Lesson 6:

App navigation

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About this lesson
Lesson 6: App navigation
● Multiple activities and intents
● App bar, navigation drawer, and menus
● Fragments
● Navigation in an app
● More custom navigation behavior
● Navigation UI
● Summary

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Multiple activities and
intents

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Multiple screens in an app
Sometimes app functionality may be separated into multiple screens.

Examples:
● View details of a single item (for example, product in a shopping app)
● Create a new item (for example, new email)
● Show settings for an app
● Access services in other apps (for example, photo gallery or browse
documents)

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Intent

Requests an action from another app component, such as another Activity

● An Intent usually has two primary pieces of information:

○ Action to be performed (for example, ACTION_VIEW,
ACTION_EDIT, ACTION_MAIN)
○ Data to operate on (for example, a person’s record in the contacts
database)
● Commonly used to specify a request to transition to another Activity

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Explicit intent

● Fulfills a request using a specific component

● Navigates internally to an Activity in your app
● Navigates to a specific third-party app or another app you've
written

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Explicit intent examples
Navigate between activities in your app:

Navigate to a specific external app:

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Implicit intent

● Provides generic action the app can perform

● Resolved using mapping of the data type and action to known
components
● Allows any app that matches the criteria to handle the request

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Implicit intent example

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App bar, navigation drawer,
and menus

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App bar

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Navigation drawer

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Menu

Define menu items in XML menu resource (located in res/menu folder)

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More menu options

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Options menu example

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Inflate options menu

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Handle menu options selected

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 Fragments

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Fragments for tablet layouts

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Fragment

● Represents a behavior or portion of the UI in an activity

("microactivity")
● Must be hosted in an activity
● Lifecycle tied to host activity's lifecycle
● Can be added or removed at runtime

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Note about fragments

Use the AndroidX version of the Fragment class.

(androidx.fragment.app.Fragment).

Don't use the platform version of the Fragment class

(android.app.Fragment), which was deprecated.

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Navigation within an app

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Navigation component
● Collection of libraries and tooling, including an integrated editor, for
creating navigation paths through an app
● Assumes one Activity per graph with many Fragment
destinations
● Consists of three major parts:
○ Navigation graph
○ Navigation Host (NavHost)
○ Navigation Controller (NavController)

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Add dependencies

In build.gradle, under dependencies:

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Navigation host (NavHost)

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Navigation graph
New resource type located in res/navigation
directory
● XML file containing all of your navigation
destinations and actions
● Lists all the (Fragment/Activity) destinations that
can be navigated to
● Lists the associated actions to traverse between
them
● Optionally lists animations for entering or exiting

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Navigation Editor in Android Studio

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Creating a Fragment
● Extend Fragment class
● Override onCreateView()
● Inflate a layout for the Fragment that you have defined in XML

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Specifying Fragment destinations

● Fragment destinations are denoted by the action tag in the

navigation graph.
● Actions can be defined in XML directly or in the Navigation Editor by
dragging from source to destination.
● Autogenerated action IDs take the form of
action_<sourceFragment>_to_<destinationFragment>.

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Example fragment destination

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Navigation Controller (NavController)

NavController manages UI navigation in a navigation host.

● Specifying a destination path only names the action, but it
doesn’t execute it.
● To follow a path, use NavController.

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Example NavController

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More custom navigation
behavior

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Passing data between destinations
Using Safe Args:
● Ensures arguments have a valid type
● Lets you provide default values
● Generates a <SourceDestination>Directions class with methods for
every action in that destination
● Generates a class to set arguments for every named action
● Generates a <TargetDestination>Args class providing access to the
destination's arguments

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Setting up Safe Args
In the project build.gradle file:

In the app's or module's build.gradle file:

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Sending data to a Fragment

1. Create arguments the destination fragment will expect.

2. Create action to link from source to destination.
3. Set the arguments in the action method on
<Source>FragmentDirections.
4. Navigate according to that action using the Navigation Controller.
5. Retrieve the arguments in the destination fragment.

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Destination arguments

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 Supported argument types
Type Type Syntax Supports Default Supports Null
app:argType=<type> Values Values
Integer "integer" Yes No
Float "float" Yes No
Long "long" Yes No
Boolean "boolean" Yes ("true" or "false") No
String "string" Yes Yes
Array above type + "[]" Yes (only "@null") Yes
(for example, "string[]" "long[]")
Enum Fully qualified name of the enum Yes No
Resource reference "reference" Yes No

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Supported argument types: Custom classes

Type Type Syntax Supports Default Supports Null

app:argType=<type> Values Values

Serializable Fully qualified class name Yes (only "@null") Yes

Parcelable Fully qualified class name Yes (only "@null") Yes

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Create action from source to destination

In nav_graph.xml:

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Navigating with actions
In InputFragment.kt:

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Retrieving Fragment arguments

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Navigation UI

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Menus revisited

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DrawerLayout for navigation drawer

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Finish setting up navigation drawer
Connect DrawerLayout to navigation graph:

Set up NavigationView for use with a NavController:

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Understanding the back stack
State 1 State 2 State 3

Activity 3

Activity 2 Activity 2 Activity 2

Activity 1 Activity 1 Activity 1

Back stack Back stack Back stack

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Fragments and the back stack
State 1 State 2 State 3

Fragment 2

Fragment 1 Fragment 1 Fragment 1

Activity 2 Activity 2 Activity 2

Activity 1 Activity 1 Activity 1

Back stack Back stack Back stack

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 Summary

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Summary
In Lesson 6, you learned how to:
● Use explicit and implicit intents to navigate between Activities
● Structure apps using fragments instead of putting all UI code in the
Activity
● Handle navigation with NavGraph, NavHost, and NavController
● Use Safe Args to pass data between fragment destinations
● Use NavigationUI to hook up top app bar, navigation drawer, and bottom
navigation
● Android keeps a back stack of all the destinations you’ve visited, with
each new destination being pushed onto the stack.

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Learn more
● Principles of navigation
● Navigation component
● Pass data between destinations
● NavigationUI

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Pathway

Practice what you’ve learned by

completing the pathway:
Lesson 6: App navigation

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