Please excuse the long post. I was playing around with a simple app and wanted to save a custom object in a fragment across an orientation change. Previously within activities this used to be handled using the onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() / getLastNonConfigurationInstance() methods. Seeing as these methods are now deprecated, the documentation encourages the use of fragments and the setRetainInstance(boolean) method.
I went ahead and played around with this method and then noticed a strange difference in behaviour when it came to saving the state of the fragments across orientation change. First up, a very brief explanation of the app I was playing with:
Main Activity
Fragment A (First fragment shown on app launch)
This is a simple fragment with 3 EditText controls. Each one has an ID in the layout file. The fragment also includes a button which when selected replaces Fragment A with Fragment B and saves the transaction on the backstack.
Fragment B
This is a fragment with an empty layout. If back is pushed, Fragment A is restored from the backstack.
Scenarios
Scenario A - setRetainInstance(false):
App launches and fragment A is displayed.
I enter values into the EditText fields and select the button.
Fragment B is displayed. I change device orientation once and hit the back key.
Fragment A is displayed with the entered values (view state) intact.
Scenario A - setRetainInstance(true):
The same behaviour takes place as above
Scenario B - setRetainInstance(false):
App launches and fragment A is displayed.
I enter values into the EditText fields and select the button.
Fragment B is displayed. I change device orientation twice and hit the back key.
Fragment A is still displayed with the entered values (view state) intact.
Scenario B - setRetainInstance(true):
App launches and fragment A is displayed.
I enter values into the EditText fields and select the button.
Fragment B is displayed. I change device orientation twice and hit the back key.
Fragment A is displayed with empty EditText controls, i.e. none of the entered values (view state) still intact.
For some reason the use of setRetainInstance(true) interferes with the view state of fragment A (on the backstack) when the orientation changes more than once.
Possible Explanation
I started getting nervous about the use of setRetainInstance while not having a full understanding of what was going on, so I dug around in the support library source code to try figure it out. At a very high level, I think this may be what is going on with setRetainInstance(true):
Fragment A is displayed, button is pressed and Fragment A is replaced by Fragment B. As part of this process, the FragmentManager (FM) removes Fragment A and fragmentA.mRemoving flag is set to true.
Change orientation the first time. At this point the FM attempts to save all state of the fragments:
Parcelable saveAllState() {
...
if (f.mState > Fragment.INITIALIZING && fs.mSavedFragmentState == null) {
fs.mSavedFragmentState = saveFragmentBasicState(f);
Fragment A has a CREATED state and has a null saved state, so it qualifies to have its state saved.
The activity is destroyed as part of the orientation change. Long story short, Fragment A has its state changed to INITIALIZING.
The activity is recreated and an attempt is made to move the state of the fragments to CREATED. However, at this point there is a check in the FM moveToState() method:
if (f.mRemoving && newState > f.mState) {
// While removing a fragment, we can't change it to a higher state.
newState = f.mState;
}
Because fragmentA.mRemoving remains true from step 1 as the fragment was retained (not recreated), it does not have its state increased to CREATED but remains in the INITIALIZING state. Note that even if one presses the back key now, Fragment A will still have its state intact, as a result of its state being saved in step 2.
Change orientation for the 2nd time. Once again the FM attempts to save all state of the fragments:
Parcelable saveAllState() {
...
if (f.mState > Fragment.INITIALIZING && fs.mSavedFragmentState == null) {
fs.mSavedFragmentState = saveFragmentBasicState(f);
However, because Fragment A is in the INITIALIZING state it does not qualify to have its state saved. Hence, once orientation completes for the 2nd time, if the back key is pressed the state of Fragment A is no longer intact.
Questions
Is this behaviour expected? Perhaps this relates to the documentation discouraging the use of setRetainInstance and backstack fragments?
How should we deal with view state and the use of setRetainInstance? Perhaps my use case is incorrect, but I would be nervous using the setRetainInstance functionality with this difference in behaviour.
Once again, sorry for the long post. Feedback will be appreciated as always.
Related
In my app, I'm using a Single Activity with multiple Fragments Architecture and I navigate between them using the Navigation Library. Within one of the fragments, I have multiple categories, each associated with an ID. When a category is clicked, I take the user to that respective category explainer screen with the code below.
val directions = MainNavGraphDirections.launchFragmentWithThisCategoryId(categoryId!!)
onRoute(AppRoute.Directions(directions))
The above code sends them to the explainer screen associated with the associated categoryId. All is well until this point, the right explainer screen gets launched based on the categoryId. Within this explainer screen, I have a deep-link with a tag chatbot://fragment/wizardintro that is supposed to let the main activity know the specific follow-up fragment to send the user to. I denote all the fragments that can receive this deep-link with the code below.
companion object{
const val DEEP_LINK = "chatbot://fragment/wizardintro"
}
In the MainActivity, I have a method that receives all the different deep linking intents and matches them to the tags that will launch the respective category fragment with the code below.
