26. An Overview and Example of Android Event Handling

Much has been covered in the previous chapters relating to the design of user interfaces for Android applications. An area that has yet to be covered, however, involves the way in which a user’s interaction with the user interface triggers the underlying activity to perform a task. In other words, we know from the previous chapters how to create a user interface containing a button view, but not how to make something happen within the application when it is touched by the user.

The primary objective of this chapter, therefore, is to provide an overview of event handling in Android applications together with an Android Studio based example project.

26.1 Understanding Android Events

Events in Android can take a variety of different forms, but are usually generated in response to an external action. The most common form of events, particularly for devices such as tablets and smartphones, involve some form of interaction with the touch screen. Such events fall into the category of input events.

The Android framework maintains an event queue into which events are placed as they occur. Events are then removed from the queue on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis. In the case of an input event such as a touch on the screen, the event is passed to the view positioned at the location on the screen where the touch took place. In addition to the event notification, the view is also passed a range of information (depending on the event type) about the nature of the event such as the coordinates of the point of contact between the user’s fingertip and the screen.

In order to be able to handle the event that it has been passed...

26.2 Using the android:onClick Resource

Before exploring event listeners in more detail it is worth noting that a shortcut is available when all that is required is for a callback method to be called when a user “clicks” on a button view in the user interface. Consider a user interface layout containing a button view named button1 with the requirement that when the user touches the button, a method called buttonClick() declared in the activity class is called. All that is required to implement this behavior is to write the buttonClick() method (which takes as an argument a reference to the view that triggered the click event) and add a single line to the declaration of the button view in the XML file. For example:

<Button

        android:id="@+id/button1"

        android:layout_width="wrap_content"

        android:layout_height...

26.3 Event Listeners and Callback Methods

In the example activity outlined later in this chapter the steps involved in registering an event listener and implementing the callback method will be covered in detail. Before doing so, however, it is worth taking some time to outline the event listeners that are available in the Android framework and the callback methods associated with each one.

•onClickListener – Used to detect click style events whereby the user touches and then releases an area of the device display occupied by a view. Corresponds to the onClick() callback method which is passed a reference to the view that received the event as an argument.

•onLongClickListener – Used to detect when the user maintains the touch over a view for an extended period. Corresponds to the onLongClick() callback method which is passed as an argument the view that received the event.

•onTouchListener – Used to detect any form of contact with...

26.4 An Event Handling Example

In the remainder of this chapter, we will work through the creation of an Android Studio project designed to demonstrate the implementation of an event listener and corresponding callback method to detect when the user has clicked on a button. The code within the callback method will update a text view to indicate that the event has been processed.

Select the Create New Project quick start option from the welcome screen and, within the resulting new project dialog, choose the Empty Activity template before clicking on the Next button.

Enter EventExample into the Name field and specify com.ebookfrenzy.eventexample as the package name. Before clicking on the Finish button, change the Minimum API level setting to API 26: Android 8.0 (Oreo) and the Language menu to Java.

Designing the User Interface

The user interface layout for the MainActivity class in this example is to consist of a ConstraintLayout, a Button and a TextView as illustrated in...

26.5 The Event Listener and Callback Method

For the purposes of this example, an onClickListener needs to be registered for the myButton view. This is achieved by making a call to the setOnClickListener() method of the button view, passing through a new onClickListener object as an argument and implementing the onClick() callback method. Since this is a task that only needs to be performed when the activity is created, a good location is the onCreate() method of the MainActivity class.

If the MainActivity.java file is already open within an editor session, select it by clicking on the tab in the editor panel. Alternatively locate it within the Project tool window by navigating to (app -> java -> com.ebookfrenzy.eventexample -> MainActivity) and double-click on it to load it into the code editor. Once loaded, locate the template onCreate() method and modify it to obtain a reference to the button view, register the event listener and implement the onClick() callback method...

26.6 Consuming Events

The detection of standard clicks (as opposed to long clicks) on views is a very simple case of event handling. The example will now be extended to include the detection of long click events which occur when the user clicks and holds a view on the screen and, in doing so, cover the topic of event consumption.

Consider the code for the onClick() method in the above section of this chapter. The callback is declared as void and, as such, does not return a value to the Android framework after it has finished executing.

The code assigned to the onLongClickListener, on the other hand, is required to return a Boolean value to the Android framework. The purpose of this return value is to indicate to the Android runtime whether or not the callback has consumed the event. If the callback returns a true value, the event is discarded by the framework. If, on the other hand, the callback returns a false value the Android framework will consider the event still to be...

26.7 Summary

A user interface is of little practical use if the views it contains do not do anything in response to user interaction. Android bridges the gap between the user interface and the back end code of the application through the concepts of event listeners and callback methods. The Android View class defines a set of event listeners, which can be registered on view objects. Each event listener also has associated with it a callback method.

When an event takes place on a view in a user interface, that event is placed into an event queue and handled on a first in, first out basis by the Android runtime. If the view on which the event took place has registered a listener that matches the type of event, the corresponding callback method is called. This code then performs any tasks required by the activity before returning. Some callback methods are required to return a Boolean value to indicate whether the event needs to be passed on to any other event listeners registered...