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Android Studio ListView with Speech Bubble

Hi,

Android Speech Bubble
example
Today I'm going to discuss how to make a ListView with speech bubble same as native android message app or some other apps out there. First of all we need to discuss the making of a row layout with speech bubble.

How to make Speech Bubble?

Well that is the most interesting part of the development. I've already posted a blog post about how to make 9 patch image of speech bubble, you can find that post here.


Here we will discuss how to use them in our application. You will copy them into your project in relevant hdpi, ldpi, xhdpi and mdpi folders accordingly. Now we come to the coding part.

We need to make simple ListActivity with ListView. There are lot of tutorials available:
and lot more. You can find customization of the ListView there too. Here I'll discuss the Adapter part of the ListView only.

What is Adapter in Android?

Android documentation says:
"An Adapter object acts as a bridge between an AdapterView and the underlying data for that view. The Adapter provides access to the data items. The Adapter is also responsible for making a View for each item in the data set."

So an adapter is responsible to provide data, view as well as count of rows to AdapterView.

Good to remember: ListView, Gallery, GridView, ExpandableListView, Spinner etc are subclasses of AdapterView. So an adapter made for ListView can be used for other controls too and vice versa, with some minor modification.

We will customize the Adapter for that we need to have an xml layout and a java class extending BaseAdapter.

XML Layout for row

Here is the layout for the row:


In the above layout, we have defined a LinearLayout containing a TextView. We have set its background to one of the image we made as 9 patch (speech_bubble_green.9.png) and now we will use it in Adapter, so that we can use this layout in ListView.

Adapter for the ListView

Now we come to the java part and make an Adapter, here's how to customize the getView() method of the adapter to implement some sender and receiver side messages representation:

In the above code, we are first checking if the current message is ours ie. isMine() then we are aligning it to the right side and setting green background to it, and if its not ours then we are aligning the TextView to left side and setting orange background to it, that's all, we set this adapter to a ListView as traditional way and get a nice looking SMS messages ListView for android app.


Where to go now?  (Gimme Code)
Well you can find the full source code here. I've included the photoshop psd for the bubbles in relavent hdpi, ldpi, xhdpi and mdpi, if anyone want to edit them and use them for their project.

Suggestion and comments are welcome :)

Comments

  1. Very informative post.Thanks for share it.

    android development

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  2. Thanks for sharing I was looking for a good tutorial and this one was the best ;)

    Ill use this in a commercial application wheres your donate key!

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  3. Hi,

    Thanks for such a informative post ,I have implemented your code in one of my app.
    As you show message only , but i want to show date and time as well so i have taken new textview within linearlayout in xml , and set background image to layout instead of textview so that "message and date time" are within same bubble. But the problem is that on layout gravity is not working .. all baubles align left .
    Please suggest .

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    Replies
    1. Hello, a quick suggestion, wrap your TextViews inside another ReativeLayout (or whatever suits you) and then wrap that RelativeLayout to a LinearLayout. set Gravity of RelativeLayout. It'll work out. If not come here for discussion, in Indo-Pak office hours. http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/5098/android-people

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. Will it be somthing like this ?

      LinearLayout
      RelativeLayout
      TextView message
      TextView date/time
      RelativeLayout
      LinearLayout

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  4. Thanks Adil for sharing my ListView talk!

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  5. nice! but
    how to mix icon with text in the bubble

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What? I didn't get you, can you explain a bit more about what you want to do.

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  6. Thank you so much for such a great tutorial on adding item in the ListView , but i dint get the complete code for adding a new element to the list , when i press send from my app, after writing something.

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    Replies
    1. Hi thanks for compliments. I wonder, haven't you downloaded the source code from here. There in the source code, I've written a method sendMessage() in MessageActivity. Please have a look at that method.

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  7. Can you explain your code A little as to what happens after onCreate()
    Because there is no call to sendmessage() but still it is executing on send button ,.. pls explain

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    Replies
    1. Hi, if you see main.xml's line number 13, you will see that I've added "sendMessage" to the "onClick" attribute of the Button tag.

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    2. ok great ! good work indeed :)
      one thing more is it a good practise to add onclick in layout itself or set onclicklistener and also i want to capture enter button as send how can i do it ?

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    3. Both are for convenience. and to capture the Enter key event have a look at this Stackoverflow.com post android: Softkeyboard perform action when Done key is pressed.

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    4. Im getting reply from others when i run this source code.But how it is working..?can u please explain..?

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    5. @John Weasley: There's a set of hardcoded messages, so whenever you send out a message, a message from the set is added to the array at random. Totally hardcoded thing.

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  8. Hi adil .. I have A doubt again :)
    how do store the instance state.. when I press Back button....
    Like when i press home button and open the app again.. I am presented the saved state like the recent convo that I have updated in thread.. but When I press back button the activity is destroyed and I am presented the initial listview
    ... I know I can do it by storing my data in db and then retrieving it.. but I don't want to do that.. How can i do it?

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    Replies
    1. What other option do you have rather than the sqlite? sqlite is your way to go.

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  9. I am getting a problem in this code while using layout parameters and setting gravity to right or left

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    Replies
    1. What kind of issue are you facing? Whats the problem with layout? please explain.

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    2. I want to show message and time inside my bubble. I cant wrap both the textviews inside a single bubble background and Layout parameters are also not working.

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  10. how to this conntection to internet like chat..skpy

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  11. project is failed to import "no project found" error

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    Replies
    1. Sarwar, you need to unzip the project and then try importing it with eclipse.

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  12. thanks Dear for posting this nice code :)

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  13. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  14. big thankssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss...
    great work sir...
    thanku.....

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  15. Appreciated Work...!!! Thank you.

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  16. Hi Adil Soomro Great tutorial, i implemented your code and it's working fine, including i created my own 9patch images and it's working perfectly, but there's something i'd like to know, as you can see the bubble fits all the screen, horizontaly i mean, what should i do to make it smaller and occupy a less portion of the screen ?

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    Replies
    1. Hi, you could introduce little transparent area around the image in your png using photoshop. or you could give margin to the left or right in your list item (row).

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    2. Ok but to use margin left or right i shoul use 2 TextView on my listItem layout ? One to left other to right side of the message ?

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    3. yes, you could use two textviews or, you could set margin programmatically in getView() of adapter.

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  18. First of all Thank you Adil for this wonderful tutorial.I need you help adil, I am trying to use bubble for my app conversation here In my app I get input from edittext field and show another user answer in textview field after seeing your tutorial I get some idea that how to go ahead but I am still confuse.can you tell me what should I have to do. please help me.

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    Replies
    1. @Vijay, what is your question specifically? What problem are you facing?

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  19. hi every one its awesome tut thanks for i want to fetch messages from Sqlite DB so i need suggestion for that please help me

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  20. Very informative Tutorial for me.... Thank you.

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  21. Good tut, How can I fetch messages from Sqlite? thanks.

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  22. What if i want to put an image inside that bubble ??

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  23. Very nice tutorial,can i know why you have added green.psd and orange.psd file in every drawable folder? i have never seen it being used in the code.

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  24. Hi Karthik, thanks. Those psds are there for anyone who want to change the color of speech bubble or re-shape it by themselves.

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  25. Very nice tutorial,any body know the profile image with bubble chat in android and share me the total code

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  26. Awesome Layout
    I sucessfully Implemented it in my application Thanks

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  27. How to add image / picture, after capture camera?

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    Replies
    1. Hey, this was just an example to get people started on the 9 patch concepts. The images can be added to rows using ImageView, the same way the rows are showing TextView. You'll have to do a little bit more work to get it implemented.

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