Getting started with android-fragments

Remarks#

Fragments are very important components of user interface in android apps. They were introduced first in Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) API.

Understanding design paradigm of Fragments

Fragments were introduced for primarily supporting modular and flexible UI on large screen devices such as tablets.

Fragments are managed by an activity. Usually each fragment represents a portion of a screen. There can be more than one fragment in an activity. Fragments may also be called sub-activities. When you add a fragment as a part of your activity layout, it lives in a ViewGroup inside the activity’s view hierarchy and the fragment defines its own view layout.

LIFECYCLE

Just like an activities, fragments also have a lifecycle. A fragment gets notified for following events. 01. Get attached to activity - onAttach(Activity) 02. Create fragment - onCreate(Bundle) 03. Create View - onCreateView(LayoutInflater, ViewGroup, Bundle) 04. Activity creation - onActivityCreated(Bundle) 05. View state restored - onViewStateRestored(Bundle) 05. Made visible to user - onStart() 06. start of user interaction - onResume() 07. pause of user interaction - onPause() 08. Made invisible to user - onStop() 09. On view destruction - onDestroyView() 10. Destroy fragment - onDestroy() 11. Get detached from an activity - onDetach()

As a programmer, you should override various lifecycle callback methods, typically we implement onCreate(), onCreateView() and onPause() methods.

Subclasses of Fragment

DialogFragment - For displaying the floating dialog
ListFragment - For displaying list of items
PreferenceFragment - Useful for creating settings activity

References

Adding Fragments

Adding a Fragment Statically

File: activity_main.xml

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="https://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"  
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"  
    android:layout_height="fill_parent" >  
  
    <fragment  
        android:id="@+id/fragment2"  
        android:name="com.example.fragmentexample.Fragment2"  
        android:layout_width="0px"  
        android:layout_height="match_parent"   
        android:layout_weight="1"  
        />  
  
    <fragment  
        android:id="@+id/fragment1"  
        android:name="com.example.fragmentexample.Fragment1"  
        android:layout_width="0px"  
        android:layout_height="match_parent"  
        android:layout_weight="1"  
         />  
  
</LinearLayout>

File: fragment1.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="https://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"  
    android:layout_width="match_parent"  
    android:layout_height="match_parent"  
    android:orientation="vertical"  
    android:background="#00ff00"  
     >  
  
    <TextView  
        android:id="@+id/textView1"  
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"  
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"  
        android:text="fragment frist"  
        android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge" />  
  
</LinearLayout>

File: fragment2.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="https://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"  
    android:layout_width="match_parent"  
    android:layout_height="match_parent"  
    android:orientation="vertical"  
    android:background="#0000ff"  
     >  
  
    <TextView  
        android:id="@+id/textView1"  
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"  
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"  
        android:text="Second Fragment"  
        android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge" />  
  
</LinearLayout>

File: MainActivity.java

package com.example.fragmentexample;  
  
import android.os.Bundle;  
import android.app.Activity;  
import android.view.Menu;  
public class MainActivity extends Activity {  
  
    @Override  
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {  
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);  
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);  
    }  
}

File: Fragment1.java

package com.example.fragmentexample;  
  
import android.app.Fragment;  
import android.os.Bundle;  
import android.view.LayoutInflater;  
import android.view.View;  
import android.view.ViewGroup;  
  
public class Fragment1 extends Fragment {  
    @Override  
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,  
            Bundle savedInstanceState) {  
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub  
        return inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment1,container, false);  
    }  
  
}

File: Fragment2.java

package com.example.fragmentexample;  
  
import android.app.Fragment;  
import android.os.Bundle;  
import android.view.LayoutInflater;  
import android.view.View;  
import android.view.ViewGroup;  
  
public class Fragment2 extends Fragment {  
      
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,  
            Bundle savedInstanceState) {  
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub  
        return inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment2,container, false);  
    }  
  
}

Adding a Fragment Dynamically

activity_main.xml

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="https://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"  
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"  
    android:layout_height="fill_parent" >  
  
    <FrameLayout  
        android:id="@+id/container1"   
        android:layout_width="0px"  
        android:layout_height="match_parent"   
        android:layout_weight="1"  
        />  
  
    <FrameLayout  
        android:id="@+id/container2"   
        android:layout_width="0px"  
        android:layout_height="match_parent"  
        android:layout_weight="1"  
         />  
  
</LinearLayout>

FrameLayout is acting as fragment container.

MainActivity class

File: MainActivity.java

package com.example.fragmentexample;  
  
import android.os.Bundle;  
import android.app.Activity;  
import android.view.Menu;  
public class MainActivity extends Activity {  
  
    @Override  
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {  
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);  
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);  
        loadFragment(this, R.id.container1,new Fragment1(),"fragment1");
        loadFragment(this, R.id.container2,new Fragment2(),"fragment2");    
    }  

    public static void loadFragment(Activity activity, int containerId, Fragment fragment, String tag)
    {
        activity.getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction().
            replace(containerId, fragment,tag).commitAllowingStateLoss();
    }
}