Find the Window containing a View in Android

Question

I can't find a way to obtain a reference the Window containing an arbitrary View v. I found getWindowToken, but I can't figure out how to use it? Does anyone know how?

Also, does anyone know why it returns an IBinder rather than a Window?

Answer 1

Well... since all views have a reference of the activity that created them (Context), you can use that Context to get a reference of the window. Let me show you this example I wrote some minutes ago:

// main activity
import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
public class GetWindow extends Activity {
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        MyView view = new MyView(this);
        view.changeSomethingInWindow(); // keep an eye on this method
        setContentView(view);
    }
}

Then, inside your view you can do this:

// your view :D
import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Context;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.Window;
import android.view.WindowManager;

public class MyView extends View{
    private Context mContext;
    public MyView(Context context) {
        super(context);
        mContext = context;
    }

    public void changeSomethingInWindow(){
        // get a reference of the activity
        Activity parent = (Activity)mContext;
        // using the activity, get Window reference
        Window window = parent.getWindow();
        // using the reference of the window, do whatever you want :D
        window.setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN,
            WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN);
    }
}

In this case, I change the mode the Window is displayed to Fullscreen. Hope this help you. Tell me if you get in trouble with this.