Knowcode - Library to allow developers to run Android XML UI + TotalCross on Linux ARM, iOS, Android and more...
KnowCode is a project that was born to solve a problem, which is: How can developers build their screens faster based on images made by designers?
So, there is two main tasks:
- Computer vision to understand the image and convert it to a XML file
- Read a XML file, parse to Totalcross and run on Linux ARM, iOS, Android and more...
Here we have the second task, named KnowCodeXML.
KnowcodeXML is a library that interprets XML files and generates Totalcross screens ready to run on Android, iOS and Linux ARM devices.
We support all main Android layouts: ConstraintLayout, LinearLayout, RelativeLayout, and AbstractLayout.
You need to import the jar file or configure maven to use KnowcodeXML in your Totalcross project. After that, you have to import two classes, XmlContainerFactory and XmlContainerLayout. These classes are the entry points to projects that use Knowcode Library.
The XmlContainerFactory class reads the XML file and defines which layout to create based on the wrapping layout from XML. Once the layout has been identified, KnowcodeXML calls the abstract class that has all the common methods for layouts and instantiates one of the layout classes. The image below shows the class structure belonging to the project.
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Create a Totalcross Project
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Import the .jar file of Knowcode (export .jar of the Knowcode Project)
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Import classes XmlContainerFactory.java and XmlContainerLayout.java
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Instantiate the container of your xml file using XmlContainerFactory.create
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Show your Window =)
Container cont = XmlContainerFactory.create("embeddedWorldSample.xml"); MainWindow.getMainWindow().swap(cont); -
To use the components of xml file, use the method getControlByID passing like parameter the id of xml file
Control control = ((XmlContainerLayout) container).getControlByID("@+id/btRegister"); control.setBackColor(Color.BRIGHT);
We have some projects on github using this API, like HelloKnowcode. A Hello World project that just open a XML file, swap this on the screen and add some functionality to the buttons:
Container cont = XmlContainerFactory.create("embeddedWorldSample.xml");
MainWindow.getMainWindow().swap(cont);
Control minusButton = ((XmlContainerLayouts) container).getControlByID("@+id/minus");
Label insideTempLabel = (Label) ((XmlContainerLayouts) container).getControlByID("@+id/insideTempLabel");
minusButton.addPressListener(new PressListener() {
@Override
public void controlPressed(ControlEvent e) {
try {
String tempString = insideTempLabel.getText();
int temp;
temp = Convert.toInt(tempString);
insideTempLabel.setText(Convert.toString(--temp));
} catch (InvalidNumberException e1) {
e1.printStackTrace();
}
}
});
The create method of XmlContainerFactory class returns a Container object of the layout to put on the window with swap method. The method getControlByID of the class XmlContainerLayouts returns a Control object created of the XML file. The screen of this file is shown below.
