Discrete seekbar in Android app?

Question

I would like to create a seekbar for an Android app that allows the user to select a value between -5 and 5 (which maps to "strongly disagree" and "strongly agree"). How do I make a seekbar with discrete values? or is there a better UI widget I could use for this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The Seekbar works great for discrete values. We use a Seekbar for discrete data as shown below. To show which item is selected, we just change the font of the selected text view so it is bigger. You could also highlight by changing the background color or something. It works pretty well. You will want to call setMax(11) on the seek bar, and then in your code you need to translate between the range (0 through 11) and (-5 through 5) appropriately.

 <LinearLayout             android:orientation="vertical"            android:layout_width="fill_parent"            android:layout_height="wrap_content"            android:gravity="center_horizontal">      <LinearLayout             android:orientation="horizontal"            android:layout_width="fill_parent"            android:layout_height="wrap_content"            android:gravity="center_horizontal">     <TextView android:text="-5"             android:id="@+id/answerNegative5"             android:textSize="25sp"             android:layout_width="wrap_content"             android:layout_height="wrap_content" />     <TextView android:text="-4"             android:id="@+id/answerNegative4"             android:textSize="25sp"             android:layout_width="wrap_content"             android:layout_height="wrap_content" />     <TextView android:text="-3"             android:id="@+id/answerNegative3"             android:textSize="25sp"             android:layout_width="wrap_content"             android:layout_height="wrap_content" />     .....   </LinearLayout>    <SeekBar android:id="@+id/intensitySlider"                     android:layout_weight="0"                     android:layout_width="fill_parent"                     android:layout_height="wrap_content" /> </LinearLayout> 

Answer 2

If you want to implement discrete seekbar with number of gaps without using third party library then use style property of seekbar.

<SeekBar      android:id="@+id/sb"      android:layout_width="match_parent"      android:layout_height="wrap_content"      android:max="10"      android:thumb="@drawable/ic_location"      android:theme="@style/Widget.AppCompat.SeekBar.Discrete" />