Question

I am new at developing Android apps. What I want to do is get data to store into an array and display that data into a list activity view. In a way, the app is going to be similar to a parsed tree where click on one item in the list will take you to a different item and so on and so forth. The thing is I’m going to be having multiple different lists and most are going to be connected somehow (depending on the category selected before hand). I have been looking into the MapsDemo sample application and know there’s a way – however I have yet to figure it out. If this is confusing at all please let me know…

Thanks all

Answer 1

Try this out for starters, then once you can do this, then move to using dynamic data. I used this for a very similar project and worked well:

http://www.ezzylearning.com/tutorial.aspx?tid=1763429

Here is the code I used. Maybe this will help you:

protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        this.setContentView(R.layout.dining);
        //Hard coded array
        ListData newListItem = new ListData();
        ArrayList<ListData> itemObject=null;
        try {

             itemObject= newListItem.getData(DATAURL);
             Log.e(TAG, "item object: "+itemObject.toString());
             ListAdapter adapter = new ListAdapter(this, R.layout.dininglistview, itemObject);
             //Create listview
             this.listView1 = (ListView)this.findViewById(android.R.id.list);
             this.listView1.setAdapter(adapter);

        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            Log.e(TAG, "Unexpected error", e);
        } catch (ServiceException e){
            AlertDialog alertDialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(DiningActivity.this).create();
            alertDialog.setTitle("Temporarily unavailable");
            alertDialog.setMessage("Please contact [e-mail]");
            alertDialog.setButton("OK", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {

                @Override
                public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which)
                {
                    Intent homeIntent = new Intent(DiningActivity.this, HomeActivity.class);
                    DiningActivity.this.startActivity(homeIntent);

                }
            });
            alertDialog.show();
        }
        //implement dining adapter

    }

Here is the getData() method that I used to parse the XML:

public ArrayList<ListData> getData(String DATAURL) throws InterruptedException, ServiceException {

        ArrayList<ListData> items=null;


        HttpURLConnection conn = null;
        try {
            URL url = new URL(DATAURL);
            conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            conn.setReadTimeout(TIMEOUT);
            conn.setConnectTimeout(CONNECT_TIMEOUT);
            conn.setRequestMethod("GET");
            conn.setDoInput(true);
            conn.connect();
            if(Thread.interrupted())
            {
                throw new InterruptedException();
            }


             items = parseXML(conn);



        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {

            Log.e(TAG, "Invalid URL", e);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            Log.e(TAG, "Unable to connect to URL", e);
        }
        finally{
            if(conn!=null){
                conn.disconnect();
            }
        }

        return items;

    }

Here is my parser:

private static ArrayList<ListData> parseXML(HttpURLConnection conn) throws ServiceException {
    ArrayList<ListData> dataArray = new ArrayList<ListData>();


    DocumentBuilderFactory builderFactory =
            DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    DocumentBuilder builder = null;

    try {

        builder = builderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
    } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
        Log.e(TAG, "Parse Configuration issue", e);
        throw new ServiceException("Service Exception Error");
    } catch (IllegalAccessError e){
        Log.e(TAG, "Illegal Accessor Error", e);
        throw new ServiceException("Service Exception Error");
    }

    try {
        //parse input from server
        Document document = builder.parse(conn.getInputStream());
        Element xmlElement  = document.getDocumentElement();
        NodeList recordNodes = xmlElement.getChildNodes();

        //assign parsed data to listItem object
        for(int i=0; i<recordNodes.getLength(); i++){

          Node record = recordNodes.item(i);
          NodeList recordDetails = record.getChildNodes();
          ListData listItem = new ListData();

          for(int ii=0; ii<recordDetails.getLength(); ii++){
             Node detailItem = recordDetails.item(ii);
             String detailType = detailItem.getNodeName();
             String detailValue = detailItem.getTextContent();

             //assign attributes to listItem object
             if(detailType.matches("item")){
                 int itemValue = Integer.parseInt(detailValue);
                 listItem.setItem(itemValue);
             } else if(detailType.matches("title")){
                 listItem.setTitle(detailValue);
             } else if(detailType.matches("subhead")){
                 listItem.setSubhead(detailValue);

             } else if(detailType.matches("thumb")){
                 ImageManager im = new ImageManager();
                 Bitmap tImg = im.getImage(detailValue);
                 listItem.setThumb(tImg);
             } else if(detailType.matches("photo")){
                 ImageManager im = new ImageManager();
                 Bitmap pImg = im.getImage(detailValue);
                 listItem.setPhoto(pImg);
             } else if(detailType.matches("localAddress")){
                 listItem.setLocalAddress(detailValue);
             } else if(detailType.matches("phone")){
                 listItem.setPhone(detailValue);
             } else if(detailType.matches("webUrl")){
                 URL webUrl1 = new URL(detailValue);
                 listItem.setWebURL(webUrl1);
             } else if(detailType.matches("facebook")){
                 listItem.setFacebook(detailValue);
             } else if(detailType.matches("twitter")){
                 listItem.setTwitter(detailValue);
             } else if(detailType.matches("latitude")){
                 float itemLat = Float.parseFloat(detailValue);
                 listItem.setLatitude(itemLat);
             } else if(detailType.matches("longitude")){
                 float itemLon = Float.parseFloat(detailValue);
                 listItem.setLatitude(itemLon);
             } else if(detailType.matches("notes")){
                 listItem.setNotes(detailValue);
             } else if(detailType.matches("comments")){
                 listItem.setComments(detailValue);
             }

          }
          dataArray.add(listItem);

        }

    } catch (SAXException e) {
        //TODO
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        //TODO
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return dataArray;
}