Question

I just have a question regarding changing an Activities layout.

Basicly my problem is:

I have a list view populated with a series of Strings.
I have an OnItemClick event assigned to the ListView,

When the user clicks an item in the list view, I want the current layout to disapear and an image to take its place.

From reading other posts, I understand that the recommended way is to set a separate activity for each item in the ListView, however, seeming as all the activity is doing is displaying an image I think it would be a waste of effort to set up a separate activity for each item in the ListView…

Could anyone give me some help on this?

thanksin advance.

Shaw

Answer 1

You really should create a new activity (ar a new fragment if you have space, but this is another question) which displays the image, for at least the following reasons

1. it is very, very simple to code and mantain such a solution. What if tomorrow you want to add 2 buttons and some text and maybe a menu for that image? you have your brand new activity to edit and upgrade without risking to damage your list activity.

2. it is more user friendly. If the user presses back when the image is shown, with 2 activities he will be back to the list, with your solution he will go back BEFORE the list, and this is not what he’d espect

remember this piece of advice: 1 activity = 1 simple task or interaction with user.

list + image display = 2 activities (or fragments)

PS: you do not need to define a different activity for each list item, just pass with the intent to the “ImageActivity” and specify there which image to show!

EDIT 2: to pass to the next activity your current selection, just use the putExtra(String key, T value) (T may vary, check documentation) method of Intent class.
example: intent.putExtra(“imgCodeSelected”, index) where index is fetched by the onItemClick event. You can put as many extras as you want as long as they have different keys.