My previous article explains about Android Tab Layoutand it got very good ranking in search engines. But unfortunately TabHost is deprecated by android in favor of fragments. So it is suggested that use fragment to achieve tab layout.

This article shows you how to create tab layout using fragments and viewpager. Also you can swipe between tab view as it is the functionality of viewpager which is not possible when using TabHost.

ViewPager and Fragments

Before getting into this tutorial it is suggested to have knowledge on Fragments and ViewPager as these two are main concepts used here. Unfortunately I haven’t covered about fragements and viewpager on androidhive

Layout Overview

Checkout the following pic which explains the complete overview of layout architecture. Basically we are using ViewPager as main layout and for individual pager views we use Fragments. The tabs are part of Action Bar.

Creating new Project

Even though you are not familiar with ViewPager or Fragments, don’t worry. You will get an idea about what those are and how to use them once you are done through this article. So let’s start by creating a new project.

1. Create a new project in Eclipse from File ⇒ New ⇒ Android ⇒ Application Project. While creating the project select the app theme which has Action Bar as shown in the below image.

2. As we are going to use Fragments, extend your main activity from FragmentActivity. Alsoimplement this class from ActionBar.TabListener as we are adding Tabs too.

3. Open main activity layout file and add ViewPager element. (My layout file for main activity isactivity_main.xml)

4. I normally prefer to create a separate package for adapter classes just to separate them from activity classes. So create a new package named your_package_name.adapter. I named my new package asinfo.androidhive.tabsswipe.adapter

5. I am creating a FragmentPagerAdapter class to provide views to tab fragments. Create a class called TabsPagerAdapter.java under adapter package. This adapter provides fragment views to tabs which we are going to create them later in this tutorial.

Adding Tabs to Action Bar

6. In order to display tabs we don’t have to use any other UI element like TabHost. Action bar has the inbuilt capability of adding tabs. All we have to do is enable it usingsetNavigationMode(ActionBar.NAVIGATION_MODE_TABS) method. Open your MainActivity.javado the following.

Here I am adding three tabs Top Rated, Games, Movies to action bar. So I just stored all the tab names in a String array and added them to action bar using a for loop.

If you run the project, you can see the tabs displaying under action bar.

Adding Views for Tabs

We already returned respected fragments for tabs in the adapter class. To make it simple I am creating very simple layout for each tab and leaving it to you to build your own UI depending on your requirement. For now I just displayed a label in the view with some background color.

» First Tab View

7. The first tab I added is Top Rated. Create a new layout file under src ⇒ res folder namedfragment_top_rated.xml and paste the following code.

8. Also create respected Fragment activity class for this view. Create a new class namedTopRatedFragment.java under your main package.

» Second Tab View

The second tab in the list is Games. Just like above create a layout file and activity file for this tab.

9. Create a new layout file under src ⇒ res folder named fragment_games.xml

10. Create a new class named GamesFragment.java with following code.

» Third Tab View

This third tab is Movies. This one need a layout file and activity class.

11. Create a layout file called fragment_movies.xml

12. Also create activity class for this view named MoviesFragment.java

Run the project and check whether the views for tabs are added or not.

And this is how it looks in landscape mode

Tab Change Listener

If you run the project you can see the swiping views working, but if you select a tab, view won’t change automatically. This is because ViewPager didn’t know about the tab change event. We have to manually change the view using Tab change listener.

13. In your MainActivity.java class add following code.

View Change Listener

14. As well if you swipe the view, you can’t see respected tab selected. Here also using ViewPagersetOnPageChangeListener() we have to select the respected tab manually.

After adding these two listeners, if you run the project you can see everything working good.

Complete Code

Below is the complete code for MainActivity.java class

Shift+Ctrl+F to find

Shift+Ctrl+R to replace

In File name filter->file mask, enter your class name

There is always some information that is needed in many places in your app. It can be a session token, the result of an expensive computation, etc. It is often tempting to avoid the overhead of passing objects between activities or keeping those in persistent storage.

A pattern that is sometimes suggested is to dump your data in the Application object with the idea that it will be available across all activities. This solution is simple, elegant and… totally wrong.

If you assume that your data will stay there, your application will eventually crash with a NullPointerException.

