Cannot get my Custom Android View to display

Question

Hi,

I am trying to create a custom control which does nothing except decorate the text which is displayed. When I reference this class inside the main.xml like all the examples which I am reading and deploy this to the emulator, the widget just says "Problem Loading Widget."

I am beginning Android development and just trying to understand how to dev custom controls:

This is the ExtendedTextView control:

package uk.co.andrewrea.android;

import android.content.Context;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class ExtendedTextView extends TextView {

    public ExtendedTextView(Context context) {
        super(context);
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
    }

    public ExtendedTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs){
        super(context,attrs);
    }

    public ExtendedTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle){
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
    }

    @Override
    public CharSequence getText() {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return "***" + super.getText() + "***";
    }

}

And this is main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  android:layout_width="fill_parent"
  android:orientation="vertical"
  android:background="@drawable/widget_bg_normal"
  android:layout_gravity="center"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content">
<uk.co.andrewrea.android.ExtendedTextView android:id="@+id/widget_textview"
  android:text="@string/hello"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal|center"
  android:layout_marginTop="5dip"
  android:padding="10dip"
  android:textColor="@android:color/black"/>
</LinearLayout>

Cheers,

Andrew

Answer 1

When I reference this class inside the main.xml like all the examples which I am reading and deploy this to the emulator, the widget just says "Problem Loading Widget."

This message only appears for home screen app widgets. If that is what you are trying to build, you cannot use custom View classes with app widgets. You can only use custom View classes with Activities.