An introduction to fragments
Fragments are reusable pieces of a user interface component that provide flexibility to the application design. As you have already learnt from Chapter 1, The Anatomy of an Android App, fragments are reusable mini-activities, such as UI components, that can manage their own life cycles. Fragments are always intended to work without depending on another activity or fragment. Like an Activity
class, a fragment class needs to extend from the Fragment
class. To make things even easier, Android provides some of the additional specialized fragment subclasses such as ListFragment
, DialogFragment
, and PreferenceFragment
.
The following table shows the list of fragment subclasses and their purposes. You may also extend any of the following fragment subclasses to create your own fragment.
|
This displays a list of data items from different sources, such as an array, a cursor, and so on. |
|
This displays a fragment as a floating dialog window... |