Implemented Home Screen widget Feature to Travel Mate Android app

Repository

https://github.com/project-travel-mate/Travel-Mate

Travel Mate

https://project-travel-mate.github.io/Travel-Mate/

A must-have app for those interested in travel. The app provides users with various features from choosing the correct destination to making all the bookings and to easily organizing the trip. The platform basically uses a mash-up technology. The app provides solutions for every possible problem a traveller might face during the course of his or her entire journey.

While travelling from one place to another, there are a lot of factors to be considered to make the trip a memorable one. Our platform helps the traveller with anything and everything that he or she might need, from the moment he or she plans the journey till the time he or she is back home happy and content. The platform includes a wide variety of options - from selection of Mode of Transport, to finding out about the destination city, to provision of best music, novels, depending on the mood of the traveller.

New Features

• What feature(s) did you add?
  The App has travel related checklist feature and the new feature was to create home screen widget to show the selcted checklist items on it.

  Link to Feature Request

• How did you implement it/them?
  References
  https://medium.com/android-bits/android-widgets-ad3d166458d3
  https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/appwidgets/

!

Added local database using room persistence library and created utility WidgetCheckListDao make CRUD operation even in detached fragments at home screen.

Next, to create home screen widget used below XML layout structure which is responsible for widget creation. As you can see the code android:updatePeriodMillis="1800000" is for updating the widget.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<appwidget-provider xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:initialKeyguardLayout="@layout/checklist_widget"
    android:initialLayout="@layout/checklist_widget"
    android:minHeight="150dp"
    android:minWidth="110dp"
    android:resizeMode="horizontal|vertical"
    android:updatePeriodMillis="1800000"
    android:widgetCategory="home_screen|keyguard" /> 

Created another two layouts to add checklist items inside the widget listview.
checklist_widget
checklist_widget_item

Here the final step is to bind UI elements on home screen widget and update it frequently. The following two class are reaponsible to do that.

CheckListWidgetProvider
CheckListWidgetService

and included these in Menifest.xml in reciever and service tag respectively.

<receiver android:name="widget.CheckListWidgetProvider" >
            <intent-filter>
                 (html comment removed:  This widget provider receives broadcast with following action name or simply onUpdate of AppWidgetProvider is called )
                <action android:name="android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_UPDATE" />
            </intent-filter>
            (html comment removed:  linking up xml file of appwidget-provider to AppWidgetProvider )
            <meta-data
                android:name="android.appwidget.provider"
                android:resource="@xml/checklist_widget_info" />
        </receiver>
         <service
            android:name="widget.CheckListWidgetService"
            android:permission="android.permission.BIND_REMOTEVIEWS" />

Pull Requests

Github Account

https://github.com/santoshhiremani