Android Tutorials for Beginners: 2013

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Android Custom GridView Example

Creating a custom GridView with Text and Image is as easy as Using a Simple GridView.
We need to just have a custom adapter and populate the GridView elements with custom adapter. It is similar to populating a ListView with Custom Adapter.

If you are not familiar with these two concepts follow my blog

Using Android GridView
ListView with Custom Adapter

In this example I have explained how to how to make a custom grid with Text and Image and poipulate it's content through Custom Adapter.

Steps:

Create Layout
Create Cutom Adapter and override it's getView() method.
Set the adapter to GridView

main.xml

grid_row.xml

CustomGridViewMainActivity.java

public class CustomGridViewMainActivity extends Activity
{


            GridView gridView;
            GridViewCustomAdapter grisViewCustomeAdapter;


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


                    gridView=(GridView)findViewById(R.id.gridViewCustom);
                    // Create the Custom Adapter Object
                    grisViewCustomeAdapter = new GridViewCustomAdapter(this);
                    // Set the Adapter to GridView
                    gridView.setAdapter(grisViewCustomeAdapter);

                    // Handling touch/click Event on GridView Item
                    gridView.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() {

                       @Override
                       public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> arg0, View v, int position, long arg3) {
                           String selectedItem;
                           if(position%2==0)
                               selectedItem="Facebook";
                           else
                               selectedItem="Twitter";
                        Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(),"Selected Item: "+selectedItem, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();

                       }
                    });

               }

}

GridViewCustomAdapter.java

public class GridViewCustomAdapter extends ArrayAdapter
{
         Context context;



    public GridViewCustomAdapter(Context context)
    {
             super(context, 0);
             this.context=context;

    }

    public int getCount()
        {
                     return 24;
        }

    @Override
    public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent)
    {
             View row = convertView;

             if (row == null)
             {
                     LayoutInflater inflater = ((Activity) context).getLayoutInflater();
                     row = inflater.inflate(R.layout.grid_row, parent, false);

                     TextView textViewTitle = (TextView) row.findViewById(R.id.textView);
                     ImageView imageViewIte = (ImageView) row.findViewById(R.id.imageView);

                     if(position%2==0)
                     {
                             textViewTitle.setText("Facebook");
                             imageViewIte.setImageResource(R.drawable.facebook);
                     }
                     else
                     {
                             textViewTitle.setText("Twitter");
                             imageViewIte.setImageResource(R.drawable.twitter);
                     }
             }



    return row;

    }

}

New Advance Topics:                   Android LiveWallpaer Tutorial
Android ImageSwitcher                  Android TextSwitcher                Android ViewFlipper
Android Gesture Detector         Handling/Detecting Swipe Events              Gradient Drawable
Detecting Missed Calls              Hide Title Bar                             GridView Animation
Android AlarmManager                 Android BootReceiver                   Vibrate Phone In a Desirable Pattern
Developing for Different Screen Sizes     Showing Toast for Longer Time       Publishing your App
How to publish Android App on Google Play
Android TextWatcher                               Android ExpandableListView

Beginning With Android
Android : Introduction(What is Android)                                                Configuring Eclipse for Android Development
   Creating Your First Android Project                   Understanding Android Manifest File of your android app

Advance Android Topics                                                            Customizing Android Views

Customizing Toast In Android Customizing Radio Buttons

Showing Toast for Longer Time Customizing Checkboxes In Android

Customizing the Display Time of Toast Customizing ProgressBar

Using TimePickerDialog and DatePickerDialog In android Customizing Toast In Android

Animating A Button In Android

Populating ListView With DataBase Android Animation

Increasin Size of Checkboxes Using Android ImageSwitcher

Android ProgressBar Using Android TextSwitcher

Designing For Different Screen Sizes GridView Animation

Handling Keyboard Events Animating A Button In Android

Alarm Manager
Android AlarmManger
Scheduling Task Using AlarmManger

Working With Layouts                                                                Working With Views

Understanding Layouts in Android                                                   Using Buttons and EditText in Android
Working with Linear Layout (With Example)                                     Using CheckBoxes in Android
Nested Linear Layout (With Example)                                              Using AutoCompleteTextView in Android                                                                                          Grid View
Relative Layout In Android                                                               ListView
Table Layout                                                                                   Android ProgressBar
Frame Layout(With Example)                                                          Customizing ProgressBar
Absolute Layout                                                                             Customizing Radio Buttons
Grid Layout                                                                                    Customizing Checkboxes In Android