A Simple Test Case

The Code

The Application object:

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// access modifiers omitted for brevity
class MyApplication extends Application {

    String name;

    String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

The first activity, where we store the name of the user in the application object:

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// access modifiers omitted for brevity
class WhatIsYourNameActivity extends Activity {

    void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.writing);

        // Just assume that in the real app we would really ask it!
        MyApplication app = (MyApplication) getApplication();
        app.setName("Developer Phil");
        startActivity(new Intent(this, GreetLoudlyActivity.class));

    }

}

The second activity, where we shout the name of the user:

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// access modifiers omitted for brevity
class GreetLoudlyActivity extends Activity {

    TextView textview;

    void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        setContentView(R.layout.reading);
        textview = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.message);
    }

    void onResume() {
        super.onResume();

        MyApplication app = (MyApplication) getApplication();
        textview.setText("HELLO " + app.getName().toUpperCase());
    }
}

The Scenario

1. The user starts the app.
2. In WhatIsYourNameActivity, you ask for the name of the user and you store it in MyApplication.
3. In GreetLoudlyActivity, you fetch the user’s name from the MyApplication object and display it.
4. The user leaves the app using the home button.
5. A few hours later, Android silently kills the app to reclaim some memory.

   So far, so good!

   But here comes the crashy part…

6. The user reopens the app.
7. Android creates a new MyApplication instance and restores GreetLoudlyActivity.
8. GreetLoudlyActivity fetches the user’s name, which is now null, and crashes with a NullPointerException.

Why Does it Crash?

In this sample, we crash because the Application object is brand new, so the name variable is null, leading to a NullPointerException when we call String#toUpperCase() on it.

Which brings us to the core of the problem: The application object will not stay in memory forever, it will get killed. Contrary to popular belief, the app won’t be restarted from scratch. Android will create a new Application object and start the activity where the user was before to give the illusion that the application was never killed in the first place.

Which means that if you expect some data to be in your application object just because your user is not supposed to be able to open activity B before activity A, you are in for a crashy surprise.

What Are The Alternatives

There is no magic solution here, you can do one of the following:

• Explicitly pass the data to the Activity through the intent.
• Use one of the many ways to persist the data to disk.
• Always do a null-check and handle it manually.

How To Simulate The Application Being Killed

EDIT: As pointed out by Daniel Lew, an easier way to kill your app is to simply use the “Stop Process” feature in DDMS. This will work on any phone as long as your application is debuggable.**

To test this, you must use an emulator or a rooted phone.

1. Exit your app using the home button.
2. In a terminal:

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# find the process id
adb shell ps
# then find the line with the package name of your app

# Mac/Unix: save some time by using grep:
adb shell ps | grep your.app.package

# The result should look like:
# USER      PID   PPID  VSIZE  RSS     WCHAN    PC         NAME
# u0_a198   21997 160   827940 22064 ffffffff 00000000 S your.app.package

# Kill the app by PID
adb shell kill -9 21997

# the app is now killed

3. Now return to the app using the task switcher.
   You are now on a new application instance.

The Bottom Line

Storing data in the application object is error prone and can crash your app. Prefer storing your global data on disk if it is really needed later or explicitly pass it to your activity in the intent’s extras.

Also remember that while this is true for the application object, it is also true for any singleton or public static field that you might have in your app.

Here is an Android example of how to share variables through out your activities and your project. There is many ways including preferences, extending from a base activity or using  a database to share variables. I like this one because it can be accessed through the whole project and it is easy to implement. The down side is that the variables are only available through a session. For example if the user restarts the application then all the variable will also be cleared. So they can be viewed as session variables.

GlobalState Class:

-Note this extends Application

import android.app.Application;

public class GlobalState extends Application{
	
	 public File sd = null;
	 boolean refresh = true;
	 pictureData [] picturemarkers = null;
	 
	 public File getFilePath(){
		 return sd;
	 }
	 
	 public void setFilePath(File sd){
          this.sd = sd;		 
	 }

	 public pictureData[] getPictureData(){
		 return picturemarkers;
	 }
	  
	 public void setPictureData(pictureData [] picData){
		 picturemarkers = picData;
	 }
	 
	 public void setRefresh(boolean refresh){
		 this.refresh = refresh;
	 }
	 
	 public boolean getRefresh(){
		 return refresh;
	 }
			 
}

ExampleActivity Class:

public class ExampleActivity extends Activity {

        GlobalState gs;

	public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
              gs = (GlobalState) getApplication();
        }

        public void examples(){  
            File temp = gs.getFilePath();
            if(gs.refresh()){
                gs.setRefresh(false);
             }
        }
} 

Manifest

-I do not fully understand why but it is needed for it to work.  Set the ‘name’ of your application to the path where the file is located.

