Navigation Bar Plugin

This plugin provides a Toolbar to be placed within the Zapp Android activities.

1. Description
2. General behaviours
3. Classes
4. Model
5. Creation new Navigation Bar plugin

Description

The navigation bar can be customized in the UI Builder via the Navigation section, illustrated below. The customized navigation bar will be available on each screen via the river.json.

General behaviours

The navigation bar plugin provides general features which will be implemented in any plugin of this type.

Customization per screen

The nagivation bar can be customized per screen. This gives the ability to use different settings for each screen as it relates to the customer’s needs. Behind the scenes, when the end-user selects a new screen, the application will send a notification to update the navigation bar title and navigation bar model.

Note: Screens which do not have the navigation model (like white label screens including Settings and Epg) will use the navigation model from the Home screen.

The Home screen can be defined in the UI Builder in the Screen section, as illustrated below.

Navigation bar view style.

The navigation bar can have different styles. The Zapp user can select the layout for the style they’d like.

Presentation state

This feature defines placements of the Toolbar within the activity. The presentation states are On top, Overlay, and Hidden, as illustrated below

Note: All white label screens (such as Settings and EPG) will use the state: OnTop to avoid possible support issues.

Presentation style

This feature allows the navigation bar to present Logo or Title differently on the screen level. More details can be found in the documentation on UIBuilder Api and UI Builder general navigation bar.

Examples:

Logo

Title

Hidden

Backgound view

The Navigation bar plugin also enables customization of the background. Currently, there are two types of background view presentations available: Color and Image.

Note: In the UI Builder, the Zapp user will only have one of these options available, but the plugin developer will get both keys if it was defined in the development of the plugin. In this case, items must be used according to their priority. Image has a higher priority than Color. During implamentation new plugins important to use same behaviour.

Context buttons

Context buttons are buttons which control the screen or root navigation. Context buttons are not controlled by the user, but all these buttons must be implemented in the development of new plugins.

1. Action Button: Can be either Menu button or Back button. The Root plugin is responsible to call the ToolbarManager.setActionButton method, whenever its state is changed (Opening a new activity, adding a fragment, and getting back to a fragment/activity). The plugin present the Menu Button if the app shows the main activity, with an empty back stack, or the Back button otherwise.

2. Menu button. This button, if enabled, asks the Root plugin to open its menu. Please Note: This button will be visible only if the Root plugin defines so in its hasToggleableMenu() method. Please be aware of this when developing new nav bar plugins.

3. Back button ask the Root Plugin to handle a back press.

   Navigation Buttons

   This button is responsible for navigation items tat make presentation - present generic screen, open url, open white label screen, etc. Please Note: Except url-scheme, he navigation buttons will always navigate to a new activity.

The number of navigation button is defined in the UI Builder, but the style of the navigation bar may create a limitation which would not allow to show more than one button within the suitable view.

Availible Navigation Buttons:

Classes

Toolbar Plugin Interface

The ToolbarPlugin interface defines method to do the following actions: Create the toolbar; populate it with menu items and styles; set its title; set its action button, and return its presentation state;

Toolbar Manager

The Toolbar manager is a class which controls the work of the Toolbar Plugin. Zapp Android will never use a Toolbar Plugin directly, but only via the toolbar manager. It is responsible to get the correct plugin, fetch the relevant data before invoking methods within it, and cache it. The Toolbar Manager will receive calls from Zapp Android to initilize the toolbar, to populate it, to set its title, and to set its action button.

Model

Navigation Bar api placed in navigations array inside screen model category - of the navigation model is define navigation model type. Navigation model has type nav_bar

Example:

{
        "id" : "uniqueID",
        "category": "nav_bar",
        "rules": {},
        "nav_items" : [
            {
                "id" : "uniqueID",
                "title" : "Home Screen",
                "type" : "button",

                "data" : {
                    "target" : "c320c5d90661-d241-410b-81fb-c320c5d90661"
                    "connected": true,
                    "source": "URL",
                    "type": "APPLICASTER_ATOM_FEED"
                },
                "assets" : {},
                "nav_items" : [],
                "rules" : {},
                "styles" : {}
            }
        ],
        "styles": {},
        "assets" : {}
    }

Navigation Bar model schema: styles

styles: schema: "presentation_style"

styles: schema: "style"

Left

Center

styles: schema: "state"

Navigation Bar model schema: assets

Creation new Navigation Bar plugin

Library

1. Create a new Android library.
2. In the app's build.gradle add dependencies to the Applicaster-Android-SDK, and the Zapp-Root libraries. Implement the ToolbarPlugin interface, as documented in the code.
3. Add to the proguard rules -

   -keep public class com.your.toolbar.plugin.class {
   public *;
   }
   

4. Publish to Bintray.

   UIBuilder

5. Create manifest for new navigation plugin with plugin type nav bar. How to create manifest please check zappifest documentation
6. Upload manifest to the zapp.