Question

I would like to perform a action when an object comes into focus but only if it happens because of the hardware directional pad and not touch events. How would I go about doing this?

Answer 1

Sounds like you need to override the onKeyDownEvent method in your view or activity. The method is passed a keyCode and a KeyEvent object. Check to see if it was the directional pad. For example (in your View or Activity class:

@Override
public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {
    if(keyCode == KeyEvent.KEY_DPAD_UP) {
        // do you stuff here
    }
}

Of course you can check for other codes and use a nested if or switch statement to handle several different keyCodes.