Building Android preference screen


Some days ago, I started building a Setting Screen for my Android app. Everything was fine, until I opened it on an older Android version. The overview screen had no material design, a thing I would have accepted, if there weren’t those completely destroyed dialogs: Android’s internal preferences are using Android’s internal app.AlertDialogs. Those dialogs in combination with the AppCompat Dialog Theme, which I had applied to them, resulted in a dialog with two frames on older devices (One system default dialog and a material frame around it).
So I decided to switch to the android.support.v7.preference library, only to face a lot more issues.


Including the Library

In order to use the new preferences, we need to import a library. To do so, we add this line to our gradle dependencies (You should change the version number to the latest).

compile 'com.android.support:preference-v7:23.4.0'

Building The Preference Screen

Creating the Preferences

At first, we need to create our preference structure: We create a new XML Android resource file as xml/app_preferences.xml. Now we can add our preference structure to this file. Make sure to add a unique android:keyattribute for each preference. More information: How to build the XML

<android.support.v7.preference.PreferenceScreen
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> 
    <android.support.v7.preference.PreferenceCategory
        android:title="Category 1">          
    <android.support.v7.preference.SwitchPreferenceCompat
            android:key="key1"
            android:title="Switch Preference"
            android:summary="Switch Summary"
            android:defaultValue="true" />
    <android.support.v7.preference.EditTextPreference
            android:key="key2"
            android:title="EditText Preference"
            android:summary="EditText Summary"
            android:dialogMessage="Dialog Message"
            android:defaultValue="Default value" /> 
    <android.support.v7.preference.CheckBoxPreference
            android:key="key3"
            android:title="CheckBox Preference"
            android:summary="CheckBox Summary"
            android:defaultValue="true"/></android.support.v7.preference.PreferenceCategory></android.support.v7.preference.PreferenceScreen>

The v7.preference library provides some preferences we can use: CheckBoxPreference, SwitchPreferenceCompat, EditTextPreference and a ListPreference (and a basic Preference). If we need more than these predefined preferences, we have to build them on our own.

Creating the Preference Fragment

Now we need to create our Preference Fragment, where we can show the preferences from our XML file. We do this by creating a new class, called SettingsFragment, which extends PreferenceFragmentCompat. Since the onCreatePreferences is declared as abstract in the source code of the library, we are forced to include our own implementation to tell the fragment to load our just created app_preferences.xml.

import android.support.v7.preference.PreferenceFragmentCompat;
public class SettingsFragment extends PreferenceFragmentCompat {
@Override
    public void onCreatePreferences(Bundle bundle, String s) {
        // Load the Preferences from the XML file
        addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.app_preferences);
    }
}

We can add this SettingsFragment (v4.app.Fragment), like any other Fragment (e.g. with a FragmentTransaction) to an Activity.

Applying the Preference Theme

Finally we need to specify a preferenceTheme in our Activity’s theme. If we don’t do so, the App will crash with an IllegalStateException.
The v7.preference library provides only one Theme: PreferenceThemeOverlay(You may have a look at its source code). We add this with the following line in our Activity’s theme:

<item name="preferenceTheme">@style/PreferenceThemeOverlay</item>

After we have done this, our result should now look like this.
(The Activity’s parent theme is Theme.AppCompat and the background is set with android:windowBackground)

Settings Screen with PreferenceThemeOverlay

As you can see, it has an oversized font and a horizontal line below the category title. This is definitely not material design.

It more looks like a mixture of material design for the CheckBoxand Switch widgets on the right and an old design for everything else.

This leads us to the next point: Applying the material theme to our settings.

Applying the Material Design Theme

Since there is no material theme in our current preference library, we need to import the v14.preference library. It is strange that Google splitted up these two libraries, because the v14 version is obviously only an addition to the v7.preference library. However, this means for us, that we have to add one more line to our gradle dependencies (You should change the version number to the latest).

compile 'com.android.support:preference-v14:23.4.0'

Now we have access to two more themes: PreferenceThemeOverlay.v14 and PreferenceThemeOverlay.v14.Material (You may have a look at their source code). To use the material theme, we simply change the preferenceTheme in our Activity’s theme.

<item name="preferenceTheme">
    @style/PreferenceThemeOverlay.v14.Material
</item>

A side effect of including the v14.preference library is that we can use a new preference called MultiSelectListPreference (it requires the v7.preference library to work).

Settings Screen with PreferenceThemeOverlay.v14.Material

Our result should look like this. And this time it is full material design.

The font is not oversized anymore and also the horizontal line below the category title has disappeared.

We can change the color of the CheckBox, the Switch and the PreferenceCategory title by changing the colorAccent in our Activity’s theme.


This was only the first step to create a material design Settings Screen. As soon as you open the Alert Dialog of the EditText preference, you will find more design issues.

Continue ReadingBuilding Android preference screen

Motion in android

So earlier this year I attended a talk where the speaker wanted to introduce us to meaningful motion in android apps and he convinced us to use this in our apps as well. Motion came in with Material design, actually not really came but became popular with Material design and since google has added the same kind of motions to their apps as well, developers have started using it.

I love motion, not only does it boost engagement but it’s instantly noticeable. Think of the apps you use that feature motion design and how pleasing, satisfying, fluent and natural they feel to experience. Eg. Zomato, Play music etc.

Now think of some apps that don’t use any kind of motions and you’ll realise they look a bit boring and you as users will always prefer apps with some kind of motion.

Touch

So firstly let’s discover the feedback on touch. It helps to communicate to the user in a visual form that some interaction has been made. But also keep in mind that this animation should be enough for them to gain clarity and encourage further explorations and not distract them.

For adding backgrounds you can use the following :

  • ?android:attr/selectableItemBackground — Show a ripple effect within the bounds of the view.
  • ?android:attr/selectableItemBackgroundBorderless — Show a ripple effect extending the bounds of the view.

