An Introduction To Fragments In Android

By: Ritesh Bhattarai(reetesh.com.np)

Date: 13th October, 2012

What is a fragment?

A fragment is, as the name suggests, a chunk of user interface with its own lifecycle which must exist within an activity.

Multiple fragments can be used in a single activity to form a multi-pane UI or reuse a fragment in multiple activities.

Advantages of fragments

• It can modularize a single activity into smaller units of UI, making it more flexible and easier to manage.

• A fragment can exist without a UI screen and act as an invisible worker for the activity.

• A fragment can be reused with multiple activities.

• A fragment lets us maintain a "back-stack" of its state.

Implementation in different screens

Implementations in paged layouts

Writing Fragment Layout

A fragment layout is similar to an activity layout.

Writing A Basic Fragment Class

Including Fragment Into Main Layout

Writing Main Activity Class

Fragment Types

ListFragment

DialogFragment

Custom Fragment (e.g Grid)

CompatibilityYou can download the compatibility package using the Android SDK Manager as shown below.

Compatibility (contd.)

To use the compatibility package, you must add it to your project and include in the build path.

This can be done by Right clicking your Android project-> Selecting Android Tools-> Add compatibility Library.

Resources

API Guide

http://developer.android.com/guide/components/fragments.html

Tutorials

https://github.com/posco2k8/fragment_basic_tutorial

https://github.com/posco2k8/fragment_tabs_tutorial

Examples

https://github.com/jrgleason/android-fragments-example

Thank You