<application
        android:name="your.package.name.GlobalState"

As previously described in Leaving an Android application, when you exit an app by pressing back button its resources are not completely destroyed immediately.

I would like to explain a concrete mistake I met multiple times, in connection with this behavior, which is easy to commit, if you forget this.

When you use static member variables in an activity you, should think about, how static variables are handled when instantiating, and how android instantiates activities.

If a static variable has an initial value it is only applied when creating the first instance. When the activity is started, when starting from app browser or by an Intent programmatically by you it becomes instantiated. When the app is first started, the first instance will be created, so obviously the static variables will get the initial values.

During the run the static variables may be killed if the activity they belong to are not visible, in this case they will have their default values when returning to the activity. If you want to restore their values in this case from some kind of stored source read this article: Maintaining global Application state

And the problem I recently met, that the opposite can also happen, the static variables may keep their values when you did not expect this. It is very easy to confirm this, just exit the application by pressing back and quickly restart it from the app browser. In such a sort time the android system will not kill the entire activity, and static variables will retain values.

So you should think over why the variable become static, to decide if it is the desired behavior for you or not. For example you can reinitialize the static variables in onCreate or onResume methods if that fits you.

STEP 1: Download QuickTime from …

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/d.

STEP 2: Open QuickTime Player.

STEP 3: GOTO Edit – Preferences – Register.

STEP 4: Enter username and password.

Pc Serials:
Registered To: CORE MAFIA
Registration Code: DFXY-5TJN-HU3N-DQXF-WDQ3

Register Name: Dawn M Fredette
Register Code: 4UJ2-5NLF-HFFA-9JW3-X2KV
===========================================
Mac Users:
Registered To: Pablo/nop
Registration code:
SMH2-6F4K-8SK9-ST5W-QKU3

===========================================
Others:
Register Name = In Memory of Abysm
Register Code = YBN7Y-9K77Y-F67B5-PNCCQ

Register Name: http://www.macmofo.com
Register Code: 3DX76-9KJ4F-CBQL9-BJBKH

Registered To: Apple Sales
Registration Code: TTVN-B66S-28V6-X84D-EBWN
===========================================

Disclaimer – This Info is for educational use it is not intentioned nor was it made in order to cause any infringements with the original creator of the software

THAT’S IT!
Hope This Helps.
datroubleshooter.

Quantity Strings (Plurals)

Different languages have different rules for grammatical agreement with quantity. In English, for example, the quantity 1 is a special case. We write “1 book”, but for any other quantity we’d write “n books”. This distinction between singular and plural is very common, but other languages make finer distinctions. The full set supported by Android is zero, one, two, few, many, and other.

The rules for deciding which case to use for a given language and quantity can be very complex, so Android provides you with methods such as getQuantityString() to select the appropriate resource for you.

Although historically called “quantity strings” (and still called that in API), quantity strings should only be used for plurals. It would be a mistake to use quantity strings to implement something like Gmail’s “Inbox” versus “Inbox (12)” when there are unread messages, for example. It might seem convenient to use quantity strings instead of an if statement, but it’s important to note that some languages (such as Chinese) don’t make these grammatical distinctions at all, so you’ll always get the other string.

The selection of which string to use is made solely based on grammatical necessity. In English, a string for zero will be ignored even if the quantity is 0, because 0 isn’t grammatically different from 2, or any other number except 1 (“zero books”, “one book”, “two books”, and so on). Conversely, in Korean only the other string will ever be used.

Don’t be misled either by the fact that, say, two sounds like it could only apply to the quantity 2: a language may require that 2, 12, 102 (and so on) are all treated like one another but differently to other quantities. Rely on your translator to know what distinctions their language actually insists upon.

It’s often possible to avoid quantity strings by using quantity-neutral formulations such as “Books: 1”. This will make your life and your translators’ lives easier, if it’s a style that’s in keeping with your application.

Note: A plurals collection is a simple resource that is referenced using the value provided in the name attribute (not the name of the XML file). As such, you can combine plurals resources with other simple resources in the one XML file, under one <resources> element.

file location:

res/values/filename.xml
The filename is arbitrary. The <plurals> element’s name will be used as the resource ID.

resource reference:

In Java: R.plurals.plural_name

syntax:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <plurals
        name="plural_name">
        <item
            quantity=["zero" | "one" | "two" | "few" | "many" | "other"]
            >text_string</item>
    </plurals>
</resources>

elements:

<resources>

Required. This must be the root node.No attributes.

