Fragment based libgdx in Android back-end

[bartolkaruza]

Added some minor abstraction of the AndroidApplication class to operate through an interface, so that a fragment can implement the same Application interface as an activity. Also added an implementation for the Fragment superclass that clients will extend, in the AndroidFragmentApplication class.

[jrenner]

This looks great. the android support lib should probably be mavenized I think?

[bartolkaruza]

There is no recent android support library in the public maven repositories, the latest I could find is r7 (which does not include parent fragments). Seems like a bit of a work-around, but I couldn't figure out a better way to include it. Any ideas?

[jrenner]

Well if the PR is accepted @badlogic will know what what should be done with regards to maven

[MobiDevelop]

Look OK to me, though I've not actually tested it. Perhaps AndroidApplicationBase would be a better name than AndroidGraphicsApplication. I can't say I have ever wanted to use libgdx as a Fragment, but this has come up before so I guess some folks want it.

Would be nice to not have to maintain the support library in the repo, but such is life.

The troublesome thing will be communicating to folks that they need to add the support library to their android project themselves. For gradle/maven the jar can be added automatically, but not everyone uses those.

[VinceAngel]

Looks great too :-)
Using libgdx as a fragment would be very useful to manage GDX view in a more complex Android application 👍

[MobiDevelop]

Yeah, I suppose it isn't all that unlike the LwjglCanvas bits in the lwjgl backend.

[jrenner]

Fragments could also provide for some creative solutions for playing videos

[badlogic]

Looks awesome. The only issue is the silly Maven dependency. Why they don't publish the support lib to central is beyond me. We need a Wiki page on the fragment support, can i ask OP to do that? I'll see what i can do about the support lib + Maven.

[badlogic]

So, it appears that Google is just incapable of getting their build shit together. The support library will not be published to SonaType because "reasons". I'm not sure how to resolve this tbh. If we have the Fragment based activity in the gdx-backend-android.jar, without the user having their project setup to have the support lib in the classpath, compilation for Android will fail.

[bartolkaruza]

I would be glad to write a page for the usage of the Fragment Android back-end. It is not clear to me where in the wiki this would fit though, can you give me a hint on this? Thanks.

[badlogic]

You could extend this page https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Starter-classes-%26-configuration there's an Android section in there.

It appears i can compile apps without the support library. Still testing, but this looks good. So we could have it in the Android backend jar without messing up builds of people who don't use the support lib. Nice.

[badlogic]

Merged your changes, fixed the conflicts and tested on 2.2/2.3. We now have fragments support! Thanks for your contribution, really appreciated.

People wanting to use libgdx via fragments need to manually add the support library. If you update the wiki page, please include instructions for that, preferably for Eclipse, Intellij and Maven/Gradle.

Thanks!

[andzdroid]

People wanting to use libgdx via fragments need to manually add the support library.

I downloaded the nightly, and the support library is included in gdx-backend-android.jar.

It is causing conflicts because I already have the support library in my project.

[johnnyapol]

@andzdroid

Right click on project.
Properties -> Java Build Path -> Order and export -> Uncheck Private Libraries

Could you try that? Thanks.

[MobiDevelop]

It should not be packed in the backend, are you using maven/gradle or the normal jar distribution?

[andzdroid]

@unkn0wn0ne I'm using android studio

@MobiDevelop I downloaded the nightly jar distribution, added it to my project's libs folder, and I have this in gradle dependencies: compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: '*.jar')

(I'm in the irc channel if it's easier to chat for you guys)

[Kangou]

compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:19.0.1'

is working if the "Android Support Repository" is installed with the Android SDK Manager.

[andzdroid]

After switching to using gradle to manage libgdx, it seems to work fine.

[cypherdare]

@unkn0wn0ne
That works, but cannot be done if using the v7 support library, because that would get removed as well. I'm using Eclipse.

@MobiDevelop
I downloaded the nightly two days ago, and all the v4 support files are inside android-backends.jar, preventing me from building.

[MobiDevelop]

I just removed the support library from being bundled with the Android backend. Let me know if it presents any issues.

[VinceAngel]

Don't agree with that : the activity manage one or more fragment so we need to listen to the fragment state.
I tried with isRemoving() or isDetached() but none is true at this point.
The better could be to implement the onDestroy() maybe.
I'm not at all good at Android stuff, but I'm sure here we have a bug to fix. For example when the Fragment is detached from the activity, the fragment onPause() calls the ApplicationListener to pause(), then the fragment onDestroy() but the ApplicationListener never dispose()... so when the fragment onCreate() is called again, the ApplicationListener create() is done without the dispose() before... and this can cause some bad things !

[MobiDevelop]

Yeah, I think this would leak if a Fragment were removed or replaced without the activity being finished (which is not all that uncommon).

[bartolkaruza]

You are right, thanks for the vigilance. I'll submit a new pull request with this fix. The onDestroyView() callback seems the most logical place for this clean-up, since it will not be guaranteed to be destroyed (onDestroy()) even after it is removed from the Activity. OnDestroyView() is the tear-down equivalent of onCreateView() in a fragment.

[bartolkaruza]

@MobiDevelop I added a short snippet in the wiki page. @badlogic asked me if I could add something about the support library as well, but I'm unsure what if anything needs to be done to make that work with eclipse/maven builds. I only use Android Studio/Gradle. Do you think something needs to be added to the wiki about this still?