Question

I’ve got three tabs, all from a layout xml file,say list.xml. In list.xml I’ve defined a EditText, something like this:

<EditText
    android:id="@+id/filterText"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
    android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
    android:layout_toLeftOf="@+id/filterClear"
    android:hint="@string/filterHint"
    android:text="@string/filter">
</EditText>

However, it seems that if doing a orientation change and having typed something into one of the three EditTexts (all I guess with the same ID), the text doesn’t restore to the same state. Sometimes (depending on which tab I’ve typed into) all fields are empty or all fields are filled.

What is the proper way to handle this?

Answer 1

I ended up having three separate layout files list1.xml, list2.xml, list3.xml, that only differed in the IDs. So list1.xml would have @+id/filterText1, list2.xml would have @+id/filterText2 and so on.

And then in the ListActivity.java file I used to have this as part of my onCreate:

setContentView(R.layout.list);

And several references to this throughout the activity:

EditText filter = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.filterText);

…

Instead I have now got this in my onCreate:

if(START_TAB1.equals(startMode)) { // Checks which tab is being started
    setContentView(R.layout.list1); // Use appropriate layout
    filterTextId = R.id.filterText1; // Save correct ID in a class variable
}
// And then the same "else if..." for all other tabs

And this when referencing the field itself throughout the activity:

EditText filter = (EditText)findViewById(filterTextId); // Use common ID