Android MVC
Discipline of IT
James Cook University
1
This presentation focuses on…
1. Android Threads
2. MVC in Android
3. Graphics in Android
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Handling background tasks
• Mobile Apps are typically multi-threaded
• The main thread is the GUI thread
• Then additional threads are used for handling
long-running background tasks
• Common issues:
• Updating a GUI object from a background
task will crash the App!
• Running task that take a long time on the
GUI thread slows the program down
Using Threads directly
• Use the Runnable interface, or subtype Thread
• Then, to force a GUI update to be handled by the
GUI thread use:
• Activity.runOnUiThread(Runnable)
• View.post(Runnable)
• View.postDelayed(Runnable, long)
• View.postInvalidate()
Why use MVC?
• In a mid-sized app, just putting all of your
code in the Activity class is bad design
– Becomes hard to understand and work on the
code
– Mistakes become more likely
– Harder to test individual parts of the app
– Harder to reuse parts of the app
Model
• You make an app to solve a problem
– E.g. sketch pad, calculator, …
• The “problem-domain” of the app is
represented by the model
• E.g. A game has:
– Players, Pieces, the game Board, …
View
• How the Model is presented to the user
– Visualising the model
– Generating touch events, click events
• Note: each view object (button, relative
layout, custom view) generates its own
events
– If a sub-view does not handle an event, then
the event “bubbles” up to the parent view
Controller
• Typically, each Activity is a Controller for its
associated view and model
• Controller can be used to create the model
and associate it with the view
• The events generated by a view are typically routed
into the Controller
– That’s because the controller knows about the
View and the Model and can send messages (e.g.
update requests) to both of them
“Wiring up”
• To allow the Controller to handle events from the
View, you assign event handlers
– Each View event (click, touch, key) has an
associated “listener” interfaces
– Implementing these listeners is then handled by
a Controller method
Things to note…
• A “good” MVC design has these characteristics:
– The model should not have direct links to the View
or Controller
– The View can have a direct link to the model
– The controller has direct links to the model and view
• The model can then be re-used in our apps
• E.g. you could place the model in a Service
component…
It’s a bad idea for the model to have direct knowledge
of the View
• There are a few solutions:
– Polling: the Controller regularly checks the model
to see if there are changes and tells the View
– Notification: The model has its own “listener”
interface
» The View or Controller can implement the
listener
Example: MyTouchDemo
• Pacman is the “model” - supports a listener interface
• MyView is the “view” (a custom View subtype)
• MainActivity is the “controller”
• Handles Pacman creation
• Handles touch events
Things to note…
• Activities can actually be coded so that they are a
combination of Controller and View logic
• E.g. activity handles View updates directly…
• This would of course not be traditional MVC…
View Layout
• Just before a view is displayed, it has time to
figure out how much screen space it needs
• This is why the constructor is needed in a
custom view subtype
View measurement
• A view figures out its space based on the
onMeasure() method
– Each view/sub-view implements this method
– The outer-most view asks its child views for their
sizes, so it can figure out its size
Canvas drawing
• Every view has an onDraw() method
• When invalidate() is called, this force the view
to run the code in its onDraw() method
• Android uses the “painter’s algorithm”
– Parent drawn first, then child on top (drawing
over the parent)
Canvas drawing
• The onDraw() method needs to be treated carefully
– The code needs to run fast
– Avoid creating objects inside onDraw()
• Useful classes
– Canvas (support draw and transformations)
– Paint
– Bitmap
– Drawable – you can setup drawable objects (i.e.
shapes)
Bling
• The Paint class has a number of powerful features
– Shader – e.g. linear gradients
– ShadowLayer
– ColorFilter
• Animation
– You can implement “tweening”
» Provide start, end, and speed to change visual
attirubtes
• Size, position, scale, color…
MVC – This is the way to make an app in Android
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