MapView in a Fragment (Honeycomb)

Question

now that the final SDK is out with google apis - what is the best way to create a Fragment with a MapView? MapView needs a MapActivity to work right.

Having the Activity managing the Fragments inherit from MapActivity (bad solution because it goes against the idea that Fragments are self contained) and use a regular xml based layout does not work. I get a NullPointerException in MapActivity.setupMapView():

E/AndroidRuntime(  597): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
E/AndroidRuntime(  597):    at com.google.android.maps.MapActivity.setupMapView(MapActivity.java:400)
E/AndroidRuntime(  597):    at com.google.android.maps.MapView.(MapView.java:289)
E/AndroidRuntime(  597):    at com.google.android.maps.MapView.(MapView.java:264)
E/AndroidRuntime(  597):    at com.google.android.maps.MapView.(MapView.java:247)

My second idea was to create the MapView programmatically and pass the associated activity (via getActivity()) as Context to the MapView constructor. Does not work:

E/AndroidRuntime(  834): Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: MapViews can only be created inside instances of MapActivity.
E/AndroidRuntime(  834):    at com.google.android.maps.MapView.(MapView.java:291)
E/AndroidRuntime(  834):    at com.google.android.maps.MapView.(MapView.java:235)
E/AndroidRuntime(  834):    at de.foo.FinderMapFragment.onCreateView(FinderMapFragment.java:225)
E/AndroidRuntime(  834):    at android.app.FragmentManagerImpl.moveToState(FragmentManager.java:708)
E/AndroidRuntime(  834):    at android.app.FragmentManagerImpl.moveToState(FragmentManager.java:900)
E/AndroidRuntime(  834):    at android.app.FragmentManagerImpl.addFragment(FragmentManager.java:978)
E/AndroidRuntime(  834):    at android.app.Activity.onCreateView(Activity.java:4090)
E/AndroidRuntime(  834):    at android.view.LayoutInflater.createViewFromTag(LayoutInflater.java:664)

Really there should be something like MapFragment that takes care of the background threads MapView needs I guess... So what is the current best practice to do this?

Thanks and regards from Germany, Valentin

Answer 1

I've managed to resolve this by using TabHost in fragment.

Here is the idea (briefly):

1. MainFragmentActivity extends FragmentActivity (from support library) and has MapFragment.

2. MyMapActivity extends MapActivity and contain MapView.

3. LocalActivityManagerFragment hosts LocalActivityManager

4. MapFragment extends LocalActivityManagerFragment.

5. And LocalActivityManager contains MyMapActivity activity in it.

Example implementation: https://github.com/inazaruk/map-fragment.

---

Answer 2

As discussed at Google Groups, Peter Doyle built a custom compatibility library supporting Google Maps too. android-support-v4-googlemaps

However, there's a downside too:

Currently, one downside is that ALL classes extending FragmentActivity are MapActivitys. Its possible to make a separate class (i.e. FragmentMapActivity), but it requires some refactoring of the FragmentActivity code.

Answer 3

Just to clarify the answer. I tried the approach suggested by inazaruk and ChristophK. Actually you can run any activity in a fragment - not just google maps. Here is the code which implements google map activity as a fragment thanks to inazaruk and ChristophK.

import com.actionbarsherlock.app.SherlockFragment;
import android.view.Window;

import android.app.LocalActivityManager;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.LayoutInflater;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.ViewGroup;

public class MapFragment extends SherlockFragment {
    private static final String KEY_STATE_BUNDLE = "localActivityManagerState";

    private LocalActivityManager mLocalActivityManager;

    protected LocalActivityManager getLocalActivityManager() {
        return mLocalActivityManager;
    }

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        Bundle state = null;
        if (savedInstanceState != null) {
            state = savedInstanceState.getBundle(KEY_STATE_BUNDLE);
        }

        mLocalActivityManager = new LocalActivityManager(getActivity(), true);
        mLocalActivityManager.dispatchCreate(state);
    }

    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
            Bundle savedInstanceState) {
            //This is where you specify you activity class
        Intent i = new Intent(getActivity(), GMapActivity.class); 
        Window w = mLocalActivityManager.startActivity("tag", i); 
        View currentView=w.getDecorView(); 
        currentView.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE); 
        currentView.setFocusableInTouchMode(true); 
        ((ViewGroup) currentView).setDescendantFocusability(ViewGroup.FOCUS_AFTER_DESCENDANTS);
        return currentView;
    }

    @Override
    public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
        super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
        outState.putBundle(KEY_STATE_BUNDLE,
                mLocalActivityManager.saveInstanceState());
    }

    @Override
    public void onResume() {
        super.onResume();
        mLocalActivityManager.dispatchResume();
    }

    @Override
    public void onPause() {
        super.onPause();
        mLocalActivityManager.dispatchPause(getActivity().isFinishing());
    }

    @Override
    public void onStop() {
        super.onStop();
        mLocalActivityManager.dispatchStop();
    }

    @Override
    public void onDestroy() {
        super.onDestroy();
        mLocalActivityManager.dispatchDestroy(getActivity().isFinishing());
    }
}