Android retrieving info form a another activity, creating new layout

Question

I am learning how to develop under Android. I've made a new project, main activity, and I wanted to design a new window. I've genereted the new Activty as it it described here Best way to add Activity to an Android project in Eclipse?

But i can't get the visual editor for that new activity. I know that I suppose to create new layout but how to do it and connect it with that second Activity?
How to properly go back from the secondActivity(close it? minimize it? how?) to the mainActivity and don't loose information gathered why we were using secondActivity(for example what options user has made?

This is how i invoke the second Acitivity and it works fine.

Intent intent = new Intent(this,DrugieOkno.class);
startActivity(intent);

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

To add a new activity, follow the methods answered in this question. This way you will create a new activity without adding it to the Manifest manually. [every activity needs to be listed in the AndroidManifest.xml].

Say you create a new activity names Activity2.java. To add the new layout to the new activity, add a new xml file to res/layout folder, say activity2.xml [where you define your new activity's layout]

To link the new layout to the new activity, include this line in your newly created Activity2.java

setContentView(R.layout.activity2);

So it will look like this:

    public class Activity2 extends Activity{

        /** Called when the activity is first created. */
        @Override
        public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
            super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
            setContentView(R.layout.activity2);         
    }       
  }

2 . Now if you want to send some data from your Activity1.java to Activity2.java, you need to use Bundles.

So, if you want to send say a String from Activity1, do the following in Activity1.java:

Intent nextActivity = new Intent(this, Activity2.class);
Bundle passData = new Bundle(); //to hold your data
passDataBndl.putString("fname", fname); //put in some String. the first parameter to it is the id, and the second parameter is the value
nextActivity.putExtras(passDataBndl); //Add bundle to the Intent
startActivityForResult(nextActivity, 0); //Start Intent

To recieve data in your Activity2.java do the following (say, onCreate())

 Bundle params = this.getIntent().getExtras(); //gets the data from the Intent
 String firstName = params.getString("fname"); //gets value of fname

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 11 '12 at 22:32

For question 1: Here is a basic tutorial on how to create a new Activity. For a more comprehensive one containing more information about Android development you can see here.

For question 2: For tansfering data between Activities here is a nice tutorial.

Hope that helps.

Android retrieving info form a another activity, creating new layout

2 Answers2