Preference Activity on Preference Click Listener

Question

I am building a Preference Activity where most of the preferences in the list will be executing code and not modifying a SharedPreference directly. My preferences.xml file looks like this.

<PreferenceCategory
    android:title="Connection" >

    <Preference
        android:id="@+id/settings_connectToNewComputer"
        android:key="connectToNewComputer"
        android:summary="Currently connected to:"
        android:title="Connect to new computer" />

    <Preference
        android:id="@+id/removeDevice"
        android:key="removeDevice"
        android:summary="Remove this device from the computer's whitelist"
        android:title="Remove this device from computer" />

</PreferenceCategory>

<PreferenceCategory
    android:title="About" >

    <Preference
        android:id="@+id/settings_About"
        android:key="about"
        android:summary="About me and my thanks to those who made this app great"
        android:title="About Hue Pro" />

    <Preference
        android:id="@+id/contact"
        android:key="contact"
        android:summary="Contact me with comments, bugs, and suggestions for updates"
        android:title="Contact me" />

</PreferenceCategory>

My goal is to have a block of code executed when a one of these preferences are clicked. Similar to the "Clear search history" in the Google Play settings preference menu. (http://i.imgur.com/qnHbJX9.png)

Does anyone know how to make this possible?

I have to add that I have tried using findPreference("KeyNameHere") but it always returns null.

Thank you!

---

Edit:

I added in this code and implemented OnPreferenceClickListener:

@Override
public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
    return false;
}

But this method never gets called. Is there another way to do this?

---

Edit 2:

I have found that if I take out the PreferenceCategory tags so I am left with this:

<Preference
    android:id="@+id/settings_connectToNewComputer"
    android:key="connectToNewComputer"
    android:summary="Currently connected to:"
    android:title="Connect to new computer" />

<Preference
    android:id="@+id/removeDevice"
    android:key="removeDevice"
    android:summary="Remove this device from the computer's whitelist"
    android:title="Remove this device from computer" />

<Preference
    android:id="@+id/settings_About"
    android:key="about"
    android:summary="About me and my thanks to those who made this app great"
    android:title="About Hue Pro" />

<Preference
    android:id="@+id/contact"
    android:key="contact"
    android:summary="Contact me with comments, bugs, and suggestions for updates"
    android:title="Contact me" />

and call this:

getPreferenceScreen().setOnPreferenceClickListener(new Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener() {

        @Override
        public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
            return false;
        }
    });

then I actually get a response from the click event. The only down side is I have to remove the preference grouping. Anyone know why this is and any way to fix it?

Answer 1

Implement OnPreferenceClickListener and in the onPreferenceClick

@Override
public boolean onPreferenceClick (Preference preference)
{
    String key = preference.getKey();
    // do what ever you want with this key
}

Answer 2

Maybe this could not be useful for OP, but could be useful for someone else. I'd like to write a sort of summary; in general, you can follow mainly three ways: 1) you can find your preference somewhere in your code with

Preference examplePreference = findPreference(KEY_EXAMPLE_PREFERENCE);

and then you can add a click listener and override its on click method with

examplePreference.setOnPreferenceClickListener(new Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener() {
    @Override
    public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
        // handle click here
    }
});

This has to be done for every preference whose clicks you want to listen to 2) You can implement Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener interface in your settings fragment/activity and override onPreferenceClick just once, by using a switch construct or a if-else if-else if-... construct and merging all the single handlings; it should be something like:

@Override
public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
    switch (preference.getKey()) {
        case KEY_EXAMPLE_PREFERENCE: {
            // handle click here
        }
        break;
        case ...
    }
}

Then, you still have to find each preference but you can simply call on each of them

setOnPreferenceClickListener(this);

(I think the OP's implementation didn't work (his method wasn't called) because of this last part) we pass "this" as parameter because we implemented the click listener interface

3) (which I think is the easiest) you can override

onPreferenceTreeClick(PreferenceScreen preferenceScreen, Preference preference)

in your preference fragment/activity without implementing any other interface and there you can copy the switch of the if-else if-... construct of option 2); the main advantage in that you shouldn't need to find each preference and to call on them setOnPreferenceClickListener.

Hope this will be useful for someone!

Answer 3

Just override:

@Override
public boolean onPreferenceTreeClick(PreferenceScreen preferenceScreen, Preference preference) {

    String key = preference.getKey();
    ...

    return super.onPreferenceTreeClick(preferenceScreen, preference);
}

Answer 4

You could also find the preference and set the click listener.

Preference connectToNewComputer= findPreference("connectToNewComputer");
connectToNewComputer.setOnPreferenceClickListener(this);