HorizontalScrollView within ScrollView Touch Handling

Question

Update: I figured this out. On my ScrollView, I needed to override the onInterceptTouchEvent method to only intercept the touch event if the Y motion is > the X motion. It seems like the default behavior of a ScrollView is to intercept the touch event whenever there is ANY Y motion. So with the fix, the ScrollView will only intercept the event if the user is deliberately scrolling in the Y direction and in that case pass off the ACTION_CANCEL to the children.

Here is the code for my Scroll View class that contains the HorizontalScrollView:

public class CustomScrollView extends ScrollView {
    private GestureDetector mGestureDetector;

    public CustomScrollView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);
        mGestureDetector = new GestureDetector(context, new YScrollDetector());
        setFadingEdgeLength(0);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onInterceptTouchEvent(MotionEvent ev) {
        return super.onInterceptTouchEvent(ev) && mGestureDetector.onTouchEvent(ev);
    }

    // Return false if we're scrolling in the x direction  
    class YScrollDetector extends SimpleOnGestureListener {
        @Override
        public boolean onScroll(MotionEvent e1, MotionEvent e2, float distanceX, float distanceY) {             
            return Math.abs(distanceY) > Math.abs(distanceX);
        }
    }
}

Thank you Joel for giving me a clue on how to resolve this problem.

I have simplified the code(without need for a GestureDetector) to achieve the same effect:

public class VerticalScrollView extends ScrollView {
    private float xDistance, yDistance, lastX, lastY;

    public VerticalScrollView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onInterceptTouchEvent(MotionEvent ev) {
        switch (ev.getAction()) {
            case MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN:
                xDistance = yDistance = 0f;
                lastX = ev.getX();
                lastY = ev.getY();
                break;
            case MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE:
                final float curX = ev.getX();
                final float curY = ev.getY();
                xDistance += Math.abs(curX - lastX);
                yDistance += Math.abs(curY - lastY);
                lastX = curX;
                lastY = curY;
                if(xDistance > yDistance)
                    return false;
        }

        return super.onInterceptTouchEvent(ev);
    }
}

I think I found a simpler solution, only this uses a subclass of ViewPager instead of (its parent) ScrollView.

UPDATE 2013-07-16: I added an override for onTouchEvent as well. It could possibly help with the issues mentioned in the comments, although YMMV.

public class UninterceptableViewPager extends ViewPager {

    public UninterceptableViewPager(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onInterceptTouchEvent(MotionEvent ev) {
        boolean ret = super.onInterceptTouchEvent(ev);
        if (ret)
            getParent().requestDisallowInterceptTouchEvent(true);
        return ret;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent ev) {
        boolean ret = super.onTouchEvent(ev);
        if (ret)
            getParent().requestDisallowInterceptTouchEvent(true);
        return ret;
    }
}

This is similar to the technique used in android.widget.Gallery's onScroll(). It is further explained by the Google I/O 2013 presentation Writing Custom Views for Android.

Update 2013-12-10: A similar approach is also described in a post from Kirill Grouchnikov about the (then) Android Market app.

I've found out that somethimes one ScrollView regains focus and the other loses focus. You can prevent that, by only granting one of the scrollView focus:

    scrollView1= (ScrollView) findViewById(R.id.scrollscroll);
    scrollView1.setAdapter(adapter);
    scrollView1.setOnTouchListener(new View.OnTouchListener() {

        @Override
        public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
            scrollView1.getParent().requestDisallowInterceptTouchEvent(true);
            return false;
        }
    });

It wasn't working well for me. I changed it and now it works smoothly. If anyone interested.

public class ScrollViewForNesting extends ScrollView {
    private final int DIRECTION_VERTICAL = 0;
    private final int DIRECTION_HORIZONTAL = 1;
    private final int DIRECTION_NO_VALUE = -1;

    private final int mTouchSlop;
    private int mGestureDirection;

    private float mDistanceX;
    private float mDistanceY;
    private float mLastX;
    private float mLastY;

    public ScrollViewForNesting(Context context, AttributeSet attrs,
            int defStyle) {
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);

        final ViewConfiguration configuration = ViewConfiguration.get(context);
        mTouchSlop = configuration.getScaledTouchSlop();
    }

    public ScrollViewForNesting(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        this(context, attrs,0);
    }

    public ScrollViewForNesting(Context context) {
        this(context,null);
    }    


    @Override
    public boolean onInterceptTouchEvent(MotionEvent ev) {      
        switch (ev.getAction()) {
            case MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN:
                mDistanceY = mDistanceX = 0f;
                mLastX = ev.getX();
                mLastY = ev.getY();
                mGestureDirection = DIRECTION_NO_VALUE;
                break;
            case MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE:
                final float curX = ev.getX();
                final float curY = ev.getY();
                mDistanceX += Math.abs(curX - mLastX);
                mDistanceY += Math.abs(curY - mLastY);
                mLastX = curX;
                mLastY = curY;
                break;
        }

        return super.onInterceptTouchEvent(ev) && shouldIntercept();
    }


    private boolean shouldIntercept(){
        if((mDistanceY > mTouchSlop || mDistanceX > mTouchSlop) && mGestureDirection == DIRECTION_NO_VALUE){
            if(Math.abs(mDistanceY) > Math.abs(mDistanceX)){
                mGestureDirection = DIRECTION_VERTICAL;
            }
            else{
                mGestureDirection = DIRECTION_HORIZONTAL;
            }
        }

        if(mGestureDirection == DIRECTION_VERTICAL){
            return true;
        }
        else{
            return false;
        }
    }
}