Snackbar Implementation in PSLab Android App

In PSLab android app we have developed the functionality of logging sensor data in CSV format. We can start and stop the data recording using the save button in the upper right corner of the menu bar and toast message was shown to notify the user for logging status whether it is started or stopped but it leads to some problem like:-

  • The user doesn’t know where the logged file has been created in the external storage.
  • If the user accidentally clicked on the save button the data logging will start the user have to manually go the storage location and delete the recently created unwanted CSV file.

What’s the solution?

The solution to both these problem is solved by implementing Snackbar instead of Toast message.

According to Material Design documentation:-

The Snackbar widget provides brief feedback about an operation through a message at the bottom of the screen. Snackbar disappears automatically, either after a timeout or after a user interaction elsewhere on the screen, and can also be swiped off the screen.

Snackbar can also offer the ability to perform an action, such as undoing an action that was just taken or retrying an action that had failed.

 

Figure 1 shows a Snackbar sample
(Source: – https://material.io/develop/android/components/snackbar/ )

 

To implement the Snackbar in our Android app I started by creating a custom snack bar class which contains all the code to create and show the Snackbar on the screen.

public class CustomSnackBar {

   public static void showSnackBar(@NonNull CoordinatorLayout holderLayout,  
                                   @NonNull String displayText,
                                   String actionText, 
                                   View.OnClickListener clickListener){
       
   Snackbar snackbar =     
              Snackbar.make(holderLayout,displayText,Snackbar.LENGTH_LONG)
              .setAction(actionText, clickListener);

  //do your customization here
}

The custom class contains a static method ‘showSnackBar()’ having parameters:

Parameter Return Type Description
holderLayout CoordinatorLayout Container layout in which the snack bar will be shown at the bottom (should not be null)
displayText String Text to be displayed in the content of Snackbar (should not be null)
actionText String Clickable text which has some action associated with it
clickListener View.OnClickListener On click listener specifying an action to be performed when actionText is clicked

 

Inside the method, I called the static make()  method provided by the Snackbar class and passed holderlayout, displayText and duration of Snackbar in this case Snackbar.LENGTH_LONG as parameters.

Then I called setAction() and passed in the actionText and the clickListener as parameters in it to set the action text. If we pass in null no action text will be generated.

Then, if we want to changes the action text color we can do that by calling setActionTextColor() and passing in the desired color.

snackbar.setActionTextColor(ContextCompat.getColor(holderLayout.getContext(), R.color.colorPrimary));

And if we want to change the content text color then we need to first get the view then we need to get the instance of TextView containing the content text using findViewById() and passing android.support.design.R.id.snackbar_text which is default ID for context TextView, and then call setTextColor() to set the desired color.

View sbView = snackbar.getView();
   TextView textView =     
             sbView.findViewById(android.support.design.R.id.snackbar_text);
       textView.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
   }

So, now our Snackbar engine is complete now we need to call CustomSnackBar class static method showSnackbar() in our sensor data logger.

For doing this I replaced all the instances of the Toast message with the ‘CustomSnackBar’ by passing in the desired messages that were being passed in Toast message.

But I still need to find the location of our stored CSV file and a method to delete the current generated CSV file.

For that, I did below modification to the CSVLogger class in PSLab android app.

public class CSVLogger {
   private static final String CSV_DIRECTORY = "PSLab";
   public CSVLogger(String category) {
       this.category = category;
       setupPath();
   }
   /*Below methods are included at the bottom of the class */
   public String getCurrentFilePath() {
       return Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsolutePath() +
               File.separator + CSV_DIRECTORY + File.separator + category;
   }
   public void deleteFile() {
       csvFile.delete();
   }
}

Now for passing the location of the stored file and implementing delete option, I called the below method when the CSV logging is stopped by the user:

CustomSnackBar.showSnackBar((CoordinatorLayout) parent.findViewById(R.id.cl),

                    “CSV File stored at” + " " +lux_logger.getCurrentFilePath(),
  
                    “DELETE”,

                    new View.OnClickListener() {
                              Override
                              public void onClick(View view) {
                                             lux_logger.deleteFile();    
                              });

By doing this I get a Snackbar as shown in Figure 2, clicking on the “DELETE” text deletes the current CSV file.

