Android Development Tutorial

Android Development 17

54 Comments

Android Fragments TutorialWelcome to part 17 of my Android Development Tutorial. This is part 2 of my Android Fragments Tutorial series. Part 1 is here and you should watch it before watching this video.

Fragments are often used so you can create completely different interfaces depending upon the screen real estate available. We’ll cover how to do that and we’ll also look at how we can get the fragments to communicate with each other and the main activity. The Whole package is available here Android Fragments.

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Code From the Video

lpsum.java

dimens.xml

news_articles.xml

article_view.xml

news_articles.xml (layout-large)

HeadlinesFragment.java

ArticleFragment.java

MainActivity.java

54 thoughts on “Android Development 17”

  1. Hey..

    Thanks for tutorials. Can you please make one tutorial about AlarmManager and how to set multiple alarms?

    Reply

    1. A Android Java app would be able to take advantage of all the specific Android tools. An app meant to be cross platform would work on more devices, but lose access to those tools specific to either Android or iOS

      Reply

  3. Master Derek, can you make an android tutorial about reading images? like inputing a string to match the name of the image and if he got the correct string or the name of the image, the user can guess another image again. I hope you understood what I typed, hehe, thanks a million if you’ll make a tutorial of my request, and even if you don’t, thanks for the great tuts 🙂

    Reply

  4. Hey..
    Nw amazon has made one tool for developing android app using html5 ..
    People say its better den any other tool and easy to make app..
    is it true?????

    Reply

  5. hi derek, i know you busy with c tutorials, but i was hoping if u could squeeze in a gesture tutorial for andriod.
    thanks for everything.
    sbo

    Reply

  6. why do we need this line of code in MainActivity.java
    firstFragment.setArguments(getIntent().getExtras());
    i didn’t get this point, since we are not using any intents here.

    Reply

      1. but we are not using any passed arguments in the headlines fragment so whats the need to set the arguments

        Reply

  7. I wnt to know frm u derek..
    That phone gap is much easier or directly frm eclipse its will be easier for us to develope android app..

    Reply

  8. Hi Derek,

    Thanks for the awesome tutorials, are you going to be posting some more android stuff? I’m trying to figure out the process of an android app interacting with a restful service, will you be covering that?

    Reply

    1. You’re very welcome 🙂 Yes more Android tutorials are coming. I’ll get them out ASAP. I covered how to use the Yahoo restful service for XML and JSON early in the tutorial. I will cover how to create webservices soon.

      Reply

  10. Hey …love the tutorials so helping me learn android …gat a sem project that i have to make a fashion app could you plse cover colour selection ..would be so helpfull thanks man

    Reply

    1. I’m going to spend more time on interface design soon. Sorry the videos are taking so long. I’m trying to make sure each one is good. I have been throwing a bunch of the videos out.

      Reply

  11. Master, I’m from Nicaragua and I do not know if you speak spanish but if you do let me know and if you do not, it is ok, Because I’m learning it, well I got a question in the tutorial number 3 I made and follow all the step for the app, but at the end of running the app to my device, which is a tablet mediapad 7 lite, an error appears like the app “crazytipcalc has stopped”, and the option ok to exit, I do not know was the problem is, and thank you for the tutorials is a such a wonderfull website

    Reply

    1. Thank you 🙂 I speak a little Spanish, but I use a translator if I need to.

      As per your question, what errors are you getting in the LogCat panel in Eclipse? (Window -> Show View -> Other… -> Android -> LogCat)

      Reply

  13. Hello Derek, thank you so much for the amazing tutorials. Do u know how to make Dictionary app. Where people can type word like “computer’ and get the meaning/definition of computer. I would like to make English to my native language dictionary and it is very important. I have been following your tutorials hoping i would learn how to make dictionary app at least in the end. Could you please teach me how to do that? thank you very much.

    Reply

    1. I actually was going to make an app that would act as a universal translator. My approach was to build the translations using the Grammatical Framework.

      The app quickly got out of control, teaching wise, so I had to drop the idea for a tutorial. You could definitely make a translation app this way though. I’d be very interested in what you come up with.

      I hope that helps 🙂

      Reply

      1. Hello Derek,

        Thanks for ur kind reply. Sadly i have very basic knowledge of programming. Could u point me to other source links if u know. I have all the list of 5000 words and meaning already in excel file. I need some way to extract this file when people make query in app form. Thanks you.

        Reply

        1. Hello Henry,

          If you have the words translated you could just save them in table form in an SQLite database. SQLite is some what like a spreadsheet. I have a tutorial on SQLite. Then when they type in a word, you can find the proper word next to it in the chosen language and display it in a text box.

          Stick with it. I’m sure you can do it.

          Reply

  14. Salut Derek,
    The first, I really love your videos. Thank you for your sharing!
    And second, i have problem with this fragment tutorial. I try to code by myself or copy direct your source codes to my eclipse but it’s still not worked …!

