Separate Back Navigation for a Tabbed View Pager in Android

Question

What I want.

In a tab sliding menu context, I want to replace a fragment to another inside a tab, and maintaining the tab menu, and also the current tab

Answer 1

You can use a ViewPager together with a TabLayout.

Then create a class that extends FragmentStatePagerAdapter to initialize the ViewPager with your initial Fragments:

public class CustomPagerAdapter extends FragmentStatePagerAdapter {
    private final List tabTitles = new ArrayList() {{
        add("Fragment 1");
        add("Fragment 4");
        add("Fragment 7");
    }};

    private List tabs = new ArrayList<>();

    public CustomPagerAdapter(FragmentManager fragmentManager) {
        super(fragmentManager);

        initializeTabs();
    }

    private void initializeTabs() {
        tabs.add(HostFragment.newInstance(new Fragment1()));
        tabs.add(HostFragment.newInstance(new Fragment4()));
        tabs.add(HostFragment.newInstance(new Fragment7()));
    }

    @Override
    public Fragment getItem(int position) {
        return tabs.get(position);
    }

    @Override
    public int getCount() {
        return tabs.size();
    }

    @Override
    public CharSequence getPageTitle(int position) {
        return tabTitles.get(position);
    }
}

The fragments containing the actual contents should be wrapped by a HostFragment, that uses its child FragmentManager to replace the current fragment with a new one if you want to navigate, or to pop the last fragment from the fragment stack. Call its replaceFragment to navigate:

public class HostFragment extends BackStackFragment {
    private Fragment fragment;

    @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
                             Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreateView(inflater, container, savedInstanceState);
        View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.host_fragment, container, false);
        if (fragment != null) {
            replaceFragment(fragment, false);
        }
        return view;
    }

    public void replaceFragment(Fragment fragment, boolean addToBackstack) {
        if (addToBackstack) {
            getChildFragmentManager().beginTransaction().replace(R.id.hosted_fragment, fragment).addToBackStack(null).commit();
        } else {
            getChildFragmentManager().beginTransaction().replace(R.id.hosted_fragment, fragment).commit();
        }
    }

    public static HostFragment newInstance(Fragment fragment) {
        HostFragment hostFragment = new HostFragment();
        hostFragment.fragment = fragment;
        return hostFragment;
    }
}

The HostFragment should extend the abstract class BackstackFragment

public abstract class BackStackFragment extends Fragment {
    public static boolean handleBackPressed(FragmentManager fm)
    {
        if(fm.getFragments() != null){
            for(Fragment frag : fm.getFragments()){
                if(frag != null && frag.isVisible() && frag instanceof BackStackFragment){
                    if(((BackStackFragment)frag).onBackPressed()){
                        return true;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return false;
    }

    protected boolean onBackPressed()
    {
        FragmentManager fm = getChildFragmentManager();
        if(handleBackPressed(fm)){
            return true;
        } else if(getUserVisibleHint() && fm.getBackStackEntryCount() > 0){
            fm.popBackStack();
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}

Wire everthing up in the MainActivity:

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
    private CustomPagerAdapter customPagerAdapter;
    private ViewPager viewPager;
    private TabLayout tabLayout;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        viewPager = (ViewPager) findViewById(R.id.viewpager);
        tabLayout = (TabLayout) findViewById(R.id.tablayout);
        customPagerAdapter = new CustomPagerAdapter(getSupportFragmentManager());

        // 2 is enough for us; increase if you have more tabs!
        viewPager.setOffscreenPageLimit(2);
        viewPager.setAdapter(customPagerAdapter);
        tabLayout.setupWithViewPager(viewPager);
    }

    @Override
    public void onBackPressed()
    {
        if(!BackStackFragment.handleBackPressed(getSupportFragmentManager())){
            super.onBackPressed();
        }
    }

    public void openNextFragment() {
        HostFragment hostFragment = (HostFragment) customPagerAdapter.getItem(viewPager.getCurrentItem());

        // your logic to change the fragments...
    }
}

This solution is certainly not perfect but gets the job done. Read more fluff about it in my blog post on the issue.