<plurals>

A collection of strings, of which, one string is provided depending on the amount of something. Contains one or more <item> elements.

attributes:

name

String. A name for the pair of strings. This name will be used as the resource ID.

<item>

A plural or singular string. The value can be a reference to another string resource. Must be a child of a <plurals> element. Beware that you must escape apostrophes and quotation marks. See Formatting and Styling, below, for information about to properly style and format your strings.

attributes:

quantity

Keyword. A value indicating when this string should be used. Valid values, with non-exhaustive examples in parentheses:

Value	Description
zero	When the language requires special treatment of the number 0 (as in Arabic).
one	When the language requires special treatment of numbers like one (as with the number 1 in English and most other languages; in Russian, any number ending in 1 but not ending in 11 is in this class).
two	When the language requires special treatment of numbers like two (as with 2 in Welsh, or 102 in Slovenian).
few	When the language requires special treatment of “small” numbers (as with 2, 3, and 4 in Czech; or numbers ending 2, 3, or 4 but not 12, 13, or 14 in Polish).
many	When the language requires special treatment of “large” numbers (as with numbers ending 11-99 in Maltese).
other	When the language does not require special treatment of the given quantity (as with all numbers in Chinese, or 42 in English).

example:

XML file saved at res/values/strings.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <plurals name="numberOfSongsAvailable">
        <!--
             As a developer, you should always supply "one" and "other"
             strings. Your translators will know which strings are actually
             needed for their language. Always include %d in "one" because
             translators will need to use %d for languages where "one"
             doesn't mean 1 (as explained above).
          -->
        <item quantity="one">%d song found.</item>
        <item quantity="other">%d songs found.</item>
    </plurals>
</resources>

XML file saved at res/values-pl/strings.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <plurals name="numberOfSongsAvailable">
        <item quantity="one">Znaleziono %d piosenkę.</item>
        <item quantity="few">Znaleziono %d piosenki.</item>
        <item quantity="other">Znaleziono %d piosenek.</item>
    </plurals>
</resources>

Java code:

int count = getNumberOfsongsAvailable();
Resources res = getResources();
String songsFound = res.getQuantityString(R.plurals.numberOfSongsAvailable, count, count);

When using the getQuantityString() method, you need to pass the count twice if your string includes string formatting with a number. For example, for the string %d songs found, the first count parameter selects the appropriate plural string and the second count parameter is inserted into the %d placeholder. If your plural strings do not include string formatting, you don’t need to pass the third parameter to getQuantityString.

Formatting and Styling

Here are a few important things you should know about how to properly format and style your string resources.

Escaping apostrophes and quotes

If you have an apostrophe or a quote in your string, you must either escape it or enclose the whole string in the other type of enclosing quotes. For example, here are some stings that do and don’t work:

<string name="good_example">"This'll work"</string>
<string name="good_example_2">This\'ll also work</string>
<string name="bad_example">This doesn't work</string>
<string name="bad_example_2">XML encodings don&apos;t work</string>

Formatting strings

If you need to format your strings using String.format(String, Object...), then you can do so by putting your format arguments in the string resource. For example, with the following resource:

<string name="welcome_messages">Hello, %1$s! You have %2$d new messages.</string>

In this example, the format string has two arguments: %1$s is a string and %2$d is a decimal number. You can format the string with arguments from your application like this:

Resources res = getResources();
String text = String.format(res.getString(R.string.welcome_messages), username, mailCount);

If you call method getString() or getResources() or getActivity(). You get this error if your fragment hasnt been attach to the activity yet.

E.g:

private horizontalTabTitles = new String[]{getString(R.string.sort_by_time),
getString(R.string.sort_by_table), getString(R.string.sort_by_order)};

when you declare and initialize this, the fragment may not has been attached to the activity yet. hence cause the error.

AndroidLocalize .java

1. Declare spinner control, locale and button objects
2. Find the spinner control from main.xml and add OnItemSelectedListener class to it
3. Based on the list item selected, call setLocale method with the Locale value: English – en, Tamil – ta and Hindi – hi.
4. Change the configuration of device (add locale) for your application
5. Make sure that you refresh the current activity to reflect the changes made in configuration