Tutorial

Android ViewPager Example Tutorial

Published on August 3, 2022
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By Anupam Chugh

Android ViewPager Example Tutorial

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ViewPager in Android allows the user to flip left and right through pages of data. In our android ViewPager application we’ll implement a ViewPager that swipes through three views with different images and texts.

Android ViewPager

Android ViewPager widget is found in the support library and it allows the user to swipe left or right to see an entirely new screen. Today we’re implementing a ViewPager by using Views and PagerAdapter. Though we can implement the same using Fragments too, but we’ll discuss that in a later tutorial. The ViewPager uses a PagerAdapter whose job is to supply views to the MainActivity similar to what a ListAdapter does for a ListView.

Android ViewPager Example

android viewpager, viewpager in android, viewpager, android viewpager example tutorial

Android ViewPager Example Code

The activity_main.xml consists solely of the ViewPager as shown below. activity_main.xml

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="https://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="https://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".MainActivity">

    <android.support.v4.view.ViewPager
        android:id="@+id/viewpager"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"/>

</RelativeLayout>

The MainActivity.java is given below. MainActivity.java

package com.journaldev.viewpager;

import android.support.v4.view.ViewPager;
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.view.MenuItem;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        ViewPager viewPager = (ViewPager) findViewById(R.id.viewpager);
        viewPager.setAdapter(new CustomPagerAdapter(this));
    }
}

The role of the MainActivity in the above code is to just reference the ViewPager and set the CustomPagerAdapter that extends the PagerAdapter. Before we discuss the CustomPagerAdapter class, let’s look into the ModelObject class. ModelObject.java

package com.journaldev.viewpager;

public enum ModelObject {

    RED(R.string.red, R.layout.view_red),
    BLUE(R.string.blue, R.layout.view_blue),
    GREEN(R.string.green, R.layout.view_green);

    private int mTitleResId;
    private int mLayoutResId;

    ModelObject(int titleResId, int layoutResId) {
        mTitleResId = titleResId;
        mLayoutResId = layoutResId;
    }

    public int getTitleResId() {
        return mTitleResId;
    }

    public int getLayoutResId() {
        return mLayoutResId;
    }

}

The enum above lists all the pages of the ViewPagers. There are three pages with their respective layouts. The layout of a single page is given below. view_blue.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="https://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:background="@android:color/holo_blue_dark"
    android:layout_height="match_parent">

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Second View"
        android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
        android:textSize="28sp"
        android:textColor="@android:color/black"
        android:textStyle="bold"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:id="@+id/textView" />

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Swipe left to\nFirst View"
        android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
        android:textSize="20sp"
        android:textColor="@android:color/black"
        android:textStyle="bold"
        android:minLines="2"
        android:id="@+id/textView2"
        android:padding="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
        android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
        android:layout_alignParentStart="true" />

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Swipe right to\nThird View"
        android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
        android:textSize="20sp"
        android:textColor="@android:color/black"
        android:textStyle="bold"
        android:padding="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
        android:minLines="2"
        android:id="@+id/textView3"
        android:layout_alignTop="@+id/textView2"
        android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
        android:layout_alignParentEnd="true" />

</RelativeLayout>

The remaining two pages have similar layouts and are given in the source code of this project. CustomPagerAdapter.java

package com.journaldev.viewpager;

import android.content.Context;
import android.support.v4.view.PagerAdapter;
import android.view.LayoutInflater;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.ViewGroup;

public class CustomPagerAdapter extends PagerAdapter {

    private Context mContext;

    public CustomPagerAdapter(Context context) {
        mContext = context;
    }

    @Override
    public Object instantiateItem(ViewGroup collection, int position) {
        ModelObject modelObject = ModelObject.values()[position];
        LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(mContext);
        ViewGroup layout = (ViewGroup) inflater.inflate(modelObject.getLayoutResId(), collection, false);
        collection.addView(layout);
        return layout;
    }

    @Override
    public void destroyItem(ViewGroup collection, int position, Object view) {
        collection.removeView((View) view);
    }

    @Override
    public int getCount() {
        return ModelObject.values().length;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean isViewFromObject(View view, Object object) {
        return view == object;
    }

    @Override
    public CharSequence getPageTitle(int position) {
        ModelObject customPagerEnum = ModelObject.values()[position];
        return mContext.getString(customPagerEnum.getTitleResId());
    }