override fun onNewIntent(intent: Intent?) {
super.onNewIntent(intent)
intent?.data?.toString().also { deepLink ->
when (deepLink) {
IntroductionFragment.DEEP_LINK ->{
val categoryId = intent?.getLongExtra("categoryId", 0L)
val directions = MainNavGraphDirections.actionGlobalGoalWizard(categoryId)
navController.popBackStack()
navController.navigate(directions)
}
}
Now my problem arises when I try to retrieve this categoryId in the Main Activity and pass it to the next fragment. I don't get anything and only the default Long gets passed along. I think the function override fun onNewIntent(intent: Intent?) { } in the MainActivity recieve any intent. To be clear, these intents are sent from the explainer fragment which is technically a fragment that loads a json. Within the json there is a "route": {"type": "route", "url": "chatbot:///fragment/wizardintro"
In the MainActivity, the onNewIntent functions receive these intents unpacks them with this line intent?.data?.toString().also ...then in the when statement picks a fragment that has a matching chatbot:///fragment/wizardintro
I said all this to say that the main activity doesn't actually gets the categoryId, it simply picks launching the neccessary fragment without actually having anything associated with the categoryId
This makes me think that the first clicked categoryId doesn't actually get passed to the MainActivity. Although, to me, this seems like it shouldn't be this hard to pass objects/data from a fragment to an activity. What am I missing? What can I read to educate myself more on this?
Thanks for your time and responses!
Since we already got to the conclusion that MainActivity is not getting categoryId, you just need to pass that categoryId with the deep-link.
However, there is no need for any communication from Fragment to Activity.
You could achieve the same result through communication only between Fragment to Fragment, and Activity to Fragment.
What you want to do is to look more closely on deep-links and android navigation in the AndroidDocs, click here.
As you can tell, there are different ways to go around this, starting with arguments for each fragment. Assigning categoryId as an argument to the Fragment would help you use the navigationController and navigate to the new Fragment, while passing the categoryId to it.
Now, I am aware that you also wish to launch it with a deep-link; there's also a good explanation on here. According to the docs, you can place arguments in deep-links in the following manner...
Placeholders in the form of {placeholder_name} match one or more characters. For example, http://www.example.com/users/{id} matches http://www.example.com/users/4. The Navigation component attempts to parse the placeholder values into appropriate types by matching placeholder names to the defined arguments that are defined for the deep link destination. If no argument with the same name is defined, a default String type is used for the argument value.
The navigation is something amazing and capable, you just need to be aware of everything it can actually do. You can even bind it to a BottomNavBar, with extremely minimal amount of code.
Try going over the AndroidDocs about it, and it'll grow on you for sure.
I have and "edit" activity and corresponding "edit" fragment (both extending standard Activity and Fragment respectively). From the edit fragment, I can call two other fragments, A or B, (via interface with the activity). Framents A and B simply extend standard Fragment as well.
Both the fragments, A or B, return a value (again via interface with the activity), and I want to use this value in the edit fragment.
However, back in the activity, if I have 'replaced' the edit fragment with one of either fragment A, or B, how do I then update the edit fragment and show it again, with the new/updated value from the A or B fragments (as the edit fragment's view is no longer in the edit activity's container, a simple FrameLayout)
i have tried combinations of Add/Hide fragments, but can't get that to work. Also, somehow using savedInstanceState doesn't appear to be an option. At the moment, it seems the easiest solution is simply to make fragments A and B as DialogFragments, and interface between them and the edit fragment. Any help appreciated.
I may have worked myself into a corner but this sounded to me like a good idea at the time.
I have been developing an interface that permits a user to modify settings of a robotic device, i.e. speed, directions, force, etc. with a very large series of options in the form of ComboBoxes. The problem is that there are about a thousand of these things, in sub categories. e.g. Speed category x1, x2, x3, Y1, y2, etc. So rather than create a thousand comboboxes in QT, I thought the good idea was to create one set of 50 (ish) and then provide a few button to switch between categories. So when the user selects speed QT, populates the comboboxes with the appropriate options, sets the style sheets and text for the labels etc. So it appears as though a dedicated page exists. Then if the user selects Direction, QT Writes the current index of each box to a dedicated array and then repopulates the boxes, labels etc with the appropriate content. I then do this over and over for the various needs of the system.
All of that seems to work fine. However I am now in a bind where the options provided to navigate to each page have grown. For instance I have forward / backward buttons (like you woudl expect in a set-up wizard), as well as action menus at the top to jump to a page. So now the code is becoming very repetitious. If you select the next button, I write the current values to array, then repopulate. If you jump to the page from anywhere, I look to see where I am, write it to array, and populate the boxes. Thus if I need to change anything I have to make the change in numerous places in the code.
I know that this is not optimal. What I woudl like to do is run a continuous loop as I woudl normally do with Micros in C. So the program can look at a variable in each pass and if it is then it does. I am not however skilled enough to figure this loop out in QT. So my new thought was...