Figure 2 shows snackbar showing file stored location and delete option

 

So, implementing Snackbar helped to make the app interactive and keeps user notified and control the data logging.

Resources

  1. https://www.journaldev.com/10324/android-snackbar-example-tutorial – Android SnackBar example implemetation tutorial
  2. https://material.io/develop/android/components/snackbar/ – Android Material Desing implementation of Snackbar.
Continue ReadingSnackbar Implementation in PSLab Android App

Snackbar for Error Handling in Twitter Followers Insight loklak App

In this blog post am going to explain how the Twitter Followers Insight app handles error which occurs when when no query is passed to the “Search” function i.e., when the search is proceeded with an empty query.

How to handle the Exception

In such cases, I have used SNACKBAR / TOAST. Snackbar / Toast is used to popup an error notification on the screen when an exception occurs.

Script for Snackbar / Toast:

In the below script, initially the error is set to null i.e., no error. The “showError” function is which is being called when there occurs a situation of no query or an empty query. The function below helps to show an error popup which only shows till a time limit.

    $scope.error = null;

    $scope.showError = function() {
        $(".snackbar").addClass("show");
        setTimeout(function(){ $(".snackbar").removeClass("show") }, 3000);
    }

 

In this script, it checks whether the query passed is undefined or empty. If yes, then the error message which was null earlier is changed and that error is showed up on the screen to the end user. Snackbars animate upwards from the edge of the screen.

        if ($scope.query === '' || $scope.query === undefined) {
            $scope.spinner = false;
            $scope.error = "Please enter a valid Username";
            $scope.showError();
            return;
        }

 

Resources:

Continue ReadingSnackbar for Error Handling in Twitter Followers Insight loklak App

Common Utility classes Progress Bar and Snack Bar in Phimpme Android

As the Phimpme Android is scaling very fast on its features, code gets redundant sometimes. Some of the widely used design widgets in Android are Progress Bar and Snack Bar. Progress Bar is shown to user when some process is happening in the background. Snackbar is a feedback operation to user of its recent process. In other words we can say Snackbar is the new toast in Android with a cool feature of setting action on them. So that User can interact with the feedback received on the process.

As In Phimpme lots of account Login and Logout progress happens. Uploading success and failure required Snackbar to show to the Users. So to remove the redundancy of the boilerplate of these codes, I added two Utilities class one is Phimpme ProgressbarHandler and other is SnackbarHandler in the app. Below is one by one code and explanation of both.

Progress Bar Handler

In the constructor I passed Context as parameter. Created a ViewGroup object and set view of android. Setting the progress bar style and length using Android core attributes such as progressBarStyleLarge and duration to setIndeterminate true.

private ProgressBar mProgressBar;

public PhimpmeProgressBarHandler(Context context) {
   ViewGroup layout = (ViewGroup) ((Activity) context).findViewById(android.R.id.content)
           .getRootView();

   mProgressBar = new ProgressBar(context, null, android.R.attr.progressBarStyleLarge);
   mProgressBar.setIndeterminate(true);



   RelativeLayout.LayoutParams params = new
           RelativeLayout.LayoutParams(RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
           RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT);

   RelativeLayout rl = new RelativeLayout(context);

   rl.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER);
   rl.addView(mProgressBar);

   layout.addView(rl, params);

   hide();

}

Next is used dynamically created Relative Layout object and setup the parameters for width and height as MATCH_PARENT. Setting gravity of the layout to center and added the progress bar view on it using the addView method. So basically we have a progress bar ready and we dynamically created a relative layout and added the view over it.

The function used in setting up the views and progress bar are from AOSP only.

After that a Progressbar is set, we now need functions to show and hide the progress bar in the code. Created two functions show() and hide().

public void show() {
   mProgressBar.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
}

public void hide() {
   mProgressBar.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
}

These functions set the visibility of the the progress bar.

Usage:

Now in any class we can create object of our Progressbar handler class pass the context on it and use the show() and hide() methods wherever we want to show this and hide. Below is the code snippet to show the illustration.

phimpmeProgressBarHandler = new PhimpmeProgressBarHandler(this);

phimpmeProgressBarHandler.show();

phimpmeProgressBarHandler.hide();

Snackbar Handler

To do this, I created a separate class as Snackbar Handler. What we can do is to create a static function show() and inside the declaration, we can create an object of Snackbar and apply the styles to that.

