Preference Activity on Preference Click Listener

Question

I am building a Preference Activity where most of the preferences in the list will be executing code and not modifying a SharedPreference directly. My preferences.xml file looks like this.

<PreferenceCategory
    android:title="Connection" >

    <Preference
        android:id="@+id/settings_connectToNewComputer"
        android:key="connectToNewComputer"
        android:summary="Currently connected to:"
        android:title="Connect to new computer" />

    <Preference
        android:id="@+id/removeDevice"
        android:key="removeDevice"
        android:summary="Remove this device from the computer's whitelist"
        android:title="Remove this device from computer" />

</PreferenceCategory>

<PreferenceCategory
    android:title="About" >

    <Preference
        android:id="@+id/settings_About"
        android:key="about"
        android:summary="About me and my thanks to those who made this app great"
        android:title="About Hue Pro" />

    <Preference
        android:id="@+id/contact"
        android:key="contact"
        android:summary="Contact me with comments, bugs, and suggestions for updates"
        android:title="Contact me" />

</PreferenceCategory>

My goal is to have a block of code executed when a one of these preferences are clicked. Similar to the "Clear search history" in the Google Play settings preference menu. (https://i.stack.imgur.com/HgEE4.png)

Does anyone know how to make this possible?

I have to add that I have tried using findPreference("KeyNameHere") but it always returns null.

Thank you!

---

Edit:

I added in this code and implemented OnPreferenceClickListener:

@Override
public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
    return false;
}

But this method never gets called. Is there another way to do this?

---

Edit 2:

I have found that if I take out the PreferenceCategory tags so I am left with this:

<Preference
    android:id="@+id/settings_connectToNewComputer"
    android:key="connectToNewComputer"
    android:summary="Currently connected to:"
    android:title="Connect to new computer" />

<Preference
    android:id="@+id/removeDevice"
    android:key="removeDevice"
    android:summary="Remove this device from the computer's whitelist"
    android:title="Remove this device from computer" />

<Preference
    android:id="@+id/settings_About"
    android:key="about"
    android:summary="About me and my thanks to those who made this app great"
    android:title="About Hue Pro" />

<Preference
    android:id="@+id/contact"
    android:key="contact"
    android:summary="Contact me with comments, bugs, and suggestions for updates"
    android:title="Contact me" />

and call this:

getPreferenceScreen().setOnPreferenceClickListener(new Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener() {

        @Override
        public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
            return false;
        }
    });

then I actually get a response from the click event. The only down side is I have to remove the preference grouping. Anyone know why this is and any way to fix it?

Answer 1

Implement OnPreferenceClickListener and in the onPreferenceClick

@Override
public boolean onPreferenceClick (Preference preference)
{
    String key = preference.getKey();
    // do what ever you want with this key
}

Answer 2

Maybe this could not be useful for OP, but could be useful for someone else. I'd like to write a sort of summary; in general, you can follow mainly three ways: 1) you can find your preference somewhere in your code with

Preference examplePreference = findPreference(KEY_EXAMPLE_PREFERENCE);

and then you can add a click listener and override its on click method with

examplePreference.setOnPreferenceClickListener(new Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener() {
    @Override
    public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
        // handle click here
    }
});

This has to be done for every preference whose clicks you want to listen to 2) You can implement Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener interface in your settings fragment/activity and override onPreferenceClick just once, by using a switch construct or a if-else if-else if-... construct and merging all the single handlings; it should be something like:

@Override
public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
    switch (preference.getKey()) {
        case KEY_EXAMPLE_PREFERENCE: {
            // handle click here
        }
        break;
        case ...
    }
}

Then, you still have to find each preference but you can simply call on each of them

setOnPreferenceClickListener(this);

(I think the OP's implementation didn't work (his method wasn't called) because of this last part) we pass "this" as parameter because we implemented the click listener interface

3) (which I think is the easiest) you can override

onPreferenceTreeClick(PreferenceScreen preferenceScreen, Preference preference)

in your preference fragment/activity without implementing any other interface and there you can copy the switch of the if-else if-... construct of option 2); the main advantage in that you shouldn't need to find each preference and to call on them setOnPreferenceClickListener.