View Property Animator

Introduced in API 12, this allows us to perform animated operations (in parallel) on a number of view properties using a single Animator instance

Some of the parameters that can be added to a view are as follows :

  • alpha() -Set the alpha value to be animated to
  • scaleX() & scaleY()— Scales the view on it’s X and / or Y axis
  • translationZ() — Translates the view on its Z axis
  • setDuration()— Sets the duration of the animation
  • setStartDelay() — Sets the delay on the animation
  • setInterpolator() — Sets the animation interpolator
  • setListener() — Set a listener for when the animation starts, ends, repeats or is cancelled.

Now let’s write some code on how to do this on a button for example:

mButton.animate().alpha(1f)
.scaleX(1f)        
.scaleY(1f)        
.translationZ(10f)        
.setInterpolator(new FastOutSlowInInterpolator())        .setStartDelay(200)        
.setListener(new Animator.AnimatorListener() {            
@Override            
public void onAnimationStart(Animator animation) { }             
@Override            
public void onAnimationEnd(Animator animation) { }             
@Override            
public void onAnimationCancel(Animator animation) { }             
@Override            
public void onAnimationRepeat(Animator animation) { }        
})        
.start();

Note : Use ViewCompat class to implement the ViewPropertyAnimator from Android API version 4 and up

Object Animator

Similar to the ViewPropertyAnimator, the ObjectAnimator allows us to perform animations on various properties of the target view (both in code and XML resource files). However, there a couple of differences:

  • The ObjectAnimator only allows animations on a single property per instance e.g.Scale X followed by Scale Y.
  • However, it allows animations on a custom Property e.g. A view’s foreground colour.

Her we need to set the evaluator, set the delay and call start().

private void animateForegroundColor(@ColorInt final int targetColor) {   
    ObjectAnimator animator = ObjectAnimator.ofInt(YOUR_VIEW, FOREGROUND_COLOR, Color.TRANSPARENT, targetColor);                    animator.setEvaluator(new ArgbEvaluator()); animator.setStartDelay(DELAY_COLOR_CHANGE); animator.start();}

Interpolators

An Interpolator can be used to define the rate of change for an animation, meaning the speed, acceleration and behaviour during animating can be altered. Some of them are :

These are some of the basics. there are a lot of other things like

  • Window transitions(Explode, fade, slide etc.)
  • Shared element Transitions
  • Other custom transitions
  • Animated Vector drawables

you can play around with these for a better understanding but be sure to actually try everything on a device/emulator since you’ll get to actually see the changes in the UI and in turn understand better.

Continue ReadingMotion in android

Flavors in Gradle

Ever wondered how do people maintain different versions of the same app on play store with some customisations in each version. For example, Lite version and a pro version which signify free and paid versions with extra features in paid one.

With the arrival of gradle as a build tool, we got gradle flavors which is an excellent way to have some variations in your app versions.

It can also be leveraged to do hermetic testing with prod/mock flavors. Some other examples could be free/paid flavors and stable/experimental flavors etc.

Now let’s talk about on how to proceed :

The process is very simple

  1. Create the flavors in you build.gradle file
android {  
      productFlavors {  
           mock {   
                applicationIdSuffix = ".mock"  
           }  
           prod  
      }  
 }

Here prod and mock are two flavors and the customisations we add are that mock has a applicationIdSuffix. We can also add altogether different applicationIds as well as define a different version for different flavors and a lot of other different things

2. Now we sync the project

If you now open Build Variants tool window either using the quick access menu located in the status bar in the bottom left hand corner of the Android Studio main window or using the Build Variant tool window bar. Once loaded, clicking in the Build Variant cell for the app module should now list the four build variants: mockDebug, mockRelease and prodDebug, prodRelease

After this we get different folders corresponding to the different flavors. We go ahead and add the different folders where we want the changes to occur. For example if I want to show two different maps for two different versions, where one version is for fdroid and another one is for googleplay and hence we replace google maps with OpenStreet Maps in the fdroid version. Hence, We add res/values and res/layout folders for different resources and we also add different java folders and add the classes that would be different for both the flavors. Since both of these will require different set of permissions we can also add AndroidManifest.xml for these were we define the permissions etc. we want.

Not that we only add the changes for each file. All the other essential things can be added from the Main flavor of the android project.

Any variable available through your code

Another thing to know is that the you can have add variables like this so that you can use different variables for different flavors. For examle if you have different api’s and different options for each flavor like if you want to report crashes in one of the flavors and not in other. Here HOST variable is not the only one you can expose in your code. You can do it with whatever you want:

prod {  
    applicationId "zuul.com.android"
    buildConfigField 'String', 'HOST', '"http://api.zuul.com"'
    buildConfigField 'String', 'FLAVOR', '"prod"'
    buildConfigField "boolean", "REPORT_CRASHES", "true"
}

You can access them as follows:

BuildConfig.HOST  
BuildConfig.FLAVOR  
BuildConfig.REPORT_CRASHES

So I think this is a really useful thing to know and is used in almost every app. We all need some configuration differences in our apps and gradle flavors is the best way to go about it. Go nuts with your imagination on the usage of flavors 😛

Adios!

Continue ReadingFlavors in Gradle

Using the new Awareness API

Google released the new Awareness API for everyone, a suite of signals concurring to gives the developer the context in which our user is, all as part of the Play Services 9.2.0, already available on Android devices around the globe.

This library combines 7 different feeds managing both the battery drain and the used memory, providing us with data such as user location, weather, time, headphones connection status, places, nearby beacons and currently performing activity.

INTRO

The Awareness API comes with two different versions, one is a callback based one (Fence API) and the other one is a polling based one (Snapshot API): while the first one will notify us when the conditions we specified are met, the second expects us to query the suite for the data from a unified interface.

There are 7 kinds of context that we can work with in Awareness API such as

Time — Local time at current user’s location

Location — Latitude/Longitude

Place — Places around user

Activity — Detected user activity (biking, walking, running, etc.)

Beacons — Check nearby beacon(s)

Headphones — Are headphones plugged in?

Weather — Current weather conditions

Now the Two set’s of API’s :

  • Snapshot API — Allows you to “request an information based on user’s context” as listed above.
  • Fence API — Allows you to “receive a signal when user’s context has changed and reaches the condition” through callback function, for example, if user moves closed to the specific coordinate with headphones plugged in, Fench API will call the registered BroadcastReceiver and let you do your job.

