First look at AnimatedVectorDrawable

Android Lollipop introduced a lot of sweet new classes. The one that caught my eye is AnimatedVectorDrawable, and I decided to check it out right away.

Example from Documentation

The documentation included an example, so I created the files as instructed: res/drawable/vectordrawable.xml, res/drawable/avd.xml, res/anim/rotation.xml and res/anim/path_morph.xml

Now what? There are many ways to use a Drawable. How about in a TextView?

<TextView
  xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:text="@string/example_from_documentation"
  android:drawableBottom="@drawable/avd"/>

No animation yet. Let's start it.

for (Drawable drawable : textView.getCompoundDrawables()) {
  if (drawable instanceof Animatable) {
    ((Animatable) drawable).start();
  }
}

And voilà! Animation. But what is it? Let's step it through.

res/drawable/vectordrawable.xml

<vector
  xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  android:height="64dp"
  android:width="64dp"
  android:viewportHeight="600"
  android:viewportWidth="600" >
  <group
    android:name="rotationGroup"
    android:pivotX="300.0"
    android:pivotY="300.0"
    android:rotation="45.0" >
    <path
      android:name="v"
      android:fillColor="#000000"
      android:pathData="M300,70 l 0,-70 70,70 0,0 -70,70z" />
  </group>
</vector>

This is the VectorDrawable. The path defines a triangle, and the group rotates it by 45 degrees.

res/drawable/avd.xml

<animated-vector
  xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  android:drawable="@drawable/vectordrawable" >
  <target
    android:name="rotationGroup"
    android:animation="@anim/rotation" />
  <target
    android:name="v"
    android:animation="@anim/path_morph" />
</animated-vector>

Next we have avd.xml, which rotates the group and morphs the path.

res/anim/rotation.xml

<objectAnimator
  xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  android:duration="6000"
  android:propertyName="rotation"
  android:valueFrom="0"
  android:valueTo="360" />

res/anim/path_morph.xml

<set
  xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <objectAnimator
    android:duration="3000"
    android:propertyName="pathData"
    android:valueFrom="M300,70 l 0,-70 70,70 0,0   -70,70z"
      android:valueTo="M300,70 l 0,-70 70,0  0,140 -70,0 z"
    android:valueType="pathType"/>
</set>

The rotation starts from 0 degrees. But since our drawable is initially rotated at 45 degrees, there is a sudden jump when the animation starts. It takes 6000ms to reach 360 degrees. Meanwhile, the path morphs from a triangle to a rectangle in 3000ms, half the time. So, at 180 degrees, the morph is complete.

Phew, that was not obvious at all. To understand what was happening, I split the rotation and the path morph to observe them separately.

Clock

After trying the example, I wanted to make my own, to see if I can come up with some simple animations that makes sense. I like the idea of animating different parts of the VectorDrawable, and made a clock.

The hours arm rotates from 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock while the minutes arm goes around from 0 to 60 minutes. The duration of rotations are set differently to give them different speeds.

Smiling face

Next I played with path morph. What is a path morph that makes sense? Let's make a sad face into a happy face!

Points to note

1. The <vector> tag must have android:height and android:width to define the intrinsic width and height of the VectorDrawable. Your app will crash if you skip them.
2. If your VectorDrawable has a smaller android:height or android:width than when you use them say in an ImageView, your graphic will look pixelated.
3. To morph from one path to another, the paths must be compatible. They need to have the exact same length of commands, and exact same length of parameters for each command.

I am very excited about VectorDrawable and AnimatedVectorDrawable. Scalable graphics FTW!

Source code: https://github.com/chiuki/animated-vector-drawable

Customize the soft keyboard

When you type something in Puzzle Pal, it is usually just a sequence of characters, not a valid word. The Android soft keyboard has auto-correct as default, which can be a bit annoying. Fortunately, you can customize the soft keyboard by specifying the input type of the TextView.

When I am expecting text, I use this:

textView.setInputType(
  InputType.TYPE_TEXT_VARIATION_VISIBLE_PASSWORD);

Phone spell only accept digits, so I use this instead:

textView.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_CLASS_PHONE);

setInputType tells the system what you expect as your input. I picked visible password for text because that turns off auto correction. For phone spell, well, it is much more intuitive to offer a phone pad, isn't it?