As you can see in the code snippet below, I Created a static function with parameters such as View (to take the view instance), String (to show the message) and duration  of the Snackbar. Set Up the text, textsize and action on the snackbar. An “OK” action is predefined in the function only.

public static void show(View view, String text, int duration) {
   final Snackbar snackbar = Snackbar.make(view, text, duration);
   View sbView = snackbar.getView();
   TextView textView = (TextView)sbView.findViewById(android

.support.design.R.id.snackbar_text);
   textView.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
   textView.setTextSize(12);
   snackbar.setAction("OK", new View.OnClickListener() {
       @Override
       public void onClick(View view) {
           snackbar.dismiss();
       }
   });
   snackbar.show();
}

Usage:

To use this directly call the show method pass the view and String of the message which you want to show on Snackbar. There are overloaded methods as well in which you can pass the durations. See the below code as example.

SnackBarHandler.show(parentLayout, getString(R.string.no_account_signed_in));

Resources

Continue ReadingCommon Utility classes Progress Bar and Snack Bar in Phimpme Android

Adding Snackbar to undo recent change in theme of SUSI.AI Web Chat

SUSI.AI Web Chat has two primary themes: Light and Dark. The user can switch between these two from settings, but what if the user does not prefer the theme change. He/She has to repeat the entire process of Going to Settings -> Selecting another theme -> saving it. To enable the user to instantly change the theme, we decided to add snackbar on theme change.

What is Snackbar ?

Snackbar contains info regarding the operation just performed and it displays them in a visual format. Snackbar can also have a button like “Undo” to revert the recent operation just made.

It appears at the bottom of screen by default. A simple snackbar looks like this:

Now we needed this to pop-up, whenever the theme is changed. When a user changes theme we run a function named “implementSettings” which checks what the theme is changed to.

The method is:

implementSettings = (values) => {
    this.setState({showSettings: false});
    if(values.theme!==this.state.currTheme){
      this.setState({SnackbarOpen: true});
    }
    this.changeTheme(values.theme);
    this.changeEnterAsSend(values.enterAsSend);
    setTimeout(() => {
       this.setState({
           SnackbarOpen: false
       });
   }, 2500);
  }

The argument values is an object that contains all the change that user has made in settings. Here values.theme contains the value of theme user selected from settings. We first check if the theme is same as the current one if so, we do nothing. If the theme is different from current, then we update the theme by calling this.changeTheme(values.theme) and also initiate snackbar by setting SnackbarOpen to open.

The snackbar component looks like:

<Snackbar
     open={this.state.SnackbarOpen}
     message={'Theme Changed'}
     action="undo"
     autoHideDuration={4000}
     onActionTouchTap={this.handleActionTouchTap}
     onRequestClose={this.handleRequestClose}
/>

This appears on the screen as follows :

Now if a user wants to change the theme instantly he/she can press the undo button. For this undo button, we have a method handleActionTouchTap. In this method, we change the theme back to previous one. The method is implemented in the following manner:

handleActionTouchTap = () => {
    this.setState({
      SnackbarOpen: false,
    });
    switch(this.state.currTheme){
      case 'light': {
          this.changeTheme('dark');
          break;
      }
      case 'dark': {
          this.changeTheme('light');
          break;
      }
      default: {
          // do nothing
      }
    }
  };

The above method is pretty self-explanatory which checks the current theme(“light” or “dark”) and then revert it. We also change the state of SnackbarOpen to “false” so that on clicking “UNDO” button, the theme changes back to previous one and the snackbar closes.Now user is having an option of instantly changing back to previous theme.

Resources:

Testing Link:

http://chat.susi.ai/

Continue ReadingAdding Snackbar to undo recent change in theme of SUSI.AI Web Chat

Addition of Bookmark Icon in Schedule ViewHolder in Open Event Android App

In the Open Event Android app we only had a list of sessions in the schedule page without  the ability to bookmark the session unless we went into the SessionDetailPage or visited the session list via the tracks page or the locations page. This was obviously very inconvenient. There were several iterations of UI design for the same. Taking cues from the Google I/O 17 App I thought that the addition of the Bookmark Icon in the Schedule ViewHolder would be helpful to the user. In this blog post I will be talking about how this feature was implemented.