Getting started

  1. Create a project in https://console.developers.google.com (or in case you already have one, you can use it instead)
  2. And then browse to API Manager page and search for Awareness and click at Awareness API and Click Enable and wait until it finishes enabling

3. Go to Credentials tab and click at Create credentials -> API key -> Android key. Enter the name you project, for example, Android key and click Create (or if you have already created Android key previously, you could skip this step and use the existed one)

4. Add dependency in build.gradle

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-contextmanager:9.2.0'

5. Open AndroidManifest.xml file and add meta-data to <application> tag like this:

        <meta-data
            android:name="com.google.android.awareness.API_KEY"
            android:value="YOUR_KEY" />
        <meta-data
            android:name="com.google.android.geo.API_KEY"
            android:value="YOUR_KEY" />
        <meta-data
            android:name="com.google.android.nearby.messages.API_KEY"
            android:value="YOUR_KEY" />

We also need to add permissions for this:

6. Open AndroidManifest.xml

    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION" />
    <uses-permission android:name="com.google.android.gms.permission.ACTIVITY_RECOGNITION" />

Now we come to the actual java code. open your activity and initialise the GoogleApiClient in onCreate()

private GoogleApiClient mGoogleApiClient;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_layout);

        mGoogleApiClient = new GoogleApiClient.Builder(this)
                .addApi(Awareness.API)
                .build();
        mGoogleApiClient.connect();
    }

So this ends the setup part. Now we move on to the actual data retrieval from the API.

Accessing Snapshot API

Awareness.SnapshotApi.getDetectedActivity(mGoogleApiClient)
                .setResultCallback(new ResultCallback<DetectedActivityResult>() {
                    @Override
                    public void onResult(@NonNull DetectedActivityResult detectedActivityResult) {
                        if (!detectedActivityResult.getStatus().isSuccess()) {
                            Log.e(TAG, "Could not get the current activity.");
                            return;
                        }
                        ActivityRecognitionResult ar = detectedActivityResult.getActivityRecognitionResult();
                        DetectedActivity probableActivity = ar.getMostProbableActivity();
                        Log.i(TAG, probableActivity.toString());
                    }
                });

This will return the most probable activity done by the user. We can get a particular activity like walking, running, driving as well by integers defined below

    public static final int IN_VEHICLE = 0;
    public static final int ON_BICYCLE = 1;
    public static final int ON_FOOT = 2;
    public static final int STILL = 3;
    public static final int UNKNOWN = 4;
    public static final int TILTING = 5;
    public static final int WALKING = 7;
    public static final int RUNNING = 8;

Similarly we can also get Headphone state, location, weather, beacon etc.

For example let’s see headphone state:

Awareness.SnapshotApi.getHeadphoneState(mGoogleApiClient)
                .setResultCallback(new ResultCallback<HeadphoneStateResult>() {
                    @Override
                    public void onResult(@NonNull HeadphoneStateResult headphoneStateResult) {
                        if (!headphoneStateResult.getStatus().isSuccess()) {
                            Log.e(TAG, "Could not get headphone state.");
                            return;
                        }
                        HeadphoneState headphoneState = headphoneStateResult.getHeadphoneState();
                        if (headphoneState.getState() == HeadphoneState.PLUGGED_IN) {
                            Log.i(TAG, "Headphones are plugged in.\n");
                        } else {
                            Log.i(TAG, "Headphones are NOT plugged in.\n");
                        }
                    }
                });

This is same as acquiring activity and headphoneState.getState() will give you if it is plugged in or not

Now we take a look at the Fence API

Fence is similar to the geofence but in addition to geofence, the fence API also allows us to set awareness conditions and check if both conditions are true.

We use a BroadcastReceiver

private static final String FENCE_RECEIVER_ACTION = "FENCE_RECEIVE";

    private HeadphoneFenceBroadcastReceiver fenceReceiver;
    private PendingIntent mFencePendingIntent;


    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        ...

        fenceReceiver = new HeadphoneFenceBroadcastReceiver();
        Intent intent = new Intent(FENCE_RECEIVER_ACTION);
        mFencePendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(MainActivity.this,
                10001,
                intent,
                0);
    }

    private void registerFences() {
        // Create a fence.
    }

    private void unregisterFence() {
    }

    @Override
    protected void onStart() {
        super.onStart();
        registerFences();
        registerReceiver(fenceReceiver, new IntentFilter(FENCE_RECEIVER_ACTION));
    }

    @Override
    protected void onStop() {
        super.onStop();
        unregisterFences();
        unregisterReceiver(fenceReceiver);
    }

    class HeadphoneFenceBroadcastReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {

        @Override
        public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {

        }

    }

Here when we get message in onReceive() and we can detect if headphone is connected or not. Something like this

FenceState fenceState = FenceState.extract(intent);

            Log.d(TAG, "Fence Receiver Received");

            if (TextUtils.equals(fenceState.getFenceKey(), "headphoneFenceKey")) {
                switch (fenceState.getCurrentState()) {
                    case FenceState.TRUE:
                        Log.i(TAG, "Fence > Headphones are plugged in.");
                        break;
                    case FenceState.FALSE:
                        Log.i(TAG, "Fence > Headphones are NOT plugged in.");
                        break;
                    case FenceState.UNKNOWN:
                        Log.i(TAG, "Fence > The headphone fence is in an unknown state.");
                        break;
                }
            }

So as you can see this is pretty straight forward and very useful. You can build so many apps with multiple fences. You can think of a lot of usecases for this and make a lot of amazing apps. Happy Tinkering with the Awareness API!

Continue ReadingUsing the new Awareness API

Bottoms sheets in android

Hey Guys I recently used Bottom sheets, so that I should write a blog about it because I don’t see a lot of developers using this in their app UI’s.

It’s a very interesting UI element. A Bottom Sheet is a sheet of material that slides up from the bottom edge of the screen. Displayed only as a result of a user-initiated action, and can be swiped up to reveal additional content. It can be a temporary modal surface or a persistent structural element of an app.

This component was introduced in the Android Design Support library 23.2. Many apps like Google Maps use the bottom sheet, in which a sliding window pops up from the bottom of the screen. Also the Google play music app uses. When we drag up the sheet we see the song details as well as the current playlist.