}
  1. CustomPagerAdapter(Context context) : The constructor needs a Context reference. The context is saved as a member variable of the class since it’s used later to access the individual page layouts from the enum class
  2. instantiateItem : In this case, we use the enum and inflate the particular enum value’s associated layout. Then, we add the newly inflated layout to the ViewGroup(collection of Views) maintained by the PagerAdapter, and then we return that layout. The object being returned by this method is also used later on, as the second parameter in the isViewFromObject method
  3. destroyItem : This method removes a particular view from the ViewGroup maintained by the PagerAdapter
  4. getCount : It simply returns the number of views that will be maintained by the ViewPager. For this example, the count is the number of enum values in the model object
  5. isViewFromObject : This method checks whether a particular object belongs to a given position, which is made simple. As noted earlier, the second parameter is of type Object and is the same as the return value from the instantiateItem method
  6. getPageTitle : At a given position, we need to supply the PagerAdapter with a title. This usually manifests itself in the ActionBar as the Activity’s title, or sometimes tabs will hook into this method for labelling each tab. In this case we’ve kept it for labelling only

The image below shows the app in action. android viewpager example, android ViewPager, ViewPager in android This brings an end to ViewPager in android example tutorial. You can download the Android ViewPager Project from the below link.

Download Android ViewPager Example Project

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Anupam Chugh

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JournalDev
DigitalOcean Employee
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October 10, 2021

I am making an android book app with java using web view and my pages in html. As I am new to this, I am trying to find out how to slide from one html page to another instead of clicking buttons. please if you know how , set an example because like I said I am new to this. here is a link to the app I made if you want to have a look(its very small for testing purposes, with 3 pages). https://github.com/Philip2021-Gr/book-app-sliding-between-html-files So far no one gave me any reliable answer that refers to a rookie like me in coding nor i find a video tutorial that saws how to do that with html pages that are stored in your assets folder. I hope some one sees this tread and try to help me cause I am struggling for weeks now with this problem.

- Philp

    JournalDev
    DigitalOcean Employee
    DigitalOcean Employee badge
    February 8, 2021

    Hi there, thank you for this tutorial. I just have a question how can I assign variables in each activity, for example, let’s say I have an ImageView in the view_blue layout which I want when is clicked does something.

    - John

      JournalDev
      DigitalOcean Employee
      DigitalOcean Employee badge
      October 1, 2020

      Hi I want write a adapter for use in fragments and sliding image is it possible? Like abase adapter for use sliding images and fragments . Can you please helpe me?

      - rezayi

        JournalDev
        DigitalOcean Employee
        DigitalOcean Employee badge
        August 6, 2020

        Well this defied everything I thought I knew about these adapters. I have some questions… Why not take the context from the ViewGroup collection? LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(collection.getContext()); Also pardon my ignorance but, I have taken a good solid few hours to try to analyze the code behind the ViewPager and I’ve failed to found even a hint of how this instatntiateItem method works, everything in that code is too disjointed… inheritance after inheritance is a headache. I’m amazed how the devs chose to use the ViewGroup pointers with that collection.addView(layout); method, even tho I personally prefer to do those kinds of things even when not needed, I thought that that was just a bad design decision on my part, but seen it here was a surprise, maybe there is so much asynchronism(?) happening back there they actually need this?? but wouldn’t that make a mismatch between the view added via collection.addView() and the one returned by the instantiateItem?? In theory one could do a mini recycler view inside the instantiate item method by checking if the view at current position is or not null/same as new one (RIGHT!!!), and I tried the whole day yesterday to do this but I failed miserably. After trying to go my own way without success for hours, I did it your way and it works perfectly, so thanks!!

        - Juan Andrade

          JournalDev
          DigitalOcean Employee
          DigitalOcean Employee badge
          June 1, 2020

          great explanation … my question is how to set curlview in view pager?

          - wajeeha

            JournalDev
            DigitalOcean Employee
            DigitalOcean Employee badge
            September 23, 2019

            Thank you man, useful sharing…

            - Oguzhan

              JournalDev
              DigitalOcean Employee
              DigitalOcean Employee badge
              September 15, 2019

              how to change my bg color to swipe my card view in my fragments

              - chavda

                JournalDev
                DigitalOcean Employee
                DigitalOcean Employee badge
                March 14, 2019

                Its great information. I want to know that if i want to swipe layout just like you mention in your article, I also add the actionbar/tool and have 4 menu item. It is possible i can also swipe same layout with my menu item which are showing at action bar on top. if yes then what code also entered above article and where. Thanks

                - Umair

                  JournalDev
                  DigitalOcean Employee
                  DigitalOcean Employee badge
                  September 30, 2018

                  RED(R.string.red, R.layout.view_red), BLUE(R.string.blue, R.layout.view_blue), GREEN(R.string.green, R.layout.view_green); sir i get the R error … its not resolved … its not sloved by rebuild

                  - dipesh

                    JournalDev
                    DigitalOcean Employee
                    DigitalOcean Employee badge
                    August 14, 2018

                    Thanks for the tutorial. 2 questions: 1) Can this logic be used for Wear? 2) Could the second view contain a button which changes the background of view 1 (for example)? Best regards

                    - Stefan Meyer

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