
M3

In Mastering Android Widget Development - Part1 we have gone trough the basics of appwidgets. Now we start to develop the example application, which couts time left to a given date.

First implement the configuration activity. It will contain a DatePicker, an OK button and a Cancel button, defined in the configuration.xml layout:

  1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  2. <LinearLayout
  3.   xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  4.   android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  5.   android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  6.   android:orientation="vertical">
  7.         <DatePicker android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  8.         android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  9.         android:id="@+id/DatePicker">
  10.         </DatePicker>
  11.        
  12.         <LinearLayout
  13.         android:id="@+id/LinearLayout01";
  14.         android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  15.         android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  16.         android:orientation="horizontal">
  17.        

How to configure widget-settings by clicking on widget developer tutorial

Thu, 04/01/2010 - 06:44 | by jozsi
SDK Version: 
M3

Sometimes you need to change your widget settings after you put one to home screen. In my new tutorial I will show an easy way to solve this problem.

How to disable a button on an appwidget?

Wed, 03/03/2010 - 10:18 | by gabor
SDK Version: 
M3

Would you like to disable a button on an appwidget?
As far as I know it can not be done, since the appwiget UI manipulation is limited by the methods of the RemoteViews class.

But if you insist to do that there is a way to make it look like the button were disabled!

RemoteViews can't manipulate a buttons enabled/disabled state, but it can modify its visibility. So the trick is to have two buttons, the real one, and an other which is designed to look like the real one in disabled state, and change witch one is visible.

Lets see a simple example:
We want to have two buttons on the widget, a stop and a start button in order to stop and start some kind of functionality. Once we have started it, we can not start it agin, until we stopped it and vica versa, so we want to disable the button which can not be used right now.

The XML definition of the buttons can be like this:

  1. <Button android:id="@+id/startbutton" android:text="Start" android:visibility="visible" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"></Button>
  2. <Button android:id="@+id/startbutton_disabled" android:text="Start" android:clickable="false" android:textColor="#999999" android:visibility="gone" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"></Button>

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