The Android SDK provides a powerful tool to program mobile devices, and the best way to master such a tool is to jump right in. Although you can read this book from beginning to end, as it is a cookbook, it is specifically designed to allow you to jump to specific tasks and get the results immediately.

Activities are the fundamental building block of most Android applications as the activity class provides the interface between the application and screen. Most Android applications will have at least one activity, if not several (but they are not required). A background service application will not necessarily require an activity if there is no user interface.

This chapter explains how to declare and launch activities within an application and how to manage several activities at once by sharing data between them, requesting results from them, and calling one activity from within another.

This chapter also briefly explores the intent object, which is often used in conjunction with activities. Intents can be used to transfer data between activities in your own application, as well as in external applications, such as those included with the Android operating system (a common example would be to use an intent to launch the default web browser).

Activities and other application components, such as services, are declared in the AndroidManifest.xml file. Declaring an activity node is how we tell the OS about our Activity class and how it can be requested. For example, an application will usually indicate that at least one activity should be visible as a desktop icon and serve as the main entry point to the application.

Android Studio, now at version 3.2, is used for all the code samples shown in this book. If you have not already installed it, visit the Android Studio website (see the link in the previous tip) to install the IDE and the SDK bundle for your platform.

For this first example, we'll guide you through creating a new project. Android Studio provides a Quick Start wizard, which makes the process extremely easy. Follow these steps to get started:

1. Launch Android Studio, which brings up the Welcome to Android Studio dialog:

2. Click on the Start a new Android Studio project option.
3. Enter an application name; for this example, we used DeclareAnActivity. Click on Next:

4. In the Target Android Devices dialog, you can leave the Phone and Tablet checkbox selected with the default API 21: Android 5.0 (Lollipop) selection for the minimum SDK (for this example, it really doesn't matter which API level you choose, as activities have existed since API level 1). Click on Next:

5. In the Add an Activity to Mobile dialog, select the Empty Activity option. Click on Next:

6. In the Configure Activity dialog, you can leave the defaults as provided, but note that the default activity name is MainActivity. Click on Finish:

After finishing the wizard, Android Studio will create the project files. For this recipe, the two files that we will examine are MainActivity.java (which corresponds to the activity name mentioned in step 6) and AndroidManifest.xml.

If you take a look at the MainActivity.java file, you will realize that it's pretty basic. This is because we chose the Empty Activity option (in step 5). Now, look at the AndroidManifest.xml file. This is where we actually declare the activity. Within the <application> element is the <activity> element:

<activity android:name=".MainActivity" android:label="@string/app_name"> <intent-filter> <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/> <category android:name=
 "android.intent.category.LAUNCHER"/> </intent-filter> </activity>

Declaring an activity is a simple matter of declaring the <activity> element and specifying the name of the activity class with the android:name attribute. By adding the <activity> element to the Android Manifest, we are specifying our intention to include this component in our application. Any activities (or any other component for that matter) that are not declared in the manifest will not be available to the application. Attempting to access or utilize an undeclared component will result in an exception being thrown at runtime.

In the preceding code, there is another attribute: android:label. This attribute indicates the title shown on the screen, as well as the icon if this is the Launcher activity.

The Android application model can be seen as a service-oriented one, with activities as components and intents as the messages sent between them. Here, an intent is used to start an activity that displays the user's call log, but intents can be used to do many things and we will encounter them throughout this book.

To keep things simple, we are going to use an intent object to start one of Android's built-in applications rather than create a new one. This only requires a very basic application, so start a new Android project with Android Studio and call it ActivityStarter.

Again, to keep the example simple so that we can focus on the task at hand, we will create a function to show an intent in action and call this function from a button on our activity.

Once your new project is created in Android Studio, follow these steps:

1. Open the MainActivity.java class and add the following function:

public void launchIntent(View view) { 
    Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW); 
    intent.setData(Uri.parse("https://www.packtpub.com/")); 
    startActivity(intent); 
} 

• While you are typing this code, Android Studio will give this warning on View and intent: Cannot resolve symbol 'Intent'.
• This means that you need to add the library reference to the project. You can do this manually by entering the following code in the import section:

        import android.content.Intent;
        import android.net.Uri;
        import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
        import android.os.Bundle;
        import android.view.View;

2. Open the activity_main.xml file and replace the <TextView /> block with the following XML:

<Button
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="Launch Browser"
    android:id="@+id/button"
    android:onClick="launchIntent"
    app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"/>

3. Now, it's time to run the application and see the intent in action. You will need to either create an Android emulator (in Android Studio, go to Tools | Android | AVDManager) or connect a physical device to your computer.
4. When you press the Launch Browser button, you will see the default web browser open with the URL specified.

Though simple, this app demonstrates much of the power behind the Android OS. An intent is a message object. Intents can be used to communicate across your application's components (such as services and broadcast receivers) as well as with other applications on the device. In this recipe, we asked the OS to start any app that could handle the data we specified with the setData() method. (If the user has multiple browsers installed and no default set, the OS will show a list of apps for the user to choose from.)

In this recipe, we created an intent object with the ACTION_VIEW . as what we want to do (our intention). You may have noticed that when you typed Intent and the period, Android Studio provided a pop-up list of possibilities (this is the autocomplete feature), like this:

ACTION_VIEW, along with a URL in the data, indicates that the intention is to view the website, so the default browser is launched (different data could launch different apps). In this example, we just want to open a browser with the specified URL, so we call the startActivity() method. There are other ways to call the intent depending on our needs. In the Returning a result from an activity recipe, we will use the startActivityForResult() method.

