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Android Apprentice

Fourth Edition · Android 11 · Kotlin 1.4 · Android Studio 4.1

Before You Begin

Section 0: 5 chapters
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Section I: Your First Android App

Section 1: 5 chapters
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Section II: Building a List App

Section 2: 7 chapters
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Section III: Creating Map-Based Apps

Section 3: 7 chapters
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Section IV: Building a Podcast Manager & Player

Section 4: 8 chapters
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Section V: Android Compatibility

Section 5: 2 chapters
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Section VI: Publishing Your App

Section 6: 3 chapters
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18. Navigation & Photos
Written by Kevin D Moore

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In this chapter, you’ll add the ability to navigate directly to bookmarks, and you’ll also replace the photo for a bookmark.

Getting started

The starter project for this chapter includes an additional icon that you need to complete the chapter. You can either begin this chapter with the starter project or copy src/main/res/drawable-xxxx/ic_other.png from the starter project into yours.

Make sure to copy the files from all of the drawable folders, including everything with the .hdpi, .mdpi, .xhdpi, .xxhdpi and .xxxhdpi extensions.

If you do use the starter app, don’t forget to add your google_maps_key in google_maps_api.xml. Read Chapter 13 for more details about the Google Maps key.

Bookmark navigation

At the moment, the only way to find an existing bookmark is to locate its pin on the map. Let’s save a little skin on the user’s fingertips by creating a Navigation Drawer that they can use to jump directly to any bookmark.

Navigation drawer design

While the navigation drawer is going out of fashion, it’s difficult to use Android without encountering a navigation drawer. Although its uses vary, they share a common design pattern. The drawer is hidden to the left of the main content view and is activated with either a swipe from the left edge of the screen or by tapping a navigation drawer icon. Once the drawer is activated, it slides out over the top of the main content and slides back in once an action has been taken by the user.

Navigation drawer layout

To create the drawer Layout, you need to create a new Layout file for the navigation drawer, move the map fragment from activity_maps.xml to its own Layout file, and update activity_maps.xml to contain the DrawerLayout element.

Adding Data Binding to MapActivity

Since activity_maps.xml used the layout tag, you need to update MapsActivity to use Data Binding. Open up MapsActivity.kt and add the databinding variable after the mapsViewModel:

Navigation toolbar toggle

Add a toggle button for the navigation drawer by creating an ActionBarDrawerToggle. This is used to integrate the drawer functionality with the app bar.

Populating the navigation bar

To populate the navigation bar, you need to provide an Adapter to the RecyclerView and use LiveData to update the Adapter any time bookmarks change in the database.

Navigation bar selections

It’s great that users can now see a list of bookmark names, but it’s not very functional. It’s time to add the ability to zoom to a bookmark when the user taps an item in the navigation drawer.

Custom photos

While Google provides a default photo for each place, your users may prefer to use that perfect selfie instead. In this section, you’ll add the ability to replace the place photo with one from the photo library or one you take on the fly with the camera.

Image option dialog

You’ll start by creating a dialog to let the user choose between an existing image or capturing a new one.

Managing package visibility

On Android 11 checking for apps like the camera or the gallery require new manifest changes. A new queries tag is now available in the manifest file. Open up AndroidManifest.xml and at the bottom before </manifest> add:

Capturing an image

Capturing a full-size image from Android consists of the following steps:

Generate a unique filename

First, you need to create a helper method to generate a unique image filename.

Start the capture activity

Before you can call the image capture Activity, you need to define a request code. This can be any number you choose. It will be used to identify the request when the image capture activity returns the image.

Register the FileProvider

Open AndroidManifest.xml and add the following to the <application> section:

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Process the capture results

The images captured from the camera can be much larger than what’s needed to display in the app. As part of the processing of the newly captured photo, you’ll downsample the photo to match the default bookmark photo size. This calls for some new methods in the ImageUtils.kt class.

Select an existing image

Now you’ll add the option to pick an existing image from the device’s gallery.

Key Points

  • Navigation drawers are useful for information that is not needed all the time.
  • Actions can be performed on navigation drawer items.
  • Refactoring is easy to do in Android Studio.
  • Importing camera and gallery images takes some work but is very useful.

Where to go from here?

Great job! You’ve added some key features to the app and have completed the primary bookmarking features. In the next chapter, you’ll add some finishing touches that will kick the app up a notch.

17. Detail Activity
19. Finishing Touches
Have a technical question? Want to report a bug? You can ask questions and report bugs to the book authors in our official book forum here.
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