Usage of expanded and collapsed Bottom sheets in Android

There are 3 states of Bottom sheets :-

  • Expanded — When the sheet is completely visible.
  • Collapsed — When the sheet is partially visible.
  • Hidden — When the sheet is completely hidden.

Step 1 is we need to import the latest design support library. Put this line in your app level build.gradle file.

compile ‘com.android.support:design:23.2.0’

Then one should create a new Blank Activity (not Empty Activity) in Android Studio. It sets up the CoordinatorLayout by default.

So now there ate two layouts created by default namely activity_main.xml and content_main.xml.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
app:layout_behavior="@string/appbar_scrolling_view_behavior"
tools:context="yet.best.bottomsheets.MainActivity"
tools:showIn="@layout/activity_main">

<Button
android:id="@+id/open"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
android:layout_margin="5dp"
android:text="Open Bottom Sheet" />

<Button
android:id="@+id/collapse"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_below="@+id/open"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
android:layout_margin="5dp"
android:text="Collapse Bottom Sheet" />

<Button
android:id="@+id/hide"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_below="@+id/collapse"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
android:layout_margin="5dp"
android:text="Hide Bottom Sheet" />

</RelativeLayout>

Notice that 3 Buttons have been created in this layout to perform different actions with the bottom sheets.

activity_main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<android.support.design.widget.CoordinatorLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:fitsSystemWindows="true"
tools:context="yet.best.bottomsheets.MainActivity">

<android.support.design.widget.AppBarLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:theme="@style/AppTheme.AppBarOverlay">

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
android:id="@+id/toolbar"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
app:popupTheme="@style/AppTheme.PopupOverlay" />

</android.support.design.widget.AppBarLayout>

<include layout="@layout/content_main" />

<include
android:id="@+id/bottom_sheet"
layout="@layout/bottomsheet_main" />

<android.support.design.widget.FloatingActionButton
android:id="@+id/fab"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_margin="@dimen/fab_margin"
android:src="@android:drawable/ic_dialog_email"
app:layout_anchor="@id/bottom_sheet"
app:layout_anchorGravity="top|right|end" />

</android.support.design.widget.CoordinatorLayout>

Those who aren’t familiar with the coordinator layout — basically there is a base level layout activity_main which contains the FloatingButton and within this layout including content_main.xml which will contain the rest of the layout. Notice that one also has to include bottomsheet_main.xml. This layout contains our bottom sheet layout which will be created next.

Create a new layout file called bottomsheet_main.xml

bottomsheet_main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="300dp"
android:background="#d3d3d3"
app:behavior_hideable="true"
app:behavior_peekHeight="70dp"
app:layout_behavior="@string/bottom_sheet_behavior">

<TextView
android:id="@+id/heading"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_margin="7dp"
android:text="Collapsed"
android:textSize="18sp" />

<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_centerInParent="true"
android:text="Main Content"
android:textSize="20sp" />

</RelativeLayout>

This layout is how our bottom sheet will actually look. You can design it as you want.

Now for the actual java code. This is the easiest part actually. Just set listeners to the 3 buttons created and perform the corresponding action with the bottom sheet.

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

BottomSheetBehavior bottomSheetBehavior;
Button open, collapse, hide;
TextView heading;
@Override
 protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
  Toolbar toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.toolbar);
  setSupportActionBar(toolbar);

View bottomSheet = findViewById(R.id.bottom_sheet);
  bottomSheetBehavior = BottomSheetBehavior.from(bottomSheet);

setup();
 }

private void setup() {
  open = (Button) findViewById(R.id.open);
  collapse = (Button) findViewById(R.id.collapse);
  hide = (Button) findViewById(R.id.hide);
  heading = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.heading);

//Handling movement of bottom sheets from buttons
  open.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
   @Override
   public void onClick(View view) {
    bottomSheetBehavior.setState(BottomSheetBehavior.STATE_EXPANDED);
    heading.setText("Welcome");
    heading.setTextColor(ContextCompat.getColor(MainActivity.this, R.color.colorPrimary));
   }
  });

collapse.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
   @Override
   public void onClick(View view) {
    bottomSheetBehavior.setState(BottomSheetBehavior.STATE_COLLAPSED);
    heading.setText("Collapsed");
    heading.setTextColor(ContextCompat.getColor(MainActivity.this, R.color.colorAccent));
   }
  });

hide.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
   @Override
   public void onClick(View view) {
    bottomSheetBehavior.setState(BottomSheetBehavior.STATE_HIDDEN);
   }
  });

//Handling movement of bottom sheets from sliding
  bottomSheetBehavior.setBottomSheetCallback(new BottomSheetBehavior.BottomSheetCallback() {
   @Override
   public void onStateChanged(View bottomSheet, int newState) {
    if (newState == BottomSheetBehavior.STATE_COLLAPSED) {
     heading.setText("Collapsed");
     heading.setTextColor(ContextCompat.getColor(MainActivity.this, R.color.colorAccent));
    } else if (newState == BottomSheetBehavior.STATE_EXPANDED) {
     heading.setText("Welcome");
     heading.setTextColor(ContextCompat.getColor(MainActivity.this, R.color.colorPrimary));
    }
   }

@Override
   public void onSlide(View bottomSheet, float slideOffset) {}
  });
 }
}

We just use the bottomSheetBehavior.setState() method to set the relevant state on each button click.

The bottom sheets can also be dragged by touch gestures. One can simply touch the sheet and drag them up or down. For these touch gestures to be handled one has to implement the onStateChanged() listener. This listener is fired everytime the state of the sheet changes by gestures. Whenever this triggers it checks the state of the bottom sheet and again do the desired action which user would have done by the button clicks.

As you can see, this is a pretty neat UI solution and can be implemented so easily. Go try it out for yourself. Adios!

Continue ReadingBottoms sheets in android

Handling data in android

So this week I was working with getting some data from the sqlite database in android and someone who was a beginner in android also asked me to help him with the same. I asked him what he knew and he said that even after reading up a lot he wasn’t able to figure out what exactly to do with the data he wants to save and use in his app. I have seen that this is a problem with a lot of people starting to develop android apps. So, I decided to write a blog on how can you handle your data in your android apps.

