In this exercise, you will construct a simple notes list that lets the user add new notes but not edit them. The exercise demonstrates:
- The basics of
ListActivities
and creating and handling menu options. - How to use a SQLite database to store the notes.
- How to bind data from a database cursor into a ListView using a SimpleCursorAdapter.
- The basics of screen layouts, including how to lay out a list view, how you can add items to the activity menu, and how the activity handles those menu selections.
Step 1
Open up the Notepadv1
project in Eclipse.
Notepadv1
is a project that is provided as a starting point. It
takes care of some of the boilerplate work that you have already seen if you
followed the Hello,
World tutorial.
- Start a new Android Project by clicking File > New > Android Project.
- In the New Android Project dialog, select Create project from existing source.
-
Click Browse and navigate to where you copied the
NotepadCodeLab
(downloaded during setup) and selectNotepadv1
. - The Project Name and other properties should be automatically filled for you. You must select the Build Target—we recommend selecting a target with the lowest platform version available. Also add an integer to the Min SDK Version field that matches the API Level of the selected Build Target.
-
Click Finish. The
Notepadv1
project should open and be visible in your Eclipse package explorer.
If you see an error about AndroidManifest.xml
, or some
problems related to an Android zip file, right click on the project and
select Android Tools > Fix Project Properties.
(The project is looking in the wrong location for the library file,
this will fix it for you.)
Step 2
Accessing and modifying data
For this
exercise, we are using a SQLite database to store our data. This is useful
if only your application will need to access or modify the data. If you wish for
other activities to access or modify the data, you have to expose the data using a
ContentProvider
.
If you are interested, you can find out more about
content providers or the
whole
subject of Data Storage.
The NotePad sample in the samples/
folder of the SDK also has an example of how
to create a ContentProvider.
Take a look at the NotesDbAdapter
class — this class is provided to
encapsulate data access to a SQLite database that will hold our notes data
and allow us to update it.
At the top of the class are some constant definitions that will be used in the application to look up data from the proper field names in the database. There is also a database creation string defined, which is used to create a new database schema if one doesn't exist already.
Our database will have the name data
, and have a single table called
notes
, which in turn has three fields: _id
, title
and
body
. The _id
is named with an underscore convention used in a number of
places inside the Android SDK and helps keep a track of state. The _id
usually has to be specified when querying or updating the database (in the column projections
and so on). The other two fields are simple text fields that will store data.
The constructor for NotesDbAdapter
takes a Context, which allows it to communicate with aspects
of the Android operating system. This is quite common for classes that need to touch the
Android system in some way. The Activity class implements the Context class, so usually you will just pass
this
from your Activity, when needing a Context.
The open()
method calls up an instance of DatabaseHelper, which is our local
implementation of the SQLiteOpenHelper class. It calls getWritableDatabase()
,
which handles creating/opening a database for us.
close()
just closes the database, releasing resources related to the
connection.
createNote()
takes strings for the title and body of a new note,
then creates that note in the database. Assuming the new note is created successfully, the
method also returns the row _id
value for the newly created note.
deleteNote()
takes a rowId for a particular note, and deletes that note from
the database.
fetchAllNotes()
issues a query to return a Cursor
over all notes in the
database. The query()
call is worth examination and understanding. The first field is the
name of the database table to query (in this case DATABASE_TABLE
is "notes").
The next is the list of columns we want returned, in this case we want the _id
,
title
and body
columns so these are specified in the String array.
The remaining fields are, in order: selection
,
selectionArgs
, groupBy
, having
and orderBy
.
Having these all null
means we want all data, need no grouping, and will take the default
order. See SQLiteDatabase
for more details.
Note: A Cursor is returned rather than a collection of rows. This allows Android to use resources efficiently -- instead of putting lots of data straight into memory the cursor will retrieve and release data as it is needed, which is much more efficient for tables with lots of rows.
fetchNote()
is similar to fetchAllNotes()
but just gets one note
with the rowId we specify. It uses a slightly different version of the
SQLiteDatabase
query()
method.
