Question

I want to get fling gesture detection working in my Android application.

What I have is a GridLayout that contains 9 ImageViews. The source can be found here: Romain Guys’s Grid Layout.

That file I take is from Romain Guy’s Photostream application and has only been slightly adapted.

For the simple click situation I need only set the onClickListener for each ImageView I add to be the main activity which implements View.OnClickListener. It seems infinitely more complicated to implement something that recognizes a fling. I presume this is because it may span views?

• If my activity implements
  OnGestureListener I don’t know how to
  set that as the gesture listener for
  the Grid or the Image views that I
  add.

  public class SelectFilterActivity extends Activity implements
     View.OnClickListener, OnGestureListener { ...
  

• If my activity implements
  OnTouchListener then I have no
  onFling method to override (it has
  two events as parameters allowing me
  to determine if the fling was
  noteworthy).

  public class SelectFilterActivity extends Activity implements
      View.OnClickListener, OnTouchListener { ...
  

• If I make a custom View, like GestureImageView that extends ImageView I don’t know how to tell the activity that a fling has occurred from the view. In any case, I tried this and the methods weren’t called when I touched the screen.

I really just need a concrete example of this working across views. What, when and how should I attach this listener? I need to be able to detect single clicks also.

// Gesture detection
mGestureDetector = new GestureDetector(this, new GestureDetector.SimpleOnGestureListener() {

    public boolean onFling(MotionEvent e1, MotionEvent e2, float velocityX, float velocityY) {
        int dx = (int) (e2.getX() - e1.getX());
        // don't accept the fling if it's too short
        // as it may conflict with a button push
        if (Math.abs(dx) > MAJOR_MOVE && Math.abs(velocityX) > Math.absvelocityY)) {
            if (velocityX > 0) {
                moveRight();
            } else {
                moveLeft();
            }
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    }
});

Is it possible to lay a transparent view over the top of my screen to capture flings?

If I choose not to inflate my child image views from XML can I pass the GestureDetector as a constructor parameter to a new subclass of ImageView that I create?

This is the very simple activity that I’m trying to get the fling detection to work for: SelectFilterActivity (Adapted from photostream).

I’ve been looking at these sources:

• Detect Gestures – Tutorial

• SDK docs

• Calculator Code

Nothing has worked for me so far and I was hoping for some pointers.

Answer 1

Thanks to Code Shogun, whose code I adapted to my situation.

Let your activity implementOnClickListener as usual:

public class SelectFilterActivity extends Activity implements OnClickListener {

  private static final int SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE = 120;
  private static final int SWIPE_MAX_OFF_PATH = 250;
  private static final int SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY = 200;
  private GestureDetector gestureDetector;
  View.OnTouchListener gestureListener;

  @Override
  protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    /* ... */

    // Gesture detection
    gestureDetector = new GestureDetector(this, new MyGestureDetector());
    gestureListener = new View.OnTouchListener() {
      public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
        return gestureDetector.onTouchEvent(event);
      }
    };

  }

  class MyGestureDetector extends SimpleOnGestureListener {
    @Override
    public boolean onFling(MotionEvent e1, MotionEvent e2, float velocityX, float velocityY) {
      try {
        if (Math.abs(e1.getY() - e2.getY()) > SWIPE_MAX_OFF_PATH)
          return false;
        // right to left swipe
        if(e1.getX() - e2.getX() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityX) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) {
          Toast.makeText(SelectFilterActivity.this, "Left Swipe", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        } else if (e2.getX() - e1.getX() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityX) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) {
          Toast.makeText(SelectFilterActivity.this, "Right Swipe", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        }
      } catch (Exception e) {
         // nothing
      }
      return false;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onDown(MotionEvent e) {
      return true;
    }
  }
}

Attach your gesture listener to all the views you add to the main layout;

// Do this for each view added to the grid
imageView.setOnClickListener(SelectFilterActivity.this); 
imageView.setOnTouchListener(gestureListener);

Watch in awe as your overridden methods are hit, both the onClick(View v) of the activity and the onFling of the gesture listener.

public void onClick(View v) {
  Filter f = (Filter) v.getTag();
  FilterFullscreenActivity.show(this, input, f);
}

The post ‘fling’ dance is optional but encouraged.