Converting a view to Bitmap without displaying it in Android?

Question

Hi,

I will try to explain what exactly I need to do.

I have 3 separate screens say A,B,C. There is another screen called say HomeScreen where all the 3 screens bitmap should be displayed in Gallery view and the user can select in which view does he wants to go.

I have been able to get the Bitmaps of all the 3 screens and display it in Gallery view by placing all the code in HomeScreen Activity only. Now, this has complicated the code a lot and I will like to simplify it.

So, can I call another Activity from HomeScreen and do not display it and just get the Bitmap of that screen. For example, say I just call HomeScreen and it calls Activity A,B,C and none of the Activities from A,B,C are displayed. It just gives the Bitmap of that screen by getDrawingCache(). And then we can display those bitmaps in Gallery view in HomeScreen.

I hope I have explained the problem very clearly.

Please let me know if this is actually possible.

Regards

Sunil

Answer 1

I'm not entirely sure, but I think you won't be able to do that. The problem is that activities are meant to be displayed to the user. You can start the activity and then immediately hide it, but the activity will still be visible to the user for a split-second. It's shown long enough to be noticed so having the screen flicker several times makes the app look unprofessional. However, it might be possible that there is a command to start an activity without displaying it; I just don't know of one if it exists.

Answer 2

there is a way to do this. you have to create a Bitmap and a Canvas and call view.draw(canvas);

here is the code:

public static Bitmap loadBitmapFromView(View v) {
    Bitmap b = Bitmap.createBitmap( v.getLayoutParams().width, v.getLayoutParams().height, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);                
    Canvas c = new Canvas(b);
    v.layout(0, 0, v.getLayoutParams().width, v.getLayoutParams().height);
    v.draw(c);
    return b;
}