androidandroid-widgetandroid-appwidgetonupdate

Force Android widget to update


I respond to a button press on my appwidget in the onreceive method. When the button I pressed, I want to force the widget to call the onupdate method. How do I accomplish this?

Thanks in advance!


Solution

  • Widget can't actually respond to clicks because it's not a separate process running. But it can start service to process your command:

    public class TestWidget extends AppWidgetProvider {
      public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager, int[] appWidgetIds) {
            final int N = appWidgetIds.length;
    
            // Perform this loop procedure for each App Widget that belongs to this provider
            for (int i=0; i<N; i++) {
                int appWidgetId = appWidgetIds[i];
    
                // Create an Intent to launch UpdateService
                Intent intent = new Intent(context, UpdateService.class);
                PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getService(context, 0, intent, 0);
    
                // Get the layout for the App Widget and attach an on-click listener to the button
                RemoteViews views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), R.layout.appwidget_provider_layout);
                views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.button, pendingIntent);
    
                // Tell the AppWidgetManager to perform an update on the current App Widget
                appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetId, views);
            }
        }
    
        public static class UpdateService extends Service {
            @Override
            public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
              //process your click here
              return START_NOT_STICKY;
            }
        }
    }
    

    You should also register the new service in your manifest file:

    <service android:name="com.xxx.yyy.TestWidget$UpdateService">
    

    You can find another example of UpdateService implementation in Wiktionary sample in SDK

    And here's another good approach Clickable widgets in android