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In a few steps, to create User controls for the Android platform you will have take care of the following issues.

  1. Create the Control Definition in GeneXus so it will be available on the toolbox.
  2. Implement the control in the Target platform; you need to create an Android Studio project.
  3. Create a library definition to match the GeneXus control definition to the target implementation.

Follow the steps bellow

1. Control Definition in GeneXus

Follow the steps detailed in Creating a User Control Definition for Native Mobile applications article to create a User Control definition for Smart Devices.

Execute GeneXus with the /install option and make sure it is available in the Extension Manager dialog.

Create a Smart Device object and bind an attribute or variable to the new User Control definition, generate the model.

The application will be deployed to the Android emulator, now you have to implement the User Control in the Androidplatform.

2. Implement the control in the Target Platform

To get your hands dirty and get an introduction to the Android framework you can check some of the Tutorials, for example:

To get started from an existing sample check this repository.

There are two types of user control for smart devices: Item and List.

Item User Controls

  • Deploy your Base Class which will subclass any android.widget.* class.
  • The class must implement the IGxEdit interface from the com.artech.controls package. This means overiding the following methods:
    • String getGx_Value(): Returns the value associated to this control in string format.
    • void setGx_Value(String value): Set the value associated to the control.
    • String getGx_Tag(): return the Tag property as String, in general return (String)this.getTag();
    • void setGx_Tag(String tag): Set the Tag property as String, in general this.setTag(stringData);
    • void setValueFromIntent(Intent data): if the user control implements a picker control, implement this method.
    • void setEnabled(boolean enabled): Set the enabled state of the control.
    • IGxEdit getListControl(): Return the control reference; default implementation should return this.
    • IGxEdit getViewControl(): Return the control view reference; default implementation should return this.
    • IGxEdit getEditControl(): Return the control to use when editing; default implementation should return this.

For learning purposes check the following classes in the FlexibleClient  com.artech.controls and com.artech.extendedcontrols packages; all GeneXus standard controls are created internally as User Controls:

  • GxButton
  • RadioGroupControl
  • GxCheckBox
  • GxDateTimePicker
  • GxEditText
  • GxImage
  • GxTextView
  • SpinnerControl
  • DynamicSpinnerControl
  • SeekBarControl
  • ScannerControl
  • RatingControl
  • GxWheelControl
  • GxMeasuresControl
  • GxSDGeoLocation

List User Controls

  • Deploy your Base Class which will subclass any android.widget.* class.
  • The class will have to implement the IGridView interface from the com.artech.controls package.
  • This means overriding the following methods and implementing the GridEventsListener interface (Event handlers for requesting data, default action and buttons):
    • void addListener(GridEventsListener listener): define the User Control listeners used to react to specific events.
    • void update(ViewData data): populate the User Control with the data provided.
    • public void requestMoreData(): used to request more data, for example when scrolling.
    • public boolean runAction(UIContext context, ActionDefinition action, Entity entity): execute an action associated to a grid item.
    • public boolean runDefaultAction(UIContext context, Entity entity): execute the default action for the Grid.
  • You can use the GridHelper class from the com.artech.controls.grids package, it contains common functionality for grid controls.
  • When the User Control Constructor is executed with the following arguments (Context context, LayoutItemDefinition def) make sure to inflate your layout, for example:
LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(context);
     if (inflater != null)
        inflater.inflate(com.artech.R.layout.myusercontrol_layout, this, true);
  • the myusercontrol_layout.xml file will contain the layout to hold the list (XML markup).
  • To access the control properties defined,  you can use helper methods from the ControlInfo class (com.artech.base.metadata.layout package):
ControlInfo info = layoutItemDefinition.getControlInfo();
controlItemValues = info.optStringProperty("@ControlItemValues"); //$NON-NLS-1$
controlItemDescription = info.optStringProperty("@ControlItemDescription"); //$NON-NLS-1$
addEmptyItem = info.optBooleanProperty("@AddEmptyItem");   //$NON-NLS-1$
emptyItemText = info.getTranslatedProperty("@EmptyItemText"); //$NON-NLS-1$
  • Depending on your control, you may need to specialize the BaseAdapter class to populate your View. An Adapter object acts as a bridge between an AdapterView and the underlying data for that view. The Adapter provides access to the data items. The Adapter is also responsible for making a View for each item in the data set.
    To define how each row should be inflated, getView is implemented in the custom adapter which inherits from BaseAdapter. A baseadapter is required if you don’t want to use anything that is provided by default in Android like simple_list_item_1, simple_list_item_2. You have to define how to iterate over the list by implementing following methods:
    • public int getCount()
    • public Object getItem(int position)
    • public long getItemId(int position)
  • Define the method getView, where you will describe how to inflate the custom view, basically bind the data from the data structure (UserControlName class) to the view (UserControlNameView class).
    • public View getView(final int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent)

For learning purposes check the following classes in the FlexibleClient  com.artech.controls, com.artech.controls.grid and com.extensions.controls packages:

  • ImageGallery
  • GxMapView
  • GxMagazineViewer
  • GxViewPager

Once you are done, make sure to execute gradlew publishDebugPublicationToLocalRepository to upload your implementation to a local repository used by GeneXus.  it is ready you need to execute

3. Create a Library

Create a library definition to match the GeneXus control definition to the target implementation.

Samples

How To's

See also






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