Using View Flipper in Android

Suppose you want to display a news bar in your activity. this news bar displays a single news item at a time then flips and shows next item and so on, then your choice would be Android's ViewFlipper.

ViewFlipper inherits from frame layout, so it displays a single view at a time.

consider this layout:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    >
<TextView  
    android:layout_width="fill_parent" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    android:text="@string/hello"
    />
    <Button
    android:layout_width="wrap_content" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    android:text="Flip"
    android:id="@+id/btn"
    android:onClick="ClickHandler"
    />
    <ViewFlipper
    android:layout_width="fill_parent" 
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:id="@+id/flip"
    >
    <TextView  
    android:layout_width="fill_parent" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    android:text="Item1"
    />
    <TextView  
    android:layout_width="fill_parent" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    android:text="Item2"
    />
    <TextView  
    android:layout_width="fill_parent" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    android:text="Item3"
    />
    </ViewFlipper>
</LinearLayout>

just a ViewFlipper container that contains three text views

now we want to flip the views when the button is clicked

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        
        btn=(Button)findViewById(R.id.btn);
        flip=(ViewFlipper)findViewById(R.id.flip);
            
    }
    
    public void ClickHandler(View v)
    {
     
     flip.showNext();
     
    }

if we want to flip in reverese direction we could use
flip.showPrevious() instead

we can add animations to the child views when they appear or disappear:

@Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        
        btn=(Button)findViewById(R.id.btn);
        flip=(ViewFlipper)findViewById(R.id.flip);
        //when a view is displayed
        flip.setInAnimation(this,android.R.anim.fade_in);
       //when a view disappears
     flip.setOutAnimation(this, android.R.anim.fade_out);     
    }

we can also set the ViewFlipper to flip views automatically when the button is clicked:

public void ClickHandler(View v)
    {
     
     
     //specify flipping interval
     flip.setFlipInterval(1000);
     flip.startFlipping();
    }

we can stop the flipping by calling flip.stopFlipping(); method.

or we can set the flipper to flip autommatically when the activity starts

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        
        btn=(Button)findViewById(R.id.btn);
        flip=(ViewFlipper)findViewById(R.id.flip);
        flip.setInAnimation(this,android.R.anim.fade_in);
     flip.setOutAnimation(this, android.R.anim.fade_out);
     flip.setFlipInterval(1000);
     flip.setAutoStart(true);
     
    }