Hope this will be useful for someone!

Answer 3

Just override:

@Override
public boolean onPreferenceTreeClick(PreferenceScreen preferenceScreen, Preference preference) {

    String key = preference.getKey();
    ...

    return super.onPreferenceTreeClick(preferenceScreen, preference);
}

Answer 4

You could also find the preference and set the click listener.

Preference connectToNewComputer= findPreference("connectToNewComputer");
connectToNewComputer.setOnPreferenceClickListener(this);

Answer 5

For Androidx in Feb 2020

Others answers were not worked in Androidx for me. I implemented Settings from Android Developers guides

See below guide for implementing click listener

1) Implement PreferenceManager.OnPreferenceTreeClickListener in your settings fragment, like below code

import androidx.preference.PreferenceManager;

class SettingsFragment extends PreferenceFragmentCompat implements PreferenceManager.OnPreferenceTreeClickListener {

2) Override onPreferenceTreeClick inside your SettingsFragment

@Override
public boolean onPreferenceTreeClick(Preference preference) {        
    String key = preference.getKey();

        switch (key) {
            case "key1":
                return true;

            case "key2":
                return true;

            //codes    
        }
}

Answer 6

I came up with my own (what I believe is really messed up) solution; but it works.

for(int x = 0; x < getPreferenceScreen().getPreferenceCount(); x++){
        PreferenceCategory lol = (PreferenceCategory) getPreferenceScreen().getPreference(x);
        for(int y = 0; y < lol.getPreferenceCount(); y++){
            Preference pref = lol.getPreference(y);
            pref.setOnPreferenceClickListener(new Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener(){

                @Override
                public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
                    return false;
                }

            });
        }
    }

So what I have learned is there is a hierarchical system that works like: PreferenceScreen has children PreferenceCategory has children Preference, as you can see in the XML file. My problem was I could not set the preferences' onClickListeners directly from the PreferenceScreen. So I made two for loops that will get down to each Preference and set an OnPreferenceClickListener for each and every one of them. Messy, but works finally.

Answer 7

Your Preference object wont get null if you will find followings (copypasting from the project):

public class ImePreferences extends PreferenceActivity {

.....

@Override
protected boolean isValidFragment(String fragmentName) {
    return Settings.class.getName().equals(fragmentName);
}

.....

public static class Settings extends InputMethodSettingsFragment {

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setInputMethodSettingsCategoryTitle(R.string.language_selection_title);
        setSubtypeEnablerTitle(R.string.select_language);

        // Load the preferences from an XML resource
        addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.ime_preferences);
        Preference pLcl = getPreferenceScreen().findPreference(getResources().getString(
                R.string.dictionary_button));
        pLcl.setOnPreferenceClickListener(new Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener() {
            @Override
            public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
                // handle click here
                l.a("this is the click");
                return true;
            }
        });
        if(pLcl != null)
            l.a(6576);
    }
}

.....

}

Answer 8

For Kotlin

your xml should look like this

<Preference
    app:title="Contact me"
    app:key="contact"/>

do not forget the key. Then in your Settings Activity find this class

class SettingsFragment : PreferenceFragmentCompat()

and add this code

        override fun onPreferenceTreeClick(preference: Preference): Boolean {
            val key  = preference.key
            return super.onPreferenceTreeClick(preference)
        }

When you are done your code should look like this

class SettingsFragment : PreferenceFragmentCompat() {
        override fun onPreferenceTreeClick(preference: Preference): Boolean {
            val key  = preference.key
            return super.onPreferenceTreeClick(preference)
        }

        override fun onCreatePreferences(savedInstanceState: Bundle?, rootKey: String?) {
            setPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.root_preferences, rootKey)
        }
    }