Android: How to handle right to left swipe gestures

Question

I want my app to recognize when a user swipes from right to left on the phone screen.

How to do this?

Answer 1

This code detects left and right swipes, avoids deprecated API calls, and has other miscellaneous improvements over earlier answers.

/**
 * Detects left and right swipes across a view.
 */
public class OnSwipeTouchListener implements OnTouchListener {

    private final GestureDetector gestureDetector;

    public OnSwipeTouchListener(Context context) {
        gestureDetector = new GestureDetector(context, new GestureListener());
    }

    public void onSwipeLeft() {
    }

    public void onSwipeRight() {
    }

    public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
        return gestureDetector.onTouchEvent(event);
    }

    private final class GestureListener extends SimpleOnGestureListener {

        private static final int SWIPE_DISTANCE_THRESHOLD = 100;
        private static final int SWIPE_VELOCITY_THRESHOLD = 100;

        @Override
        public boolean onDown(MotionEvent e) {
            return true;
        }

        @Override
        public boolean onFling(MotionEvent e1, MotionEvent e2, float velocityX, float velocityY) {
            float distanceX = e2.getX() - e1.getX();
            float distanceY = e2.getY() - e1.getY();
            if (Math.abs(distanceX) > Math.abs(distanceY) && Math.abs(distanceX) > SWIPE_DISTANCE_THRESHOLD && Math.abs(velocityX) > SWIPE_VELOCITY_THRESHOLD) {
                if (distanceX > 0)
                    onSwipeRight();
                else
                    onSwipeLeft();
                return true;
            }
            return false;
        }
    }
}

Use it like this:

view.setOnTouchListener(new OnSwipeTouchListener(context) {
    @Override
    public void onSwipeLeft() {
        // Whatever
    }
});