Most of the android apps need to save data even if only to save some user preferences. So primarily there are 3 ways to save your data :

  1. In form of key values (SharedPreferences)
  2. Reading/Writing to files
  3. Writing to a database

So let’s go step by step. When we need to store just some preferences of the users like if they want notifications or what kind of theme they want : light or dark etc. So basically if we want to store a key value in the persitant storage of the app we can do that using SharedPreferences. To use sharedpreferences, we initialise the sharedpreference object like

SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);

in oncreate and cache it. Then we just need to add or retrieve what we want using this cached SharedPreferences object. To Add a key value pair :

sharedPreferences.edit().putString("someKey", "someValue").apply();

Also you can put all kinds of stuff here. For example right now we added a string with key “someKey” and Value “someValue”. We can also add Booleans, Floats, Ints, Longs, StringSets etc.

To retrieve the same value we do something like this

sharedPreferences.getString("someKey", "DefaultValue");

Now if you want some logs or some values that can be exported and sent to your server, you should write them to files and maybe read some json inputs etc. as well.

Basically android has a File system similar to other platforms. All android devices have two file storage areas : “Internal” and “external” storage. The difference between them is as follows :

Internal :

  • Always available
  • Files saved here are accesible by only your app
  • When user uninstalls the app, system removes all your app’s files from internal storage

Best to use this when you want to be sure that neither the user nor the other app’s can access your files

External :

  • It’s not always available because user can mount external storage as USB storage and remove it as well
  • It’s readable by anything(Other apps, users etc.)
  • When you uninstall, system removes your app’s files from here only if you save them in the directory from getExternalFilesDir()

Now to read and write files, you need extra permissions

  • android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE
  • android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

So now let’s get down to it. How do I save and read files in my app?

You first initialise the File object

File file = new File(context.getFilesDir(), filename);

This will create a file with filename in the internal storage. For external storage

first check if the storage is available, then just create a file using getExternalStoragePublicDirectory

File file = new File(Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(
            Environment.DIRECTORY_PICTURES), albumName);
    if (!file.mkdirs()) {
        Log.e(LOG_TAG, "Directory not created");
    }
    return file;

This is for writing public files.

Now we move onto the most used part in an android app which is a database.Android has a built in SQLite database package which helps us in writing databases in files with syntax similar to SQL.

You need to add 2 classes which are mandatory and another class which basically helps you get organised. So the first is a Contract. This is where you actually write statements that will be executed later on to initialise or create the tables we want. For this make an a static abstract inner class that implements BaseColums like

public static abstract class Microlocation implements BaseColumns {
    public static final String TABLE_NAME = "microlocation";

    public static final String ID = "id";

    public static final String NAME = "name";

    public static final String LATITUDE = "latitude";

    public static final String LONGITUDE = "longitude";

    public static final String FLOOR = "floor";

    public static final String[] FULL_PROJECTION = {
            ID,
            NAME,
            LATITUDE,
            LONGITUDE,
            FLOOR

    };

    public static final String CREATE_TABLE =
            "CREATE TABLE " + TABLE_NAME
                    + " ("
                    + ID + INT_TYPE + PRIMARY_KEY + COMMA_SEP
                    + NAME + TEXT_TYPE + COMMA_SEP
                    + LATITUDE + REAL_TYPE + COMMA_SEP
                    + LONGITUDE + REAL_TYPE + COMMA_SEP
                    + FLOOR + INT_TYPE
                    + " );";

    public static final String DELETE_TABLE = "DROP TABLE IF EXISTS " + TABLE_NAME;


}

Here we are making static final Strings for column names and then creating a static final String CREATE_TABLE which is basically a statement that creates the table Microlocation with the specified key, columns, data types etc.

After adding this structure for all the tables we want to have in our database, we move on to adding a DbHelper class that extends SQLiteOpenHelper which basically has two Abstract methods called onCreate(SQLiteDatabase db) and onUpgrade(SQLiteDatabase db) which are called when the database is created and database version is changed respectively. We call all our CREATE_TABLE static Strings in onCreate which in turn creates all the tables. Something like this :

@Override
public void onCreate(SQLiteDatabase db) {
    db.execSQL(DbContract.Speakers.CREATE_TABLE);
    db.execSQL(DbContract.Sponsors.CREATE_TABLE);
    db.execSQL(DbContract.Sessions.CREATE_TABLE);
    db.execSQL(DbContract.Tracks.CREATE_TABLE);
    db.execSQL(DbContract.Sessionsspeakers.CREATE_TABLE);
    db.execSQL(DbContract.Event.CREATE_TABLE);
    db.execSQL(DbContract.Microlocation.CREATE_TABLE);
    db.execSQL(DbContract.Versions.CREATE_TABLE);
    db.execSQL(DbContract.Bookmarks.CREATE_TABLE);
    db.execSQL(DbContract.EventDates.CREATE_TABLE);
}

You can also call DELETE_TABLE Strings in onUpgrade and the call onCreate again if you like but it’s not compulsory.

Now that you’re database is initialised, let’s add some records into it. For example I have to add a new Micrlocation I’d create a method in my data model where I’ll add a basic structure for the query and then format it with the values for a particular object of the model. Something, like this

public String generateSql() {
    String insertQuery = "INSERT INTO %s VALUES ('%d', %s, '%f', '%f', '%d');";
    return String.format(Locale.ENGLISH,
            insertQuery,
            DbContract.Microlocation.TABLE_NAME,
            id,
            DatabaseUtils.sqlEscapeString(StringUtils.optionalString(name)),
            latitude,
            longitude,
            floor);
}

and then I’d execute the string returned by the call

String query = model.generateSql();

by this

public void insertQuery(String query, DbHelper mDbHelper) {
    SQLiteDatabase db = mDbHelper.getWritableDatabase();
    db.beginTransaction();
    db.execSQL(query);
  
    db.setTransactionSuccessful();
    db.endTransaction();
}

Where db is just a SQLiteDatabase instance.