The first parameter (set true) indicates that we are interested
in one distinct result. The selection parameter (the fourth parameter) has been specified to search
only for the row "where _id =" the rowId we passed in. So we are returned a Cursor on
the one row.
And finally, updateNote()
takes a rowId, title and body, and uses a
ContentValues
instance to update the note of the given
rowId.
Step 3
Layouts and activities
Most Activity classes will have a layout associated with them. The layout will be the "face" of the Activity to the user. In this case our layout will take over the whole screen and provide a list of notes.
Full screen layouts are not the only option for an Activity however. You might also want to use a floating layout (for example, a dialog or alert), or perhaps you don't need a layout at all (the Activity will be invisible to the user unless you specify some kind of layout for it to use).
Open the notepad_list.xml
file in res/layout
and
take a look at it. (You may have to
hit the xml tab, at the bottom, in order to view the XML markup.)
This is a mostly-empty layout definition file. Here are some things you should know about a layout file:
-
All Android layout files must start with the XML header line:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
. -
The next definition will often (but not always) be a layout
definition of some kind, in this case a
LinearLayout
. -
The XML namespace of Android should always be defined in
the top level component or layout in the XML so that
android:
tags can be used through the rest of the file:xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
Step 4
We need to create the layout to hold our list. Add code inside
of the LinearLayout
element so the whole file looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"> <ListView android:id="@android:id/list" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/> <TextView android:id="@android:id/empty" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="@string/no_notes"/> </LinearLayout>
-
The @ symbol in the id strings of the
ListView
andTextView
tags means that the XML parser should parse and expand the rest of the id string and use an ID resource. -
The
ListView
andTextView
can be thought as two alternative views, only one of which will be displayed at once. ListView will be used when there are notes to be shown, while the TextView (which has a default value of "No Notes Yet!" defined as a string resource inres/values/strings.xml
) will be displayed if there aren't any notes to display. - The
list
andempty
IDs are provided for us by the Android platform, so, we must prefix theid
withandroid:
(e.g.,@android:id/list
). - The View with the
empty
id is used automatically when theListAdapter
has no data for the ListView. The ListAdapter knows to look for this name by default. Alternatively, you could change the default empty view by usingsetEmptyView(View)
on the ListView.More broadly, the
android.R
class is a set of predefined resources provided for you by the platform, while your project'sR
class is the set of resources your project has defined. Resources found in theandroid.R
resource class can be used in the XML files by using theandroid:
name space prefix (as we see here).
Step 5
Resources and the R class
The folders under res/ in the Eclipse project are for resources. There is a specific structure to the folders and files under res/.
Resources defined in these folders and files will have corresponding entries in the R class allowing them to be easily accessed and used from your application. The R class is automatically generated using the contents of the res/ folder by the eclipse plugin (or by aapt if you use the command line tools). Furthermore, they will be bundled and deployed for you as part of the application.
To make the list of notes in the ListView, we also need to define a View for each row:
-
Create a new file under
res/layout
callednotes_row.xml
. -
Add the following contents (note: again the XML header is used, and the
first node defines the Android XML namespace)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <TextView android:id="@+id/text1" xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>
This is the View that will be used for each notes title row — it has only one text field in it.
In this case we create a new id called
text1
. The + after the @ in the id string indicates that the id should be automatically created as a resource if it does not already exist, so we are definingtext1
on the fly and then using it. - Save the file.
Open the R.java
class in the
project and look at it, you should see new definitions for
notes_row
and text1
(our new definitions)
meaning we can now gain access to these from the our code.
Step 6
Next, open the Notepadv1
class in the source. In the following steps, we are going to
alter this class to become a list adapter and display our notes, and also
allow us to add new notes.
Notepadv1
will inherit from a subclass
of Activity
called a ListActivity
,
which has extra functionality to accommodate the kinds of
things you might want to do with a list, for
example: displaying an arbitrary number of list items in rows on the screen,
moving through the list items, and allowing them to be selected.
Take a look through the existing code in Notepadv1
class.
There is a currently an unused private field called mNoteNumber
that
we will use to create numbered note titles.