Is it possible to trigger an action or slot with a variable. For example, if the user presses the Next button it triggers a slot for a button that does not exist, so that QT will execute a particular line of Code? Then I can have 1 dedicated section focused on reading and writing boxes, with a bunch of actions that will take me there.
You can make a signal that is triggered with an emit call in your code, so you'd hook up the next button signal of clicked to a slot that does some work and moves on, or directly calls another signal that you've created that triggers a slot elsewhere, or do some work in a lambda triggered by the button press.
I would first load all the ComboBoxes options in a QStringList array (or maybe an array of QList<QLatin1String> lists - for memory saving and code efficiency).
Then I would keep an array of a 1000 integers for current ComboBox indexes.
When the user changes a value in some ComboBox, the currentIndexChanged signal will trigger the corresponding slot (a single slot for all the ComboBoxes would be enough - sender()->objectName() to get the name of the ComboBox which had sent the signal):
void WindowWidget::on_ComboBox_currentIndexChanged(int index)
{
name = sender()->objectName();
/* here change the corresponding integer in the current
indexes array */
}
On Next/Back button push repopulate the ComboBoxes. Also, provide some 'Save' button for saving the ComboBoxes indexes (or trigger the Save slot on some action, i.e. on window close either even on a timer signal).
I want to display quite a bit of demographic data for a certain pin when someone touches on it, so providing a pop-up isn't going to cut it. I figured once the pin is touched I will just stick a tableviewController onto the NavigationController and the table view will have access to the object and display the single objects information, with one item per row and 1 section.
Anyway I'm having a hard time figuring out MKMapViewDelegates methods as it appears none of them do what I need and/or allow me to return a tableview or push that view onto the navigation controller.
I played around with:
- (MKAnnotationView *)mapView:(MKMapView *)mapView viewForAnnotation:(id <MKAnnotation>)annotation;
But that requires a MKAnnotationView be returned and I really just need this method to work by showing the user a table view of all the data. I was hoping for something simple like a userDidTouchPin method....
Anyone have any ideas how to accomplish what I am trying to do?
If you want to do something when the user selects the pin (and not a button on its callout), then implement the mapView:didSelectAnnotationView: delegate method and present or push your detail view controller there.
The selected annotation object is available as the annotation property of the view parameter:
- (void)mapView:(MKMapView *)mapView
didSelectAnnotationView:(MKAnnotationView *)view
{
YourDetailViewController *dvc = [[YourDetailViewController alloc] init...
dvc.annotation = view.annotation;
//present or push here
[dvc release];
}
You might need to check which type of annotation was selected (eg. if MKUserLocation was selected do nothing, etc) and you might need to cast the view.annotation to your own annotation class to easily access any custom properties you may have.
Im wondering how to implement undo redo functionality with a TextArea. I already have an undoredo framework functionality working, now I have two questions.
When do I start/stop a new undo/redo command, eg when a user hits undo, how far back do I go.
How do I implement this(1.) in a normal TextArea
My thinking:
I thinking that I should create a new undo command, when anything but a alphanumber+space is hit. To do this I would use the keyDown event and test if the key is alpha num if it is not I will reset the command.
Sound good?
Listening for keydown events would miss any text editing that user does with the mouse (cut/copy/paste).
I think a better approach would be to listen for 'change' event on the control (which fires whenever the content changes through user input), and just push the full content of the control (its 'text' or 'htmlText' attribute) with every change event into a undo-buffer (an Array of Strings). I assume that the memory usage is not an issue (it probably isn't, depending on the expected size of the controls content and number of undo levels).
This way, you implement undo/redo just by copying the corresponding control state (moving up and down through array, basically) in the undo buffer back into the control.
The 'proper' approach would be to track the actual edits, and would be condsiderably more complicated.
1.When do I start/stop a new undo/redo command, eg when a user hits undo, how far back do I go.
Do you think your users will need to undo multiple steps? If so, then you may want to have a history (e.g. Paint .NET) and allow infinite undo-s. Otherwise, just remember the most recently performed action.
1.) You should listen for the Event.CHANGE event on the TextField and create a history step each time the event is fired. A history step consists in your case of two values: old and new.
Old is the value of the TextField before change, new is its value after the change.
2.) Your history is a sequence of actions or you can use the Memento Pattern. I think actions are much easier to use. A history action has two methods, undo() and redo(). So in undo() you have to say textField.text = oldContent and in the redo() method you say textField.text = newContent. Your history will also need a pointer to the current action.
3.) To make it a little bit better. You should not listen only for Event.CHANGE but instead listen for the first CHANGE and then the next FOCUS_OUT for that TextField. In that case, a history step is only created once I stop editing the TextField. But it depends on your TextField and how you want to distribute history steps. A multiline TextField should not create a history step only on FOCUS_OUT :)