Layout Implementation for the Bookmark Icon

<ImageButton
    android:id="@+id/slot_bookmark"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_gravity="end"
    android:layout_alignParentEnd="true"
    android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
    android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
    android:tint="@color/black"
    android:background="?attr/selectableItemBackgroundBorderless"
    android:contentDescription="@string/session_bookmark_status"
    android:padding="@dimen/padding_small"
    app:srcCompat="@drawable/ic_bookmark_border_white_24dp" />

The bookmark Icon was modelled as an ImageButton inside the item_schedule.xml file which serves as the layout file for the DayScheduleViewHolder.

Bookmark Icon Functionality in DayScheduleAdapter

The Bookmark Icon had mainly 3 roles :

  1. Add the session to the list of bookmarks (obviously)
  2. Generate the notification giving out the bookmarked session details.
  3. Generate a Snackbar if the icon was un-clicked which allowed the user to restore the bookmarked status of the session.
  4. Update the bookmarks widget.

Now we will be seeing how was all this done. Some of this was already done previously in the SessionListAdapter. We just had to modify some of the code to get our desired result.

       Session not bookmarked                      Session bookmarked                      

First we just set a different icon to highlight the Bookmarked and the un-bookmarked status. This code snippet highlights how this is done.

if(session.isBookmarked()) {
    slot_bookmark.setImageResource(R.drawable.ic_bookmark_white_24dp);
 } else {
 slot_bookmark.setImageResource(R.drawable.ic_bookmark_border_white_24dp);
 }
 slot_bookmark.setColorFilter(storedColor,PorterDuff.Mode.SRC_ATOP);

We check if the session is bookmarked by calling a function isBookmarked() and choose one of the 2 bookmark icons depending upon the bookmark status.

If a session was found out to be bookmarked and the Bookmark Icon was we use the WidgetUpdater.updateWidget() function to remove that particular session from the  Bookmark Widget of the app. During this a  Snackbar is also generated “Bookmark Removed” with an UNDO option which is functional.

realmRepo.setBookmark(sessionId, false).subscribe();
 slot_bookmark.setImageResource(R.drawable.ic_bookmark_border_white_24dp);
 
 if ("MainActivity".equals(context.getClass().getSimpleName())) {
    Snackbar.make(slot_content, R.string.removed_bookmark, Snackbar.LENGTH_LONG)
            .setAction(R.string.undo, view -> {
 
                realmRepo.setBookmark(sessionId, true).subscribe();
                slot_bookmark.setImageResource(R.drawable.ic_bookmark_white_24dp);
 
                WidgetUpdater.updateWidget(context);
            }).show();

else {
    Snackbar.make(slot_content, R.string.removed_bookmark, Snackbar.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
 }

If a session wasn’t bookmarked earlier but the Bookmark Icon was clicked we would firstly need to update the bookmark status within our local Realm Database.

realmRepo.setBookmark(sessionId, true).subscribe();

We would also create a notification to notify the user.

NotificationUtil.createNotification(session, context).subscribe(
        () -> Snackbar.make(slot_content,
                R.string.added_bookmark,
                Snackbar.LENGTH_SHORT)
                .show(),
        throwable -> Snackbar.make(slot_content,
                R.string.error_create_notification,
                Snackbar.LENGTH_LONG).show());

The static class Notification Util is responsible for the generation of notifications. The internal working of that class is not necessary right now. What this snippet of code does is that It creates a Snackbar upon successful notification with the text “Bookmark Added” and if any error occurs a Snackbar with the text “Error Creating Notification” is generated.

slot_bookmark.setImageResource(R.drawable.ic_bookmark_white_24dp);
 slot_bookmark.setColorFilter(storedColor,PorterDuff.Mode.SRC_ATOP);

This snippet of code is responsible for the colors that are assigned to the Bookmark Icons for different tracks and this color is obtained in the following manner.

int storedColor = currentSession.getTrack().getColor()

So now we have successfully added the Bookmark Icon to the ScheduleViewHolder inside the schedule of the app.

Resources

Continue ReadingAddition of Bookmark Icon in Schedule ViewHolder in Open Event Android App