Android - Notifications

A notification is a message you can display to the user outside of your application's normal UI. When you tell the system to issue a notification, it first appears as an icon in the notification area. To see the details of the notification, the user opens the notification drawer. Both the notification area and the notification drawer are system-controlled areas that the user can view at any time.

Android Toast class provides a handy way to show users alerts but problem is that these alerts are not persistent which means alert flashes on the screen for a few seconds and then disappears.

To see the details of the notification, you will have to select the icon which will display notification drawer having detail about the notification. While working with emulator with virtual device, you will have to click and drag down the status bar to expand it which will give you detail as follows. This will be just 64 dp tall and called normal view.

Above expanded form can have a Big View which will have additional detail about the notification. You can add upto six additional lines in the notification. The following screen shot shows such notification.

Create and Send Notifications

You have simple way to create a notification. Follow the following steps in your application to create a notification −

Step 1 - Create Notification Builder

As a first step is to create a notification builder using NotificationCompat.Builder.build(). You will use Notification Builder to set various Notification properties like its small and large icons, title, priority etc.

NotificationCompat.Builder mBuilder = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)

Step 2 - Setting Notification Properties

Once you have Builder object, you can set its Notification properties using Builder object as per your requirement. But this is mandatory to set at least following −

• A small icon, set by setSmallIcon()

• A title, set by setContentTitle()

• Detail text, set by setContentText()

mBuilder.setSmallIcon(R.drawable.notification_icon);
mBuilder.setContentTitle("Notification Alert, Click Me!");
mBuilder.setContentText("Hi, This is Android Notification Detail!");

You have plenty of optional properties which you can set for your notification. To learn more about them, see the reference documentation for NotificationCompat.Builder.

Step 3 - Attach Actions

This is an optional part and required if you want to attach an action with the notification. An action allows users to go directly from the notification to an Activity in your application, where they can look at one or more events or do further work.

The action is defined by a PendingIntent containing an Intent that starts an Activity in your application. To associate the PendingIntent with a gesture, call the appropriate method of NotificationCompat.Builder. For example, if you want to start Activity when the user clicks the notification text in the notification drawer, you add the PendingIntent by calling setContentIntent().

A PendingIntent object helps you to perform an action on your applications behalf, often at a later time, without caring of whether or not your application is running.

We take help of stack builder object which will contain an artificial back stack for the started Activity. This ensures that navigating backward from the Activity leads out of your application to the Home screen.

Intent resultIntent = new Intent(this, ResultActivity.class);
TaskStackBuilder stackBuilder = TaskStackBuilder.create(this);
stackBuilder.addParentStack(ResultActivity.class);

// Adds the Intent that starts the Activity to the top of the stack
stackBuilder.addNextIntent(resultIntent);
PendingIntent resultPendingIntent = stackBuilder.getPendingIntent(0,PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);
mBuilder.setContentIntent(resultPendingIntent);

Step 4 - Issue the notification

Finally, you pass the Notification object to the system by calling NotificationManager.notify() to send your notification. Make sure you call NotificationCompat.Builder.build() method on builder object before notifying it. This method combines all of the options that have been set and return a new Notification object.

NotificationManager mNotificationManager = (NotificationManager) getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);
    
// notificationID allows you to update the notification later on.
mNotificationManager.notify(notificationID, mBuilder.build());

The NotificationCompat.Builder Class

The NotificationCompat.Builder class allows easier control over all the flags, as well as help constructing the typical notification layouts. Following are few important and most frequently used methods available as a part of NotificationCompat.Builder class.

Example

Following example shows the functionality of a Android notification using a NotificationCompat.Builder Class which has been introduced in Android 4.1.

Following is the content of the modified main activity file src/com.example.notificationdemo/MainActivity.java. This file can include each of the fundamental lifecycle methods.

package com.example.notificationdemo;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.app.NotificationManager;
import android.app.PendingIntent;
import android.content.Context;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.support.v4.app.NotificationCompat;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.Button;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {
   Button b1;
   @Override
   protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
      setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

      b1 = (Button)findViewById(R.id.button);
      b1.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
         @Override
         public void onClick(View v) {
            addNotification();
         }
      });
   }

   private void addNotification() {
      NotificationCompat.Builder builder =
         new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
         .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.abc)
         .setContentTitle("Notifications Example")
         .setContentText("This is a test notification");

      Intent notificationIntent = new Intent(this, MainActivity.class);
      PendingIntent contentIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(this, 0, notificationIntent,
         PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);
      builder.setContentIntent(contentIntent);

      // Add as notification
      NotificationManager manager = (NotificationManager) getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);
      manager.notify(0, builder.build());
   }
}

Following will be the content of res/layout/notification.xml file −

<?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="400dp"
      android:text="Hi, Your Detailed notification view goes here...." />
</LinearLayout>

Following is the content of the modified main activity file src/com.example.notificationdemo/NotificationView.java.

