Question

Here is my unanswered question:
Add new item count to icon on button – Android

Basically I want to display “new” counts on top. I see it as overlaying some view over existing button. How this can be done?

Answer 1

Ok here is what i’d do:

Create a custom control that extends button. I’m not going to do the pretty graphics for you but this will give you the basic idea:

import android.content.Context;
import android.graphics.Canvas;
import android.graphics.Paint;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.widget.Button;

    public class CounterButton extends Button{
        protected int count=0;
        protected final Paint myTextPaint = new Paint();
        protected final Paint myCirclePaint = new Paint();

        public CounterButton(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
            super(context, attrs);
            this.setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(android.R.drawable.ic_dialog_email));
            this.myCirclePaint.setARGB(150, 255, 0, 0);
            this.myTextPaint.setARGB(150, 255, 255, 255);

        }

        @Override
        protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
                    if(count!=0){
            canvas.drawCircle((float) (this.getWidth()*.75), (float) (this.getHeight()*.4), this.getHeight()/5, myCirclePaint);
            canvas.drawText(Integer.toString(count), (float) (this.getWidth()*.75), (float) (this.getHeight()*.4), this.myTextPaint);
             }
        }
    }

Clean up the sizing of your text you draw, the circle positioning (and add a border etc) and you have a custom control. You could further extend it so you could set the background in xml or dynamically and you have a reusable control with a number counter in a circle.

then in your code you could do:

CounterButton cb=(CounterButton) findViewById(R.id.whateverYouGaveItInXML);
cb.count=SomeNewNumber;
cb.invalidate;

the invalidate will redraw the image with the new value in the circle.

I used a button in the event you want to have it clickable easily and all that – but you could just as easily extend view if you are just doing a view.