Continuously increase integer value as the button is pressed

Question

I'm new to Android so sorry if the question is easy to answer. I have two buttons, a decrease and an increase button, and in the middle of them a TextView which displays a value.

When I hit the decrease button, the value in the TextView decreases and increases when I hit the increase button, no problem with that, I got that working but the problem is the value only increases/decreases by 1 on a single click. What I'm trying to achieve is that as I continuously press the button (the increase button for example), the value is also continuously increasing and only stops when I release the increase button.

Is that possible? If so, can you show some sample code or references on how to implement that? Thanks!

Here is my main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:gravity="center" >

    <RelativeLayout
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="44dp"
        android:gravity="center_horizontal" >

        <Button android:id="@+id/button1"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
            android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
            android:text="&lt;" />

        <TextView android:id="@+id/textView1"
            android:layout_width="50dp"
            android:layout_height="fill_parent"
            android:layout_alignBottom="@+id/button1"
            android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/button1"
            android:gravity="center"
            android:text="45" />

        <Button android:id="@+id/button2"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
            android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/textView1"
            android:text="&gt;" />

     </RelativeLayout>   

</RelativeLayout>

and here is my Main.java

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.View.OnClickListener;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class Main extends Activity {

    private Button _decrease;
    private Button _increase;
    private TextView _value;
    private static int _counter = 45;
    private String _stringVal;

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);

        _decrease = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button1);
        _increase = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button2);
        _value = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView1);

        _decrease.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {

            @Override
            public void onClick(View v) {

                Log.d("src", "Decreasing value...");
                _counter--;
                _stringVal = Integer.toString(_counter);
                _value.setText(_stringVal);
            }
        });

        _increase.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {

            @Override
            public void onClick(View v) {

                Log.d("src", "Increasing value...");
                _counter++;
                _stringVal = Integer.toString(_counter);
                _value.setText(_stringVal);
            }
        });

    }
}

Answer 1

For that to work, you need a thread that will update the integer value when you long press on a button.

Create a handler in your activity:

private Handler repeatUpdateHandler = new Handler();

And 2 vars which will state: is it increment or decrement? Only one set at a time.

private boolean mAutoIncrement = false;
private boolean mAutoDecrement = false;

And the present number value

public int mValue;

And a class that will run in another thread:

class RptUpdater implements Runnable {
    public void run() {
        if( mAutoIncrement ){
            increment();
            repeatUpdateHandler.postDelayed( new RptUpdater(), REP_DELAY );
        } else if( mAutoDecrement ){
            decrement();
            repeatUpdateHandler.postDelayed( new RptUpdater(), REP_DELAY );
        }
    }
}

Add a long press listener to your button:

mBTIncrement.setOnLongClickListener( 
            new View.OnLongClickListener(){
                public boolean onLongClick(View arg0) {
                    mAutoIncrement = true;
                    repeatUpdateHandler.post( new RptUpdater() );
                    return false;
                }
            }
    );   

mBTIncrement.setOnTouchListener( new View.OnTouchListener() {
        public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
            if( (event.getAction()==MotionEvent.ACTION_UP || event.getAction()==MotionEvent.ACTION_CANCEL) 
                    && mAutoIncrement ){
                mAutoIncrement = false;
            }
            return false;
        }
    });  

In the above case the button is the increment one. Create another button which will set mAutoDecrement to true.

And decrement() will be a function, which will set your instance int variable like this:

public void decrement(){
    mValue--;
    _value.setText( ""+mValue );
}

You figure the increment out. Oh and REP_DELAY is a static int variable set to 50.

I see this is an excerpt from Jeffrey Cole's open source NumberPicker available at http://www.technologichron.net/ Proper author's attribution must be added.

Answer 2

While the accepted answer is totally correct, it can be simplified a bit.

Basically, we can optimize two things:

• We don't need the OnTouchListener.
• We can instantiate the runnable object just once instead of creating multiple objects.

So this is my version:

// global variables
Handler handler = new Handler();
Runnable runnable;

increaseView.setOnLongClickListener(new View.OnLongClickListener() {

    @Override
    public boolean onLongClick(View v) {

        runnable = new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                if (!increaseView.isPressed()) return;
                increaseValue();
                handler.postDelayed(runnable, DELAY);
            }
        };

        handler.postDelayed(runnable, DELAY);
        return true;

    }

});

Here the runnable object is reused. And when the view is not pressed anymore, it will stop calling itself.

The decrease view or button can be defined in a similar way.