    The application force close when i try to open it
    This is logcat error:
    E/AndroidRuntime(2197): Caused by: android.content.res.Resources$NotFoundException: Resource ID #0x7f030003

    I think have some problem with onCreate method in MainActivity. But i can’t fix it. I tried clean project and then restart eclipse. I didn’t find any answer from google or stackoverflow also. Could you help me please ! Thanks again.

    Reply

      1. Thank you so much ! it saved me a lot of times. I found out my problem. It’s typo name of xml layout so, the onCreate method cannot setContentView for the application. Oh brain …

        Reply

  15. Hi Derek,

    Thank you for the wonderful tutorials and you are the best.

    I am wondering if you have or will you be covering tabs in future. I have not covered all tutorials yet could you please let me know the number if you did.

    Thank you very much,

    Adam

    Reply

  16. Why do I keep getting this error very frequently?! “The specified activity does not exist! Getting the launcher activity.”
    The codes are exactly the same.

    Reply

  17. But I would like to point out one thing I noticed. Now a days your video tutorials like this one is very very fast you use copy paste of code a lot and you are damm fast.

    For instance I need to pause this video after each minute to write out the codes you have written.

    of course you have provided the code along with comments but still I like to make programs along with live video tutorials so please if you can slow down, In this video you were really too fast and it was not at all enjoyable writing with you

    Thnx for providing these awesome tutorials

    Reply

  18. Hey, Your tutorials study materials are awesome, I don’t have words to thank u. The content of your video tutorials are just amazzzing.

    Reply

    1. Hey Derek why not make a wonderful app, at the end of which there is also a walk through to upload it to google play store. ( Please do not choose google maps as the major app video tutorial – it sucks ).

      Thnks anyway

      Reply

      1. Eventually I’m going to great apps to go along with the video tutorials. So for example if I do an algebra tutorial I will make an Algebra practice app. I plan to do this over and over again. That way I can teach how to make real world Android apps while I continue to explore new areas of knowledge. Everything will be free 🙂

        Reply

  19. First of all thanks for your tutorial.
    To test this app on my Galaxy S4, I replaced layout-large by layout-land. But when I select an article in land layout, I have a NullPointerException in updateArticleView because article was not found.
    Is it a little bug or is it because it has to be implemented another way when one uses layout-land ?
    Thanks in advance for your answer.

    Gilles
    Paris

    Reply

  20. I really wanna understand this tutorial. But everything seem not very easy to be understood for me. teacher Derek, can you tell me how to understand this source codes fully please? Thank you very much

    Reply

  21. Hello Derek, what is the preferable resolution for this lab. My first emulator is to small to have these landscape changes. Then I changed to a Nexus 10 with a 2560*1600 it’s so big that it only has the landscape. Thanks for very good tutorials.

    Reply

  22. I’m trying to figure out fragments… and this example still leaves me with a question.

    * When this app is started on a large device, the first entry to source code is to onAttach in HeadlinesFragment.java

    * When this app is started on a small device, the first entry to source code is to onCreate in MainActity.java

    Ok – I understand if the large layout is used, it calls fragments, and if the smaller layout is used, well, it isn’t used until MainActivity.java inflates it.

    So, why/how does android know that if using the large xml, to call using the fragment lifecycle (which starts with onAttach in HeadlinesFragment.java), and if using the small device, to use the activity lifecycle (that starts with onCreate in MainActivity.java).

    Thanks in advance for your help.

    And by the way… FANTASTIC TUTORIALS!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply

  23. Ok… figured it out. My previous post isn’t exactly accurate… so this is what I found out.

    When run on a large device, the order of what is run is:

    * MainActivity.java, onCreate starts
    when setContentView is executed, the following gets run:
    * HeadlinesFragment.java, OnAttached gets called
    * HeadlinesFragment.java, OnCreate gets called
    * ArticleFragment.java, OnCreateView gets called
    * MainActivity.java, onCreate ends
    * HeadlinesFragment.java, onStart gets called
    * ArticleFragment.java, onStart gets called
    * Tablet screen now shows both fragments.

    On the other hand, a much different path happens if a SMALL device screen is run:

    * MainActivity.java, onCreate starts
    * if statement starts FragmentManager and begins Fragment.add…
    * MainActivity.java, onCreate ends
    * HeadlinesFragment.java, onAttach is called
    * HeadlinesFragment.java, onCreate is called
    * HeadlinesFragment.java, onStart is called
    * Phone screen now shows headlines fragment only.

    So what it comes down to is: When setContentView is called, if the layout contains fragments (as in the large device), the fragments get started. If setContentView does not contain fragments (as in the small device), nothing was started, so the Activity needs to start the fragments it wants/needs.

    I now see it’s obvious… now…

    Again – FANTASTIC TUTORIALS!!!

    Thanks – Daniel

    Reply

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