It's very common for Android users to download their favorite apps for web browsing, taking photos, text messaging, and so on. Using Intents, you allow your users to use their favorite apps instead of trying to reinvent all of this functionality.

To start an activity from a menu selection, refer to the Handling menu selections recipe in Chapter 4, Menus and Action Mode.

Often, we will want to activate one activity from within another activity. Although this is not a difficult task, it will require a little more setting up to be done than the previous recipes as it requires two activities. We will create two activity classes and declare them both in the manifest. We'll also create a button, as we did in the previous recipe, to switch to the activity.

We'll create a new project in Android Studio, just as we did in the previous recipes, and call this one ActivitySwitcher. Android Studio will create the first activity, ActivityMain, and automatically declare it in the manifest.

1. Since the Android Studio New Project wizard has already created the first activity, we just need to create the second activity. Open the ActivitySwitcher project and navigate to File | New | Activity | Empty Activity, as shown in this screenshot:

2. In the New Android Activity dialog, you can leave the default Activity Name as is, or change it to SecondActivity, as follows:

3. Open the MainActivity.java file and add the following function:

    public void onClickSwitchActivity(View view) { 
        Intent intent = new Intent(this, SecondActivity.class); 
        startActivity(intent); 
    }

4. Now, open the activity_main.xml file located in the res/layout folder and replace the <TextView /> with the following XML to create the button:

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:text="Launch Second Activity"
        android:onClick="onClickSwitchActivity"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"/>

5. You can run the code at this point and see the second activity open. We're going to go further and add a button to SecondActivity to close it, which will bring us back to the first activity. Open the SecondActivity.java file and
   add this function:

    public void onClickClose(View view) { 
        finish(); 
    } 

6. Finally, add the Close button to the SecondActivity layout. Open the activity_second.xml file and add the following <Button> element to the auto-generated ConstraintLayout: 

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/buttonClose"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Close"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:onClick="onClickClose"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"/>

7. Run the application on your device or emulator and see the buttons in action.

The real work of this exercise is in the onClickSwitchActivity() method from step 3. This is where we declare the second activity for the Intent using SecondActivity.class. We went one step further by adding the close button to the second activity to show a common real-world situation: launching a new activity, then returning to the original calling activity. This behavior is accomplished in the onClickClose() function. All it does is call finish(), but that tells the OS that we're done with the activity. Finish doesn't actually return us to the calling activity (or any specific activity for that matter); it just closes the current activity and relies on the application's back stack to show the last activity. If we want a specific activity, we can again use the Intent object and specify the activity class name when creating the Intent.

This activity switching does not make a very exciting application. Our activity does nothing but demonstrates how to switch from one activity to another, which of course will form a fundamental aspect of almost any application that we develop.

If we had manually created the activities, we would need to add them to the manifest. Using the New Android Activity wizard will automatically add the necessary elements to the Android Manifest file. To see what Android Studio did for you, open the AndroidManifest.xml file and look at the <application> element:

<activity android:name=".MainActivity">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />

        <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>
<activity android:name=".SecondActivity"></activity>

One thing to note in the preceding auto-generated code is that the second activity does not have the <intent-filter> element. The main activity is generally the entry point when starting the application. That's why MAIN and LAUNCHER are defined so that the system will know which activity to launch when the application starts.

• To learn more about embedding widgets such as the Button, visit Chapter 2, Views, Widgets, and Styles

The intent object is defined as a messaging object. As a message object, its purpose is to communicate with other components of the application. In this recipe, we'll show you how to pass information with the intent and how to get it out again.

This recipe will pick up from where the previous one ended. We will call this project SendData.

Since this recipe is building on the previous recipe, most of the work is already done.  We'll add an EditText element to the main activity so that we have something to send to SecondActivity. We'll use the (auto-generated) TextView view to display the message. The following are the complete steps:

1. Open activity_main.xml and add the following <EditText> element above the button:

<EditText
    android:id="@+id/editTextData"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/button" />

The <Button> element that we created in the previous recipe doesn't change.

2. Now, open the MainActivity.java file and change the onClickSwitchActivity() method as follows:

public void onClickSwitchActivity(View view) { 
    EditText editText = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.editTextData); 
    String text = editText.getText().toString(); 
    Intent intent = new Intent(this, SecondActivity.class); 
    intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT,text); 
    startActivity(intent); 
}

3. Next, open the activity_second.xml file and add the following <TextView> element:

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/textViewText"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@id/buttonClose"/>

4. The last change is to edit the second activity to look for this new data and display it on the screen. Open SecondActivity.java and edit onCreate() as follows:

protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_second);
    TextView textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textViewText);
    if (getIntent() != null && getIntent().hasExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT)) {
        textView.setText(getIntent().getStringExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT));
    }
}

5. Now, run the project. Type some text in the main activity and press Launch Second Activity to see it send the data.

As expected, the Intent object is doing all the work. We created an intent just as in the previous recipe and then added some extra data. Did you notice the putExtra() method call? In our example, we used the already defined Intent.EXTRA_TEXT as the identifier, but we didn't have to. We can use any key we want (you've seen this concept before if you're familiar with name/value pairs).

The key point about using name/value pairs is that you have to use the same name to get the data back out. That's why we used the same key identifier when we read the extra data with getStringExtra().

The second activity was launched with the intent that we created, so it's simply a matter of getting the intent and checking for the data sent along with it. We do this in onCreate():

textView.setText(getIntent().getStringExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT)); 

We aren't limited to just sending String data. The intent object is very flexible and already supports basic data types. Go back to Android Studio and click on the putExtra method. Then, hit Ctrl and the spacebar. Android Studio will bring up the auto-complete list so that you can see the different data types that you can store.