NOTE: This library is discontinued. There are many color picker libraries to choose from as alternatives. This repository will become inaccessible on or after 1 January 2019.
Sometimes, you want your users to pick a color. A simple approach is to give the user a fixed roster of a handful of colors -- easy, but limited. A fancy approach is to use some form of color wheel, but these can be difficult to use on a touchscreen and perhaps impossible without a touchscreen.
ColorMixer is a widget that provides a simple set of SeekBars
to let the user mix red, green, and blue to pick an arbitrary color.
It is not very big, so it is easy to fit on a form, and it is still
fairly finger-friendly.
It is also packaged as a dialog (ColorMixerDialog), a dialog-themed
activity (ColorMixerActivity), and a preference (ColorPreference).
This is distributed as an Android library project. You can use it in source form or via an AAR.
Add the following blocks to your build.gradle file:
repositories {
maven {
url "https://s3.amazonaws.com/repo.commonsware.com"
}
}
dependencies {
compile 'com.commonsware.cwac:colormixer:0.6.+'
}Or, if you cannot use SSL, use http://repo.commonsware.com for the repository
URL.
ColorMixer is a simple widget. Given that you have the parcel
installed in your project, or have manually merged the source
and resources into your project, you can add the widget to a
layout like any other:
<com.commonsware.cwac.colormixer.ColorMixer
android:id="@+id/mixer"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
/>
You can call getColor() and setColor() to manipulate the
color at runtime. You can also call setOnColorChangedListener()
to register a ColorMixer.OnColorChangedListener object, which
will be called with onColorChanged() when the color is altered
by the user.
There is one custom attribute, cwac_colormixer_color, that you can use, to set
the initial color (instead of using setColor()). To use this
custom attribute, add the
xmlns:mixer="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" namespace
declaration to your layout, then add the mixer:cwac_colormixer_color attribute
to the com.commonsware.cwac.colormixer.ColorMixer widget:
<com.commonsware.cwac.colormixer.ColorMixer android:id="@+id/mixer" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" mixer:cwac_colormixer_color="#FFFF00FF" />
ColorMixerDialog is an AlertDialog subclass. Hence, to create
and show the dialog, all you need to do is create an instance
and show() it:
new ColorMixerDialog(this, someColor, onDialogSet).show();
In the above code snippet, this is a Context (e.g., an Activity),
someColor is the color you want to start with, and onDialogSet
is a ColorMixer.OnColorChangedListener that will be notified
if the user clicks the "Set" button on the dialog and has
changed the color from the initial value.
ColorMixerActivity is a dialog-themed Activity. This is
useful for situations where you want a dialog but do not want
to deal with a dialog.
To use it, add it as an activity to your project. You will
need to use the full package in your <activity> element,
marking it as using Theme.Dialog.
Here is one implementation, from the demo/ project:
<activity android:name="com.commonsware.cwac.colormixer.ColorMixerActivity"
android:label="@string/app_name"
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Dialog">
</activity>
In the Intent you use to start the activity, you can supply
the starting color via a ColorMixerActivity.COLOR integer
extra, and the dialog title via a ColorMixerActivity.TITLE
string extra. For example:
Intent i=new Intent(this, ColorMixerActivity.class);
i.putExtra(ColorMixerActivity.TITLE, "Pick a Color");
i.putExtra(ColorMixerActivity.COLOR, mixer.getColor());
startActivityForResult(i, COLOR_REQUEST);
ColorPreference is a Preference class, to be referenced
in preference XML and loaded into a PreferenceActivity. It
has no attributes beyond the standard ones.
<PreferenceScreen
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<com.commonsware.cwac.colormixer.ColorPreference
android:key="favoriteColor"
android:defaultValue="0xFFA4C639"
android:title="Your Favorite Color"
android:summary="Blue. No yel-- Auuuuuuuugh!" />
</PreferenceScreen>
The preference is stored as an integer under the key you specify in the XML.
This project has no dependencies.
This project should work on API Level 4 and higher — please report bugs if you find otherwise.
This is version v0.6.0 of this module, meaning it is creeping towards respectability.
NOTE: To eliminate a collision on the attribute name with Android 5.0, users
of v0.5.3 or older versions of this library will need to upgrade
their layout XML to reference cwac_colormixer_color instead
of just color.
There is a demo/ directory containing a demo project. It uses
the library project itself to access the source code and
resources of the ColorMixer library. When built using Eclipse, it depends
upon the library being located at ../colormixer with respect to the
demo project. When built using Gradle/Android Studio, it uses the
local :colormixer project for debug builds and the AAR artifact
for release builds.
The code in this project is licensed under the Apache Software License 2.0, per the terms of the included LICENSE file.
This library is no longer supported.
- v0.6.1: updated for Android Studio 1.0 and new AAR publishing system
- v0.6.0: renamed attribute from
colortocwac_colormixer_color, added more Gradle - v0.5.3: manifest fixes to help with manifest merging
- v0.5.2: continued work to improve IDE preview panes
- v0.5.1: bug fix to help with IDE preview panes
- v0.5.0: added Gradle support
- v0.4.3: removed
CWAC-Parceldependency - v0.4.2: demonstrated better Android library project integration with layouts
- v0.4.1: fixed
ColorPreferenceto work better on Honeycomb - v0.4.0: converted to Android library project, added ColorMixerActivity