Android Advance Views
Android Spinner                                                                           Android GalleryView
Android TabWidget                                                                      Android ExpandableListView

Android Components                                                                 Dialogs In Android

Activity In Android                                                                    Working With Alert Dialog
Activity Life Cycle                                                                    Adding Radio Buttons In Dialog
Starting Activity For Result                                                     Adding Check Boxes In Dialog
Sending Data from One Activity to Other in Android                Creating Customized Dialogs in Android
Returning Result from Activity                                               Creating Dialog To Collect User Input
Android : Service                                                                     DatePicker and TimePickerDialog
BroadcastReceiver                                                                   Using TimePickerDialog and DatePickerDialog In android

Menus In Android                                                                ListView:
Creating Option Menu                                 Populating ListView With DataBase
Creating Context Menu In Android            Populating ListView with ArrayList
                                                                                               ListView with Custom Adapter

Toast                                                                                      Working With SMS
Customizing Toast In Android                                               How to Send SMS in Android
Customizing the Display Time of Toast                                  How To Receive SMS
Customizing Toast At Runtime                                                Accessing Inbox In Android
Adding Image in Toast
Showing Toast for Longer Time

TelephonyManager                                                            Storage: Storing Data In Android
Using Telephony Manager In Android                                SharedPreferences In Android
                                                                                              Reading and Writing files to Internal Stoarage

Working With Incoming Calls                                       DataBase :  Introduction of SQLiteDataBase
How To Handle Incoming Calls in Android                          Working With Database in Android
How to Forward an Incoming Call In Android                            Creating Table In Android
CALL States In Android                                                          Inserting, Deleting and Updating Records In Table in Android

Miscellaneous
Notifications In Android
How To Vibrate The Android Phone
Sending Email In Android
Opening a webpage In Browser
How to Access PhoneBook In Android
Prompt User Input with an AlertDialog
How to Hide Title Bar In Android
How to show an Activity in Landscape or Portrait Mode only.
How to Set an Image as Wallpaper.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Android WebView Example

WebView is a View that displays web pages. Using his class we can display some online content within our Activity.

If you want to deliver a web application (or just a web page) as a part of a client application, you can do it using WebView. The WebView class is an extension of Android's View class that allows you to display web pages as a part of your activity layout.

In this Example you will see how to use WebView in your activity.

Do not forget to add the Internet permission in your manifest file.
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

main.xml

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".MainActivity" >

    <WebView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/webView1"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"/>

</RelativeLayout>

WebViewActivity

public class MainActivity extends Activity
{

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

        WebView webView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webView1);
        webView.loadUrl("http://www.google.com");

    }
}

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Android MediaPlayer Example

MediaPlayer class is used to control playback of audio/video files and streams.
Using MediaPlayer class we can control the behavioyr of player like volume control, whether to repeat the current tarck or not, stop or pause the playback etc.

Steps:

Initialize the Media Player with media to play.
Prepare the Media Player for playback.
Start the playback.
Pause or stop the playback prior to its completing.
Playback complete.

To play a media resource you need to create a new MediaPlayer object, initialize it with a media
source, and prepare it for playback.

When you have finished playing , call the release method on your Media Player object to free the resources associated with the MediaPlayer

mediaPlayer.release();

Preparing Audio for Playback

To play back audio content using the Media Player, we need to create a new Media Player object and
set the data source of the audio (pass as paarmeter).

A resource identifier
A URI to a local file using the file
A URI to an online audio resource as a URL
A URI to a local Content Provider row

MediaPlayer filePlayer = MediaPlayer.create(appContext,
Uri.parse("file:///sdcard/localfile.mp3"));

MediaPlayer urlPlayer = MediaPlayer.create(appContext,
Uri.parse("http://site.com/audio/audio.mp3"));

MediaPlayer contentPlayer = MediaPlayer.create(appContext,
Settings.System.DEFAULT_RINGTONE_URI)

we can also use setDataSource method to specify the resource
like

myMediaPlayerObject.setDataSource("/sdcard/music/tarck1.mp3");