package com.example.notificationdemo;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.app.Activity;

public class NotificationView extends Activity{
   @Override
   public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState){
      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
      setContentView(R.layout.notification);
   }
}

Following will be the content of res/layout/activity_main.xml file −

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
   android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="match_parent"
   android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
   android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
   android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
   android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
   tools:context="MainActivity">
   
   <TextView
      android:id="@+id/textView1"
      android:layout_width="wrap_content"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"
      android:text="Notification Example"
      android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
      android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
      android:textSize="30dp" />
      
   <TextView
      android:id="@+id/textView2"
      android:layout_width="wrap_content"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"
      android:text="Tutorials point "
      android:textColor="#ff87ff09"
      android:textSize="30dp"
      android:layout_below="@+id/textView1"
      android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
      android:layout_marginTop="48dp" />
      
   <ImageButton
      android:layout_width="wrap_content"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"
      android:id="@+id/imageButton"
      android:src="@drawable/abc"
      android:layout_below="@+id/textView2"
      android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
      android:layout_marginTop="42dp" />
      
   <Button
      android:layout_width="wrap_content"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"
      android:text="Notification"
      android:id="@+id/button"
      android:layout_marginTop="62dp"
      android:layout_below="@+id/imageButton"
      android:layout_centerHorizontal="true" />
      
</RelativeLayout>

Following will be the content of res/values/strings.xml to define two new constants −

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
   <string name="action_settings">Settings</string>
   <string name="app_name">howcodex </string>  
</resources>

Following is the default content of AndroidManifest.xml −

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   package="com.example.notificationdemo" >
   
   <application
      android:allowBackup="true"
      android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
      android:label="@string/app_name"
      android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >
      
      <activity
         android:name="com.example.notificationdemo.MainActivity"
         android:label="@string/app_name" >
         
         <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
         </intent-filter>
            
      </activity>
      
      <activity android:name=".NotificationView"
         android:label="Details of notification"
         android:parentActivityName=".MainActivity">
         <meta-data
         android:name="android.support.PARENT_ACTIVITY"
         android:value=".MainActivity"/>
      </activity>
      
   </application>
</manifest>

Let's try to run your howcodex application. I assume you had created your AVD while doing environment set-up. To run the APP from Android Studio, open one of your project's activity files and click Run icon from the toolbar. Android Studio installs the app on your AVD and starts it and if everything is fine with your setup and application, it will display following Emulator window −

Now click button, you will see at the top a message "New Message Alert!" will display momentarily and after that you will have following screen having a small icon at the top left corner.

Now lets expand the view, long click on the small icon, after a second it will display date information and this is the time when you should drag status bar down without releasing mouse. You will see status bar will expand and you will get following screen −

Big View Notification

The following code snippet demonstrates how to alter the notification created in the previous snippet to use the Inbox big view style. I'm going to update displayNotification() modification method to show this functionality −

protected void displayNotification() {
   Log.i("Start", "notification");

   /* Invoking the default notification service */
   NotificationCompat.Builder  mBuilder = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this);
   
   mBuilder.setContentTitle("New Message");
   mBuilder.setContentText("You've received new message.");
   mBuilder.setTicker("New Message Alert!");
   mBuilder.setSmallIcon(R.drawable.woman);
   
   /* Increase notification number every time a new notification arrives */
   mBuilder.setNumber(++numMessages);
   
   /* Add Big View Specific Configuration */
   NotificationCompat.InboxStyle inboxStyle = new NotificationCompat.InboxStyle();
   
   String[] events = new String[6];
   events[0] = new String("This is first line....");
   events[1] = new String("This is second line...");
   events[2] = new String("This is third line...");
   events[3] = new String("This is 4th line...");
   events[4] = new String("This is 5th line...");
   events[5] = new String("This is 6th line...");
   
   // Sets a title for the Inbox style big view
   inboxStyle.setBigContentTitle("Big Title Details:");
   
   // Moves events into the big view
   for (int i=0; i < events.length; i++) {
      inboxStyle.addLine(events[i]);
   }
   
   mBuilder.setStyle(inboxStyle);
   
   /* Creates an explicit intent for an Activity in your app */
   Intent resultIntent = new Intent(this, NotificationView.class);
   
   TaskStackBuilder stackBuilder = TaskStackBuilder.create(this);
   stackBuilder.addParentStack(NotificationView.class);

   /* Adds the Intent that starts the Activity to the top of the stack */
   stackBuilder.addNextIntent(resultIntent);
   PendingIntent resultPendingIntent =stackBuilder.getPendingIntent(0,PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);
   
   mBuilder.setContentIntent(resultPendingIntent);
   mNotificationManager = (NotificationManager) getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);
   
   /* notificationID allows you to update the notification later on. */
   mNotificationManager.notify(notificationID, mBuilder.build());
}

Now if you will try to run your application then you will find following result in expanded form of the view −