There are also three override methods defined:
onCreate
, onCreateOptionsMenu
and
onOptionsItemSelected
; we need to fill these
out:
onCreate()
is called when the activity is started — it is a little like the "main" method for an Activity. We use this to set up resources and state for the activity when it is running.onCreateOptionsMenu()
is used to populate the menu for the Activity. This is shown when the user hits the menu button, and has a list of options they can select (like "Create Note").onOptionsItemSelected()
is the other half of the menu equation, it is used to handle events generated from the menu (e.g., when the user selects the "Create Note" item).
Step 7
Change the inheritance of Notepadv1
from
Activity
to ListActivity
:
public class Notepadv1 extends ListActivity
Note: you will have to import ListActivity
into the
Notepadv1
class using Eclipse, ctrl-shift-O on Windows or Linux, or
cmd-shift-O on the Mac (organize imports) will do this for you
after you've written the above change.
Step 8
Fill out the body of the onCreate()
method.
Here we will set the title for the Activity (shown at the top of the
screen), use the notepad_list
layout we created in XML,
set up the NotesDbAdapter
instance that will
access notes data, and populate the list with the available note
titles:
-
In the
onCreate
method, callsuper.onCreate()
with thesavedInstanceState
parameter that's passed in. -
Call
setContentView()
and passR.layout.notepad_list
. -
At the top of the class, create a new private class field called
mDbHelper
of classNotesDbAdapter
. -
Back in the
onCreate
method, construct a newNotesDbAdapter
instance and assign it to themDbHelper
field (passthis
into the constructor forDBHelper
) -
Call the
open()
method onmDbHelper
to open (or create) the database. -
Finally, call a new method
fillData()
, which will get the data and populate the ListView using the helper — we haven't defined this method yet.
onCreate()
should now look like this:
@Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.notepad_list); mDbHelper = new NotesDbAdapter(this); mDbHelper.open(); fillData(); }
And be sure you have the mDbHelper
field definition (right
under the mNoteNumber definition):
private NotesDbAdapter mDbHelper;
Step 9
More about menus
The notepad application we are constructing only scratches the surface with menus.
You can also add shortcut keys for menu items, create submenus and even add menu items to other applications!.
Fill out the body of the onCreateOptionsMenu()
method.
We will now create the "Add Item" button that can be accessed by pressing the menu button on the device. We'll specify that it occupy the first position in the menu.
-
In
strings.xml
resource (underres/values
), add a new string named "menu_insert" with its value set toAdd Item
:<string name="menu_insert">Add Item</string>
Then save the file and return to
Notepadv1
. - Create a menu position constant at the top of the class:
public static final int INSERT_ID = Menu.FIRST;
- In the
onCreateOptionsMenu()
method, change thesuper
call so we capture the boolean return asresult
. We'll return this value at the end. - Then add the menu item with
menu.add()
.
The whole method should now look like this:
@Override public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) { boolean result = super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu); menu.add(0, INSERT_ID, 0, R.string.menu_insert); return result; }
The arguments passed to add()
indicate: a group identifier for this menu (none,
in this case), a unique ID (defined above), the order of the item (zero indicates no preference),
and the resource of the string to use for the item.
Step 10
Fill out the body of the onOptionsItemSelected()
method:
This is going
to handle our new "Add Note" menu item. When this is selected, the
onOptionsItemSelected()
method will be called with the
item.getId()
set to INSERT_ID
(the constant we
used to identify the menu item). We can detect this, and take the
appropriate actions:
-
The
super.onOptionsItemSelected(item)
method call goes at the end of this method — we want to catch our events first! -
Write a switch statement on
item.getItemId()
.In the case of INSERT_ID, call a new method,
createNote()
, and return true, because we have handled this event and do not want to propagate it through the system. - Return the result of the superclass'
onOptionsItemSelected()
method at the end.
The whole onOptionsItemSelect()
method should now look like
this:
@Override public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) { switch (item.getItemId()) { case INSERT_ID: createNote(); return true; } return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item); }
Step 11
Add a new createNote()
method:
In this first version of
our application, createNote()
is not going to be very useful.
