How To Implement Color Picker Feature In Android Apps - Hive Programmers

Greetings to my favorite Science community online, StemSocial.

It's @skyehi and as always I'm super excited to be back to continue my series on Android App development tutorials for beginners.

In today's episode I'm going to introduce a great feature that makes user interface and the whole App experience a better one.

Original Image Source by stux from Pixabay

Besides theme changes in Android Apps which is Light Mode and Dark Mode, Apps sometimes present a "Color Picker" feature which would allow the users to choose from a number of different colors.

The color they choose will affect the theme of the App. It's a really great feature loved by app users because it gives them more options to customize the look of their App.

In today's episode, I would be teaching on how to implement the color picker feature in you Android App.

Prerequisites

For the benefit of newcomers to Android App development or my series, I'll share with you the required softwares you need to be able to go through with this tutorial.

• Android Studio IDE - the platform on which we'll develop this and all other Android Apps.

• Java Development Kit, JDK - You need to install JDK correctly on your PC for your PC to be able to execute Java commands or codes.

• Physical Android Device or Emulator - After building the App, we'll need to test it either on an emulator or a physical Android device.

If you have all these checked out, you're absolutely ready to go through with this tutorial

Create a New Android Studio Project

Alright guys, to implement a Color Picker feature since this is an example, I'll create a whole new project for the feature implementation.

I'll assume you probably already have an App you want to implement this feature in so you can simply use this technique in your App and have theme changer feature added to the App.

To create a new Android project, open Android Studio IDE and click on "Create a New Project". Choose "Empty Activity" as the template of your App project and click the "Next" button.

Set both the package name and App name of your project and finally ensure that Java is the selected Programming language not Kotlin.

When you're satisfied with the project configuration, click on "Finish" Button for Android Studio to load your new App project Space.

Adding A Color Picker Library

Now guys, Android Studio does not come with a default color picker API or class so we're going to have to integrate a third party library for the color picker feature.

The ColorPicker library is by QuadFlask and it would simplify the color selection feature we need.

To include the library, we need to open our app level build.gradle file and include the dependency of QuadFlask.

Here's how the dependency code should look like

implementation 'com.github.QuadFlask:colorpicker:1.0.0'

I'll recommend using the latest version of their dependency.

When you're through with adding the dependency to Gradle click on the "Sync" button and Android Studio will download the library files to integrate the library to your App project.

Working On The Design Layout

This is just an example of how to implement the color picker feature so we won't create any complex user interface in particular.

We will create the user interface with a ColorPickerView and a container for the background.

This will all be done inside our activity_main.xml file.

The idea is that, when the user chooses a particular color, it should reflect in the background layout we created, as simple as that.

Here's how the layout design code should look like

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".YourActivity">

    <com.flask.colorpicker.ColorPickerView
        android:id="@+id/colorPicker"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
        app:color_picker_density="12" />

    <FrameLayout
        android:id="@+id/backgroundContainer"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent">
        (html comment removed:  Your app content goes here )
    </FrameLayout>
</RelativeLayout>

So as you can observe above, I included the flask color picker layout and I also included a simple frame layout which would change in background color when the user chooses a color.

Initialize The Color Picker Logic

It's now time to work on the backend end or logic of our App.

This would be done inside the activity in which you want to implement color picker feature. In my case it's going to be inside the MainActvity.java file.

So guys in your activity or fragment initialize the ColorPickerView and also set up the color change listener.

import android.os.Bundle;
import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;
import com.flask.colorpicker.ColorPickerView;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        ColorPickerView colorPicker = findViewById(R.id.colorPicker);
        FrameLayout backgroundContainer = findViewById(R.id.backgroundContainer);

        colorPicker.setColorListener(color -> {
            // Update background color based on the selected color
            backgroundContainer.setBackgroundColor(color);
        });
    }
}

It's as simple as that guys. All we had to do was to initialize the color picker element we created in activity_main.xml file and use the setColorListener and setBackgroundColor methods or functions to implement the color changes when user selects a color.

Running Your App

Congratulations guys, you have successfully implemented Color Picker feature in your Android App.

The next thing to do is to build and run your app on an emulator or any physical Android device.

When the App launches, the ColorPickerView will appear at the bottom of the screen.

You can now select any color of your choice and as you pick a color, the background will dynamically change to reflect your choice.

I hope you have fun doing that guys. You can implement this feature anywhere in your App and include a color theme changer for the entire App.

I'll draw the curtains on today's tutorial or episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to read today's blog. I hope it has been helpful to you.

Remember guys, practice makes you perfect so keep practicing with new projects and you'll soon become a professional Android App developer.

Thanks everyone for the support to @stemsocial and my friends @stickupcurator or @stickupboys

Have A Great Day And Catch You Next Time On StemSocial. Goodbye 👨‍💻

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