Android Application Development Tutorial - 19 - Setting up an ArrayAdapter

what's up guys welcome to your 19th
Android tutorial against me Travis and
these are for the new Boston what we're
going to do in this tutorial still work
for a list activity that we're creating
called menu and we're just going to go
within the oncreate method of this list
activity and this is generally or what
we have done the past we would say like
set content view and reference a layout
that we created in XML but for this list
activity we aren't actually going to use
a layout we're doing to develop
everything in Java just because for the
most part I want to show you guys the
Java aspect as well so you can think of
instead of saying set content view we're
going to say set list adapter for a list
activity and then we're going to within
there it's going to look for an array
adapter which we don't have one and
we're going to set that up so basically
again this will probably be kind of
confusing guys but just stick with this
I'll try fall along and just get this
set up and this is great reference are
great resource for the most part oh I
mean this series is because once you
guys have this built when you guys are
developing your own applications you can
always go back and look at how we did
some certain things and you guys will
pick up on pick up on stuff more or
easily as you guys get more familiar
with Java and more familiar with Android
and all that great stuff so just stick
with it I promise you later on in the
series everything is going to make sense
so we're going to say a set list adapter
like I said this takes an array adapter
or a list adapter for the most part
within the parameters right here as you
can see it takes a list adapter but
we're going to create a ray adapter
which will basically what that's going
to do is take some kind of parameters or
attributes and it's going to kind of
adapt it for the most part into a list
adapter if that makes sense
and since we're using an array that's
what we're going to use is a ray adapter
I thought I'd give you guys kind of an
idea of what we're doing instead of
making you guys completely lost as we're
creating this so we're going to say new
array adapter
and then we're going to say is a greater
than sign and string spelt like that and
basically this greater than a less than
sign basically what whatever is within
there it's saying that's the type of
array adapter we're creating we're
creating a ray adapter with the type
string because we're working with a
string array up here so hopefully we're
getting some errors don't worry about
that if we once we set up our method for
the most part we're going to just do
some brackets right here or some
parentheses after we set up what type it
is and then we have to import the array
adapter so there you go we import it and
now we're getting another error because
we aren't giving it any attributes for
it to kind of adapt to or convert into
you know the thing that we're looking
for so if we hover over here we can see
kind of the different attributes or
parameters that it takes within these
parentheses and we want to use the one
that uses a context and int and a string
array so that's when we're going to
click on and it kind of sets up some
stuff for us or context again we're just
going to refer to the context of our
class we're going to say our class name
menu dot this and it already has our
again this was our string array it
already has it set up it sets classes
and that again is this string array up
here you don't have to put those square
brackets right there just it's just
going to know that's a string array so
there we go we set up that parameter and
the only other one we have left is this
int now this is going to be may become
confusing for brand-new programmers
because you're like an ant okay our
integer I know what that is that's like
a 1 2 3 that's a whole number but what
we're actually going to do is kind of
use a reference and what this parameter
is actually going to be is just one
single list item kind of the layout of
one single list item within our whole
entire list and it's going to kind of
set that up for us but it's referred to
as an int because over here in our gen
folder our our Java just to open that up
I don't know if I show you this as well
but these are all ants as well like
you um you know let's see our splash
background you're like that's a picture
but it's referring to it as an INT and
it's just kind of a reference that is
giving as a number so don't get too
confused by the same note we need like a
1 2 or some kind of number basically
what this parameter again is going to be
as just a single item within our list
and Android the Android SDK comes with
some of these default list items that we
can use so we're going to refer to that
instead of creating our own at the
moment so we're going to say Android dot
r dot layout dot and then we have all
these choices that we can choose from
we're going to pick simple list item 1
so again this is just setting up kind of
the attributes of a single list item
within our entire list
so hopefully that made somewhat sense
like some sense
I completely understand if that made no
sense at all guys don't worry because
again trust me as we go through the
series you'll understand everything so
thanks again guys for watching the next
tutorial we're going to finish our list
activity where we set up this method on
list item click so cut you guys then
have a good one