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Implementing Progress Bar in PSLab App

This blog is a step by step guide on how to make a functional progress bar in an Android app by taking an example of the progress bar implemented in PSLab Android application. The example is based on my work done in PSLab Android repository under PR #1077 and so it will only demonstrate making a simple progress bar (both linear and circular) and not the one showing progress in percentage too.

How progress bar was implemented in the PSLab app?

Both horizontal and circular progress bar is available in the Material Design Library provided by Google in Android Studio. So, no extra dependencies are needed.

Just drag and drop the progress bar of whichever shape necessary i.e. circular or horizontal, directly on the screen available in the Design tab as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Design tab in Android Studio

There are two ways to use the progress bar available in the Material Design Library.

  • To show a loading screen
  • To show the progress of a process

Loading Screen

Loading Screens are used when the time that will be taken by the process is not known. So, an indeterminate circular progress bar is used to show that some process is going on and so the user needs to wait.

Layout

A circular progress bar is used for this process and so drag and drop the circular progress bar as shown in figure 1. Now set the position, height, and width of the progress bar in the layout as necessary. To set the color of the progress bar, use attribute android:indeterminateTint

Backend

To implement this type of functionality, use the setVisibility function to show the progress bar while some process is taking place in the backend and immediately remove it as soon as the result is ready to be displayed. To make the progress bar visible use progressBar.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE) and to make it invisible use progressBar.setVisibility(View.GONE)

Showing Progress

This is a very common type of process and is used by most of the apps. A horizontal progress bar is used to show the actual progress of the process taking place in the backend on a scale of 0-100 (the scale may vary) where 0 means the process hasn’t started and 100 means the result is now ready to be displayed.

Layout

Horizontal Progress bars are used for this type of usage. So, drag and drop the horizontal progress bar as shown in figure 1. Now set the position, height, and width of the progress bar in the layout as necessary. Different styles of the progress bar can be found in the documentation [1].

Backend

Initially, set the progress of the bar to 0 as no process is taking place by using method setProgress(). Now as soon as the process starts, to increase the progress by a fixed value, use progressBar.incrementProgressBy() method and to set the progress directly, use progressBar.setProgress() method.

So in this way, a progress bar can be implemented in an Android application. Other features like adding custom designs and animations can be done by making the necessary shapes and animations respectively and using the functions available in the documentation [1].

Resources

  1. https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ProgressBar – Documentation of Progress Bar

 

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