View or Fragment library to compose UI for common data types

Question

Problem

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I need to let the user enter an email, pick a date, edit a webpage, choose an image etc - there are a number of common presentation tasks that are not directly subserved by the Android SDK widget library and so I thought there may be a dedicated repository or framework available that specializes in such UI concerns.

[ While Android provides widgets that can be turned into specific editors for email, for instance, the question here regards finding a library of ready-made components that specifically target such common data types i.e. UI elements which are specifically geared towards presenting such data, out-of-the-box, as well as providing validation. ]

Existing Sources?

So I searched the web with a combination of terms like Android, widget, library, view, toolkit, fragment, repository, but came up with false positives only.

Could you refer me to any collective efforts that provide a list of classes / XML layouts implementing common data-specific input / editing / configuration elements?

So I could do something like this in ActivityA1, ActivityA3, ActivityB1, ActivityN9:

• new EmailEditText()
• new UrlTextView()
• new IPView() ...

Matching Data to Views?

What I'm really looking for is a set of widgets that would be resolved according to the data that needs to be presented, perhaps similarly to implicit intent resolution ?

So from my domain model I would provide some data with a specific data type, which should be displayed somehow appropriately. But I do not explicitly set what View will present this data, instead there is a matcher inbetween that filters a list of available specific-purpose views and selects the most appropriate one for the given data type.

Anything like that out there already?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, Android doesn't have exactly what you want, but don't worry - there are definitely things to make your life easier.

For example, you can set the inputType on an EditText to change what the keyboard looks like (eg. for e-mail you have "@" and ".com" buttons, for a phone number you have numbers) and use InputFilter to control data entry.

You can even use EditText.setTransformationMethod() to change the way the data is presented (like adding spaces in a phone number).

And if you want to pick an image, you can send off an intent to request it: http://android-er.blogspot.se/2011/02/select-image-using-android-build-in.html

It shouldn't be too hard building your own set of widgets that does just what you want by combining these approaches.

Update: There is now a library available that makes form validation easier: https://github.com/vekexasia/android-form-edittext