Now that we have records we want to retrieve them according to usage and for that we create helper methods. This is an example of the retrieving all the microlocations added to the database in ASCENDING order of NAME

public ArrayList<org.fossasia.openevent.data.Microlocation> getMicrolocationsList(SQLiteDatabase mDb) {
    String sortOrder = DbContract.Microlocation.NAME + ASCENDING;
    Cursor cursor = mDb.query(
            DbContract.Microlocation.TABLE_NAME,
            DbContract.Microlocation.FULL_PROJECTION,
            null,
            null,
            null,
            null,
            sortOrder
    );

    ArrayList<org.fossasia.openevent.data.Microlocation> microlocations = new ArrayList<>();
    org.fossasia.openevent.data.Microlocation microlocation;

    cursor.moveToFirst();
    while (!cursor.isAfterLast()) {
        microlocation = new org.fossasia.openevent.data.Microlocation(
                cursor.getInt(cursor.getColumnIndex(DbContract.Microlocation.ID)),
                cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex(DbContract.Microlocation.NAME)),
                cursor.getFloat(cursor.getColumnIndex(DbContract.Microlocation.LATITUDE)),
                cursor.getFloat(cursor.getColumnIndex(DbContract.Microlocation.LONGITUDE)),
                cursor.getInt(cursor.getColumnIndex(DbContract.Microlocation.FLOOR))
        );
        microlocations.add(microlocation);
        cursor.moveToNext();
    }
    cursor.close();
    return microlocations;
}

First we create a cursor and then just iterate of the cursor to get microlocation objects and add them to an Arralist and return the Arraylist to the calling method.

So This are most of the things that are there to handling data in Android. Should be sufficient to get you started.

Sorry for the long post but the content couldn’t be made any smaller but I hope you gain something from this post. You can checkout implementations I have followed for the Open event project in the github repo https://github.com/fossasia/open-event-android. You can also write to me anytime on FB, Twitter, Email etc. and I’ll be happy to answer any queries. Adios!

References : 1) developers.android.com

2) https://github.com/fossasia/open-event-android

Continue ReadingHandling data in android

UI Testing in Android


Testing in android is something that most people simply don’t do. When I first started with developing android apps, I followed the same dev cycle :

  • Develop a feature
  • deploy to a device
  • manual testing for bugs and errors
  • fix these issues due to wrong implementation
  • then again deploy and manually test and so on……

Trust me it’s a tedious process and no one actually can test for the corner cases that may arise. You may be able to cover like 85% of the cases for each feature but when there are a ton of features you’ll collectively cover much less than 85% as well. So, We should definitely write tests for android. I’ll start with Espresso testing first.

Quote from the Android developer website:


“Testing user interactions within a single app helps to ensure that users do not encounter unexpected results or have a poor experience when interacting with your app. You should get into the habit of creating user interface (UI) tests if you need to verify that the UI of your app is functioning correctly.

The Espresso testing framework, provided by the Android Testing Support Library, provides APIs for writing UI tests to simulate user interactions within a single target app. Espresso tests can run on devices running Android 2.2 (API level 8) and higher. A key benefit of using Espresso is that it provides automatic synchronization of test actions with the UI of the app you are testing. Espresso detects when the main thread is idle, so it is able to run your test commands at the appropriate time, improving the reliability of your tests. This capability also relieves you from having to adding any timing workarounds, such as a sleep period, in your test code.

The Espresso testing framework is an instrumentation-based API and works with theAndroidJUnitRunner test runner.”


Getting started

We first need to setup espresso in android studio. That can be done by adding this to the app level build.gradle

dependencies {
    ...
    androidTestCompile 'com.android.support.test.espresso:espresso-core:2.2.1'
}

After adding this dependency and setting up testing on android, now we can move on to write some tests. We start by adding a new class in androidTest where we will actually write the tests. There are 3 parts to writing an espresso test :

  1. ViewMatchers: Find a view to act/assert upon something
  2. ViewActions: something to perform an action(click, type etc.)
  3. ViewAssertion: something to verify what you expect

Components

  1. For writing tests in espresso we just have to use these three parts to see if the ui is working as it should.

    Let’s say we want to type some text in an edittext and see if the text we have typed is as we expect it to be.

    To start, we’ll see how we use viewMatchers. We need to find a view in ViewMatchers. For that, we will do something like this

    withId(R.id.edittext_id)

    Now we perform a click on this eddittext

    perform(typeText("Hello"))

    Now we join the two by wrapping in onView()

    onView(withId(R.id.edittext_id)).perform(typetext("Hello"))

    This will just type “Hello” in the edittext with the id eddittext_id, now we need to check if this is what was actually expected, for that we will have to further a viewAssertion on this like this :

    onView(withText("Hello")).check(matches(isDisplayed()));

    This is a cheatsheet that shows various methods that can be used in espresso.

    So this is how we can perform basic ui tests using espresso. Mainly people face the issue of deciding on the views that we have to perform this action on. Just think of the 3 components that we have previously talked about (View matching, View action and View assertions), if you think a view can have all three of these, then you can write a test for it. Go ahead and try it for yourself. Cheers!


Continue ReadingUI Testing in Android

Working with Styles and Themes in Android

All those who have worked with styles and themes know that they’re hard to get right. We tend to get frustrated when we work with them. The hierarchy easily devolves into spaghetti code. How often did you want to change a style but feared you might break the continuity of the design of the app somewhere or the other.

I ran into a similar situation recently. I had to change the whole app’s style’s and theme by just changing the colors etc. in one location. This was for the Open Event android project where we wanted that while generating an apk by the apk generator we could change the color scheme of the app and could make it customisable for the needs of the organisations.

So, I’ll be talking about styling different views in this post. This shall be a long post!