We will simply
create a new note with a title assigned to it based on a counter ("Note 1",
"Note 2"...) and with an empty body. At present we have no way of editing
the contents of a note, so for now we will have to be content making one
with some default values:
- Construct the name using "Note" and the counter we defined in the class:
String noteName = "Note " + mNoteNumber++
-
Call
mDbHelper.createNote()
usingnoteName
as the title and""
for the body -
Call
fillData()
to populate the list of notes (inefficient but simple) — we'll create this method next.
The whole createNote()
method should look like this:
private void createNote() { String noteName = "Note " + mNoteNumber++; mDbHelper.createNote(noteName, ""); fillData(); }
Step 12
List adapters
Our example uses a SimpleCursorAdapter
to bind a database Cursor
into a ListView, and this is a common way to use a ListAdapter
. Other options exist like ArrayAdapter
which
can be used to take a List or Array of in-memory data and bind it in to
a list as well.
Define the fillData()
method:
This
method uses SimpleCursorAdapter,
which takes a database Cursor
and binds it to fields provided in the layout. These fields define the row elements of our list
(in this case we use the text1
field in our
notes_row.xml
layout), so this allows us to easily populate the list with
entries from our database.
To do this we have to provide a mapping from the title
field in the returned Cursor, to
our text1
TextView, which is done by defining two arrays: the first a string array
with the list of columns to map from (just "title" in this case, from the constant
NotesDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE
) and, the second, an int array
containing references to the views that we'll bind the data into
(the R.id.text1
TextView).
This is a bigger chunk of code, so let's first take a look at it:
private void fillData() { // Get all of the notes from the database and create the item list Cursor c = mDbHelper.fetchAllNotes(); startManagingCursor(c); String[] from = new String[] { NotesDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE }; int[] to = new int[] { R.id.text1 }; // Now create an array adapter and set it to display using our row SimpleCursorAdapter notes = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.notes_row, c, from, to); setListAdapter(notes); }
Here's what we've done:
-
After obtaining the Cursor from
mDbHelper.fetchAllNotes()
, we use an Activity method calledstartManagingCursor()
that allows Android to take care of the Cursor lifecycle instead of us needing to worry about it. (We will cover the implications of the lifecycle in exercise 3, but for now just know that this allows Android to do some of our resource management work for us.) - Then we create a string array in which we declare the column(s) we want (just the title, in this case), and an int array that defines the View(s) to which we'd like to bind the columns (these should be in order, respective to the string array, but here we only have one for each).
-
Next is the SimpleCursorAdapter instantiation.
Like many classes in Android, the SimpleCursorAdapter needs a Context in order to do its
work, so we pass in
this
for the context (since subclasses of Activity implement Context). We pass thenotes_row
View we created as the receptacle for the data, the Cursor we just created, and then our arrays.
In the future, remember that the mapping between the from columns and to resources
is done using the respective ordering of the two arrays. If we had more columns we wanted
to bind, and more Views to bind them in to, we would specify them in order, for example we
might use { NotesDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE, NotesDbAdapter.KEY_BODY }
and
{ R.id.text1, R.id.text2 }
to bind two fields into the row (and we would also need
to define text2 in the notes_row.xml, for the body text). This is how you can bind multiple fields
into a single row (and get a custom row layout as well).
If you get compiler errors about classes not being found, ctrl-shift-O or (cmd-shift-O on the mac) to organize imports.
Step 13
Run it!
-
Right click on the
Notepadv1
project. - From the popup menu, select Run As > Android Application.
- If you see a dialog come up, select Android Launcher as the way of running the application (you can also use the link near the top of the dialog to set this as your default for the workspace; this is recommended as it will stop the plugin from asking you this every time).
- Add new notes by hitting the menu button and selecting Add Item from the menu.
Solution and Next Steps
You can see the solution to this class in Notepadv1Solution
from
the zip file to compare with your own.
Once you are ready, move on to Tutorial Exercise 2 to add the ability to create, edit and delete notes.