Question

I’m trying to create my own launcher in Android and I used the android sample Home.

The sample is not really easy and there is almost no documentation or tutorial about it, just some questions on the forum without clear answers.

I tried to add favorite applications in my launcher but the application is searching for a xml file “etc/favorites.xml“, which doesn’t exist.

Do I have to create this file programmatically? And what does this file look like?

Answer 1

I found a solution.

I created a file “favorites.xml” in the folder “assets” and write :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<favorites>
    <favorite package="com.android.email" class="com.android.email.activity.Welcome"/>
    <favorite package="com.android.browser" class="com.android.browser.BrowserActivity"/>
</favorites>

And in the sample code, i edited the method “bindFavorites” (I load the xml file with an InputStream instead of a FileReader) :

/**
 * Refreshes the favorite applications stacked over the all apps button.
 * The number of favorites depends on the user.
 */
private void bindFavorites(boolean isLaunching) {
    if (!isLaunching || mFavorites == null) {

        if (mFavorites == null) {
            mFavorites = new LinkedList<ApplicationInfo>();
        } else {
            mFavorites.clear();
        }          

        InputStream is = null;
        try {
            is = getAssets().open("favorites.xml");
        } catch (IOException e) {
            Log.e(LOG_TAG, "Couldn't find or open favorites file ");
            return;
        }

        final Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN, null);
        intent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER);

        final PackageManager packageManager = getPackageManager();

        try {
            final XmlPullParser parser = Xml.newPullParser();
            parser.setInput(is, "UTF-8");

            beginDocument(parser, TAG_FAVORITES);

            ApplicationInfo application;

            while (true) {
                nextElement(parser);
                String name = parser.getName();
                if (!TAG_FAVORITE.equals(name)) {
                    break;
                }

                final String favoritePackage = parser.getAttributeValue(null, TAG_PACKAGE);
                final String favoriteClass = parser.getAttributeValue(null, TAG_CLASS);

                final ComponentName cn = new ComponentName(favoritePackage, favoriteClass);
                intent.setComponent(cn);
                intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);

                application = getApplicationInfo(packageManager, intent);
                if (application != null) {
                    application.intent = intent;
                    mFavorites.addFirst(application);
                }
            }
        } catch (XmlPullParserException e) {
            Log.w(LOG_TAG, "Got exception parsing favorites.", e);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            Log.w(LOG_TAG, "Got exception parsing favorites.", e);
        }
    }

    mApplicationsStack.setFavorites(mFavorites);
}

And it works but i still need some help, in the xml file we have to set the class value and i don’t know where i can find this information. As you can see, this value depends on the application. I found some values here : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=836719
But i have my own titanium applications and i don’t know which class value is needed.