Controlling The PlayBack

Skip for a particular time

mediaPlayerObject.start();
int pos = mediaPlayerObject.getCurrentPosition();
int duration = mediaPlayerObject.getDuration();
mediaPlayerObject.seekTo(pos + (duration-pos)/10);

Repeating the Audio Playback track

We can use the isLooping and setLooping methods to specify if the media being played should repeat or loop when it completes.

if (!mediaPlayer.isLooping())
mediaPlayer.setLooping(true);

Controlling the Volume of Media Player

We acn also control the volume for each channel during playback using the setVolume method. It takes
a scalar float value between 0 and 1 for both the left and right channels (where 0 is silent and 1 is
maximum volume).

mediaPlayer.setVolume(1f, 0.5f);

MediaPlayer Example:

public class MediaPalyerActivity extends Activity
{
        @Override
        protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
        {
                super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

                MediaPlayer myMediaPlayer=new MediaPlayer();

                try
                {
                    myMediaPlayer.setDataSource("/sdcard/music/tarck1.mp3");
                    myMediaPlayer.prepare();
                    myMediaPlayer.start();
                }
                catch(Exception e)
                {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
        }
}

Customizing Toast In Android Customizing Radio Buttons

Showing Toast for Longer Time Customizing Checkboxes In Android

Customizing the Display Time of Toast Customizing ProgressBar

Using TimePickerDialog and DatePickerDialog In android Customizing Toast In Android

Animating A Button In Android

Populating ListView With DataBase Android Animation

Increasin Size of Checkboxes Using Android ImageSwitcher

Android ProgressBar Using Android TextSwitcher

Designing For Different Screen Sizes GridView Animation

Handling Keyboard Events Animating A Button In Android

Alarm Manager
Android AlarmManger
Scheduling Task Using AlarmManger

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Android Text To Speech Example

In Android 1.6 (SDK API level 4) the text to speech (TTS) engine was introduced. We can use this API to
produce speech synthesis from within our applications, allowing the application to ‘‘talk’’ to your users.

Before using the TTS engine, it’s good practice to confirm the language packs are installed or not, if not installed we must install the language pack.

Once you’ve confirmed the voice data is available, you need to create and initialize a new TextToSpeech
instance. Note that you cannot use the new Text To Speech object until initialization is complete.

public void onInit(int status)
            {

                    if (status == TextToSpeech.SUCCESS)
                    {
                               // ready to Speak
                    }
          }

When Text To Speech has been initialized you can use the speak method to synthesize voice using the
default device audio output.

tts.speak("Text to Speak", TextToSpeech.QUEUE_FLUSH, null)

Android Text To Speech Example:

In the example we have an EditText , in which user enters the text and when clicks on Button we c all speakTheText() method to speak the entered Text.

main.xml

MainActivity.java

public class MainActivity extends Activity implements TextToSpeech.OnInitListener
{
            EditText editText;
            Button buttonSpeak;

            TextToSpeech tts ;

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

                        tts = new TextToSpeech(this, this);

                        editText =(EditText)findViewById(R.id.editTextToSpeech);
                        buttonSpeak =(Button)findViewById(R.id.buttonSpeak);


                        buttonSpeak.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {

                            public void onClick(View v) {
                                // TODO Auto-generated method stub
                                speakTheText();

                            }
                        });
            }




            @Override
            public void onDestroy()
            {
                // Do Not forget to Stop the TTS Engine when you do not require it
                    if (tts != null)
                    {
                        tts.stop();
                        tts.shutdown();
                    }
                    super.onDestroy();
            }

            public void onInit(int status)
            {

                    if (status == TextToSpeech.SUCCESS)
                    {

                            int result = tts.setLanguage(Locale.GERMAN);

                            if (result == TextToSpeech.LANG_MISSING_DATA || result == TextToSpeech.LANG_NOT_SUPPORTED)
                            {
                                   Toast.makeText(this, "This Language is not supported", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
                            }
                            else
                            {
                                Toast.makeText(this, "Ready to Speak", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
                                speakTheText();
                            }

                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Toast.makeText(this, "Can Not Speak", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
                    }

            }

            private void speakTheText()
            {
                        String textToSpeak = editText.getText().toString();
                        tts.speak(textToSpeak, TextToSpeech.QUEUE_FLUSH, null);
            }

}