When should we use styles

First of all, most of us get confused on when should we use styles instead of an inline attribute. Now I am going to show the rules that I follow:

When you have multiple views that should look identical ( Perhaps that do similar things)

Few Examples :

  • Payment screens. You want to get the user through a bunch of ordering and payment screens. You need similar kind of buttons there to make it look like a continuous process. Hence we make the Buttons follow one particular style
<style name="Payment_Buttons">
    <item name="android:minWidth">@dimen/button_min_width</item>
    <item name="android:minHeight">@dimen/button_min_height</item>
    <item name="android:background">@color/my_choice_color</item>
</style>

Try to use themes to tweak default styles

Themes provide a way of defining the default style of many widgets. For example :

If you want to define the default button for all of your payment screens in the example above, you can do something like :

<style name="ButtonTheme">
    <item name="android:buttonStyle">@style/MyButton</item>
</style>

But note that if you’re tweaking the default style, the only tricky part is to figure out the parent of your style but that’s really dificult due to a lot of variation within the different versions of android. If you’re using something that’s part of the AppCompat, then it’s okay. you don’t need to worry about the variations but when you want to style something not in AppCompat, then the main problem arises. So For example I want a button to be Holo until kitkat and then Material starting Lollipop, I’ll do something like this :

In values/styles.xml –

<style name="ButtonParent" Parent = "android:Widget.Holo.Button" />
<style name="ButtonParent.Holo">
    <item name="android:background">@drawable/my_bg</item>
</style>

Then in values-v21/styles.xml:

<style name="ButtonParent" parent ="android:Widget.Material.Button/>

This makes the button consistent with guidelines and the app looks perfect.

Now, Themes vs Styles

This is a topic which most of the developers don’t know about. They get confused on what is the difference between them. I was also not totally clear about this until recently. A theme is infact a style, the only difference is the usage.

  • We set a theme in the Manifest of the app or an activity
  • We set a style in a layout file or a widget
  • There are more styles than themes (Checkout styles.xml and themes.xml)
  • Definition of a theme is in the essence jsut a collection of references to stlyes that the theme will use.
  • To elaborate, let’s see the example of Theme.Holo :

It has a combination of

  1. Widget.Holo.Button
  2. Widget.Holo.Button.Small
  3. TextAppearence.Holo.Small
  4. TextAppearence.Holo.Small.Inverse

So, There can be different styles like this which can be referenced in a theme. Themes can be divided into 2 parts : General themes and sub themes

You can have a general them like Theme.ABC and if you want a variation of this general theme, for example no actionbar, you can add another theme like Theme.ABC.NoActionBar . This theme will not have the ActionBar

Inheritance

One of the interesting things that most people don’t know about is inhertance of styles/themes. What do I mean by this is that you can use existing styles and create some variations to suit different needs. There are 2 ways to use this inheritance. I’m going to try to explain and elorate on them :

  1. With a parent attribute

This is the most common way to use it and the way that most of the developers learn it while working on styles for the first time.

So how actually do we use it?

<style name = "Child" parent = "@style/Parent">
</style>

Here the child inherits all the properties of the style with the name “Parent” and define new properties in this style name “Child” where they can define new properties they want on top of the parent style.

2. With implicit style names

The other way to inherit styles/themes using the implicit way. Instead of setting a parent attribute, just prefix your new style/theme with the name of its parent and a dot. Something like this :

<style name = "Parent.Child">
</style>

This works the same as the previous method. Using this reduces some time to write additional parameter and is used by almost all experienced developers.

Plus you get some checks as well while writing code in Android studio. But be careful while using this as you need to take care of somethings :

For example,

  • The Parent style/theme needs to exist, Otherwise an error
  • You cannot inherit default themes and styles. For example you can’t create
<style name = "Theme.Holo.myTheme">

but you do this

<style name = "myTheme" parent = "Theme.Holo">

I know this can be overwhelming for a person who’s just starting with styles and themes. Trust me I was also not able to understand the concepts on the first go. I had to spend some time to grasp all that can be done using styles and themes. So I think this should be it for this blog. It’s already gotten pretty big.

Be sure to check out the Open event android project here and the usage of styles and themes there. Ciao till next time!

Continue ReadingWorking with Styles and Themes in Android

Uploading json assets and icons to your app via the app generator

If you have tried out our app generator webpage, you should’ve noticed an option that allows you to upload a zip file which will contain the json for the event.

Why do we need this?

Well, this is needed because not every event organizer can maintain a server and API endpoints which contain the details for their event, so they can simply generate a json for the event by exporting it through the options provided to them on Google Spreadsheets and then they can upload them on the server, so that these files can be packaged in the android and web apps.

Implementation :

The implementation is pretty straightforward and consists of 3 parts :

  1. Making changes to the html file to allow user to upload the zip
<tr>
  <td valign="top">
    <label for="sessions">Zip containing .json files</label>
  </td>
  <td valign="top">
    <input accept=".zip" type="file" id="uploadZip" name="sessions">
  </td>
</tr>

2. Retrieve this file in the javascript and then make an AJAX call to the server

var file_data = $('#uploadZip').prop('files')[0];
 var form_data = new FormData();                 
 form_data.append('file', file_data);
 $.ajax({
            
                  url: '/upload.php', // point to server-side PHP script
                  cache: false,
                  contentType: false,
                  processData: false,
                  data: form_data,                         
                  type: 'post',
                  success: function(php_script_response){
                    // do something
                  }
                });

So here, the form_data contains the details about the file to be uploaded.

In the AJAX call, upload.php takes reads form_data variable and then initiates the upload to the server.

3. Setup a PHP script on the server to respond to the above AJAX call

<?php
    if ( 0 < $_FILES['file']['error'] ) {
        echo 'Error: ' . $_FILES['file']['error'] . '<br>';
    }
    else {
        move_uploaded_file($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], "/var/www/html/uploads/upload.zip"); 
    }
?>

Here in the PHP script, the file is read and uploaded to a temporary directory in the server.

We then manually copy it to a location and name of our choice.

In case there are multiple users accessing the website and uploading their assets at the same time, we need to pass a timestamp variable to the AJAX call to and later on use it while renaming the uploaded file.

This is to ensure that the file uploaded by one user is not overwritten by another user.

