Reply to comment

Android Time Picker Preference

When developing applications for Google Android, there's a great way to implement your preferences using an xml, much like you would for a regular layout. The added benifit of doing it this way is that you don't have to implement how the preference values are saved. However, one of the problems is that there are only a couple of preference types implemented.

For my latest application, I needed to let the user save a specific time. Where there is a TimePicker widget, there is not TimePickerPreference that extends the Preference class. So I wrote my own.

// Please note this must be the package if you want to use XML-based preferences
package android.preference;
 
import android.content.Context;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.TimePicker;
 
/**
 * A preference type that allows a user to choose a time
 */
public class TimePickerPreference extends DialogPreference implements
		TimePicker.OnTimeChangedListener {
 
	/**
	 * The validation expression for this preference
	 */
	private static final String VALIDATION_EXPRESSION = "[0-2]*[0-9]:[0-5]*[0-9]";
 
	/**
	 * The default value for this preference
	 */
	private String defaultValue;
 
	/**
	 * @param context
	 * @param attrs
	 */
	public TimePickerPreference(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
		super(context, attrs);
		initialize();
	}
 
	/**
	 * @param context
	 * @param attrs
	 * @param defStyle
	 */
	public TimePickerPreference(Context context, AttributeSet attrs,
			int defStyle) {
		super(context, attrs, defStyle);
		initialize();
	}
 
	/**
	 * Initialize this preference
	 */
	private void initialize() {
		setPersistent(true);
	}
 
	/*
	 * (non-Javadoc)
	 * 
	 * @see android.preference.DialogPreference#onCreateDialogView()
	 */
	@Override
	protected View onCreateDialogView() {
 
		TimePicker tp = new TimePicker(getContext());
		tp.setOnTimeChangedListener(this);
 
		int h = getHour();
		int m = getMinute();
		if (h >= 0 && m >= 0) {
			tp.setCurrentHour(h);
			tp.setCurrentMinute(m);
		}
 
		return tp;
	}
 
	/*
	 * (non-Javadoc)
	 * 
	 * @see
	 * android.widget.TimePicker.OnTimeChangedListener#onTimeChanged(android
	 * .widget.TimePicker, int, int)
	 */
	@Override
	public void onTimeChanged(TimePicker view, int hour, int minute) {
 
		persistString(hour + ":" + minute);
	}
 
	/*
	 * (non-Javadoc)
	 * 
	 * @see android.preference.Preference#setDefaultValue(java.lang.Object)
	 */
	@Override
	public void setDefaultValue(Object defaultValue) {
		// BUG this method is never called if you use the 'android:defaultValue' attribute in your XML preference file, not sure why it isn't		
 
		super.setDefaultValue(defaultValue);
 
		if (!(defaultValue instanceof String)) {
			return;
		}
 
		if (!((String) defaultValue).matches(VALIDATION_EXPRESSION)) {
			return;
		}
 
		this.defaultValue = (String) defaultValue;
	}
 
	/**
	 * Get the hour value (in 24 hour time)
	 * 
	 * @return The hour value, will be 0 to 23 (inclusive)
	 */
	private int getHour() {
		String time = getPersistedString(this.defaultValue);
		if (time == null || !time.matches(VALIDATION_EXPRESSION)) {
			return -1;
		}
 
		return Integer.valueOf(time.split(":")[0]);
	}
 
	/**
	 * Get the minute value
	 * 
	 * @return the minute value, will be 0 to 59 (inclusive)
	 */
	private int getMinute() {
		String time = getPersistedString(this.defaultValue);
		if (time == null || !time.matches(VALIDATION_EXPRESSION)) {
			return -1;
		}
 
		return Integer.valueOf(time.split(":")[1]);
	}
}

Reply

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <p> <span> <div> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <img> <map> <area> <hr> <br> <br /> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <table> <tr> <td> <em> <b> <u> <i> <strong> <font> <del> <ins> <sub> <sup> <quote> <blockquote> <pre> <address> <code> <cite> <embed> <object> <strike> <caption>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • You can enable syntax highlighting of source code with the following tags: <code>, <blockcode>, <pre>. The supported tag styles are: <foo>, [foo].

More information about formatting options