Create Widget on Android

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In Android, we can publish this type of view using the App Widget provider and component of the application that provide feature to hold other app widgets.

1User interface

Widgets are running in the different application so for security and performance reasons some restrictions are

In widgets. So you can only use standard component and this component interacts with RemoteViews.

You can use only:

AnalogClock

Button

Chronometer

ImageButton

ImageView

ProgressBar

TextView

ViewFlipper

ListView

GridView

StackView

AdapterViewFlipper

Along with ViewStub, which allows lazy inflation of a layout, you can only use the following containers:

FrameLayout

LinearLayout

RelativeLayout

GridLayout

Extensions of these classes are not allowed.

For some restrictions, widgets use only TextView, Button, ImageView.

We require one to receive the data so open AndroidManifest.xml and add the below the line.

2AndroidManifest.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:dist="http://schemas.android.com/apk/distribution" package="com.demo.widgets"> <application android:allowBackup="true" android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher" android:label="@string/app_name" android:roundIcon="@mipmap/ic_launcher_round" android:supportsRtl="true" android:theme="@style/AppTheme"> <receiver android:name=".MyWidget"> <intent-filter> <action android:name="android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_UPDATE" /> </intent-filter> <meta-data android:name="android.appwidget.provider" android:resource="@xml/my_widget_info" /> </receiver> <activity android:name=".MainActivity"> <intent-filter> <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" /> <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" /> <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" /> </intent-filter> </activity> </application></manifest>

view raw AndroidManifest.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

3AppWidgetProviderInfo Metadata

In Android AppWidgetProviderInfo provides the best qualities of App Widgets. it provides the function like minimum layout dimensions, how to update app widgets and initial layout file.

So we define AppWidgetProviderInfo object in XML resource using <appwidget-provider>

And save it in res/xml folder

4my_widget_info.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><appwidget-provider xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:initialKeyguardLayout="@layout/my_widget" android:initialLayout="@layout/my_widget" android:minWidth="100dp" android:minHeight="40dp" android:resizeMode="horizontal|vertical" android:updatePeriodMillis="86400000" android:widgetCategory="home_screen" />

view raw my_widget_info.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

5Call AppWidgetProvider

In Java for handling app widgets broadcast we extend AppWidgetProvider class and then we override the update method.

6MyWidget.java

After that open the my_widget.xml file and write the code as below.

public class MyWidget extends AppWidgetProvider { public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager, int[] appWidgetIds) { final int N = appWidgetIds.length; Log.e("Updating widgets " , Arrays.asList(appWidgetIds)+” ”); for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) { int appWidgetId = appWidgetIds[i]; String url = "https://www.vasundharavision.com/"; Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW); intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK); intent.setData(Uri.parse(url)); PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, 0, intent, 0); // attach an on-click listener // to the button RemoteViews views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), R.layout.my_widget); views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.btn, pendingIntent); // To update a textview views.setTextViewText(R.id.txtWidget, "Vasundhara Vision"); appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetId, views); } }}

view raw MyWidget.java hosted with ❤ by GitHub

7my_widget.xml

After that open the MainActivity.java and write code as below.

view raw my_widget.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

8MainActivity.java

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity { @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); }}

view raw MainActivity.java hosted with ❤ by GitHub

9Output :

After that we run the project and we will get this type of output.

Android