How do we use this data during app compilation

The uploaded zip is then uncompressed and its contents are moved to the assets folder of the android app’s directory.

zip_ref = zipfile.ZipFile(path_to_zip_file, 'r')
zip_ref.extractall(directory)
zip_ref.close()
#TODO: Change path here
for f in os.listdir(directory+ "/zip"):
	if f.endswith('.json'):
		copyfile(f, directoy + "open-event-android/android/app/src/main/assets/"+f)
	elif f.endswith('.png'):
		copyfile(f, directory + "open-event-android/android/app/src/main/res/drawable"+f)
replace(directory+"/open-event-android/android/app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml", 'mipmap/ic_launcher', 'drawable/' + f)

Here replace is a function that searches in the source file for the phrase supplied as it’s argument and changes it with the new phrase.

Now when the app is compiled and ran on a user’s device, it will first search for a json file in the assets directory and if it exists, use that for fetching the data instead of making a network call. For this I have used Gson to first parse the offline files otherwise retrofit makes request to the api and fetches the data from there.

But if there is no json in the assets folder, a normal network call using retrofit will be made and the data will be fetched from the API defined by the user.

Continue ReadingUploading json assets and icons to your app via the app generator

How to parse json assets with gson

So most of us have json assets in our app which we parse on runtime to get the data and use it accordingly but what I have seen is that most of the people create a JSONObject or JSONArray after reading the json into an inputstream but then handling it becomes difficult since we have to manually extract every entity in each array which makes it bound to a lot of errors. A better approach to using it is making use of gson : an open source library by Google to serialise and deserialise Java object to (and from) Json. It’s pretty easy to use and makes the development process easy. For those of you not still convinced on using gson, I’d like to demonstrate the code we had to write to without using gson and the one using gson as well.

So to start with lets see the json file we’ll be using. It’s the events.json file from the open event project.

{
  "events": [
    {
      "color": "#fdfdfd",
      "email": "dev@fossasia.org",
      "end_time": "2015-07-14T00:00:00",
      "id": 4,
      "latitude": 37.783839,
      "location_name": "Moscone centre",
      "logo": "http://mysecureshell.readthedocs.org/en/latest/_images/logo_redhat.png",
      "longitude": -122.400546,
      "name": "FOSSASIA",
      "slogan": "Fossasia",
      "start_time": "2015-05-28T13:00:00",
      "url": "www.google.com"
    }
  ]
}

As you can see it has an object that has an array of event objects. So what we’ll first do is that we’ll get the whole json as a string by openeing an inputstream and then directing it to a buffer. Then we convert the buffer array to a string object.

String json = null;
try {
    InputStream inputStream = getAssets().open("events.json");
    int size = inputStream.available();
    byte[] buffer = new byte[size];
    inputStream.read(buffer);
    inputStream.close();
    json = new String(buffer, "UTF-8");

} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Now we have the json as a string which we can now parse it using a combination of JSONObject and JSONArray. First we’ll access data in the outer json object i.e. “events”. That’ll be done by

JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject(json);
JSONArray events = jsonObject.getJSONArray("events");

Now that we have the array, we can traverse it to get the objects inside events array

for (int j=0; j < events.length(); j++){
    JSONObject cit = events.getJSONObject(j);
    String color = jsonObject.getString("color");
    String email = jsonObject.getString("email"); 
    String endTime = jsonObject.getString("end_time");
    String id = jsonObject.getString("id");
    String latitude = jsonObject.getString("latitude");
    String locationName = jsonObject.getString("location_name");
    String logo = jsonObject.getString("logo");
    String longitude = jsonObject.getString("longitude");
    String name = jsonObject.getString("name");
    String slogan = jsonObject.getString("slogan");
    String startTime = jsonObject.getString("start_time");
    String url = jsonObject.getString("url");
}

This is how we go about it. Now for the exiting part.

We already have an Event data class which has the constructor, getters and setters etc.

public class Event {

    int id;

    String name;

    String email;

    String color;

    String logo;

    @SerializedName("start_time")
    String start;

    @SerializedName("end_time")
    String end;

    float latitude;

    float longitude;

    @SerializedName("location_name")
    String locationName;

    String url;

    String slogan;

    public Event(int id, String name, String email, String color, String logo, String start,
                 String end, float latitude, float longitude, String locationName, String url, String slogan) {
        this.id = id;
        this.name = name;
        this.email = email;
        this.color = color;
        this.logo = logo;
        this.start = start;
        this.end = end;
        this.latitude = latitude;
        this.longitude = longitude;
        this.locationName = locationName;
        this.url = url;
        this.slogan = slogan;
    }

    public String getEmail() {
        return email;
    }

    public void setEmail(String email) {
        this.email = email;
    }

    public String getColor() {
        return color;
    }

    public void setColor(String color) {
        this.color = color;
    }

    public String getUrl() {
        return url;
    }

    public void setUrl(String url) {
        this.url = url;
    }

    public String getSlogan() {
        return slogan;
    }

    public void setSlogan(String slogan) {
        this.slogan = slogan;
    }

    public int getId() {

        return id;

    }

    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getLogo() {
        return logo;
    }

    public void setLogo(String logo) {
        this.logo = logo;
    }

    public String getStart() {
        return start;
    }

    public void setStart(String start) {
        this.start = start;
    }

    public String getEnd() {
        return end;
    }

    public void setEnd(String end) {
        this.end = end;
    }

    public float getLatitude() {
        return latitude;
    }

    public void setLatitude(float latitude) {
        this.latitude = latitude;
    }

    public float getLongitude() {
        return longitude;
    }

    public void setLongitude(float longitude) {
        this.longitude = longitude;
    }

    public String getLocationName() {
        return locationName;
    }

    public void setLocationName(String locationName) {
        this.locationName = locationName;
    }

}

Now here we name the parameters to the same as that in the json we have or we can just add @SerializedName(entity_name). Then we go to the code for actually retrieving the data from the json file using this data class. How we can do that is by first making a class that’ll get the array of events for us.

public class EventResponseList {
    @SerializedName("events")
    public List<Event> event;
}

Now all we do is

EventResponseList eventResponseList = gson.fromJson(json, EventResponseList.class);

We have a list of events that were in the json array.

Voila! That’s it. It’s so easy to get a list of all the events from the JSONArray and since the library is available for gradle, it’s even better. You can just add

compile 'com.google.code.gson:gson:2.7'

to your build.gradle dependencies and you’re good to go. Cheers!

Continue ReadingHow to parse json assets with gson