Widgets. Custom fonts

Faced the situation when it was necessary in the widget, on the screen of the andphone, to display the text in a beautiful non-standard font. From that moment this post began.

Developing a widget is a little different from developing an activity , and this “little” sometimes puts a stick in the wheel. I will not describe in detail the development of the widget, on Habré there are already some wonderful posts on this topic (for example, Hello World widget for Android or even such a cheat sheet, Creating a Widget ), I’ll only focus on the features.

The essence of the problem

The problem was that we can write a custom font in activity by setting just the Typeface property of the View we need.
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Typeface tf = Typeface.createFromAsset(getAssets(), "fonts/Aliner.ttf"); TextView tv = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.txtFont); tv.setTypeface(tf); 

But with the widget is no longer pass. To get to the View we can only through the object RemoteViews , which provides us with not very great opportunities. We too will not easily get to the “views”, although we can change the meanings of some, through the methods:

  remoteView.setInt(R.id.widgetPNG, "setAlpha", 50); remoteView.setBoolean(R.id.a_text_view, "setSelected", true); remoteView.setCharSequence(viewId, "setText", "Hello World!"); ..... 

but the question with the font remains open.

The solution was found using Bitmap 's.

Connect custom font

The first thing that is needed is to find a suitable font and put it in the directory ./assets/fonts/ :


Then it remains only to connect it in the widget code:

  Typeface tf = Typeface.createFromAsset(context.getAssets(),"fonts/Benegraphic.ttf"); 

Text to picture

As I said, we will work with Bitmap 'om. Having the text, the following method will help us convert it into a picture:

  private Bitmap convertToImg(String text, Context context) { Bitmap btmText = Bitmap.createBitmap(400, 100, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_4444); Canvas cnvText = new Canvas(btmText); Typeface tf = Typeface.createFromAsset(context.getAssets(),"fonts/Benegraphic.ttf"); Paint paint = new Paint(); paint.setAntiAlias(true); paint.setSubpixelText(true); paint.setTypeface(tf); paint.setColor(Color.WHITE); paint.setTextSize(50); cnvText.drawText(text, 150, 50, paint); return btmText; } 

The convertToImg () method returns a ready-made bitmap with text written in Benegraphic.ttf . We just have to install it in the widget.

Adding "text" to the widget

Installing the generated bitmap into the work widget will not make much of it; it’s just 3 lines of code:

  public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager, int[] appWidgetIds) { RemoteViews remoteViews = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), R.layout.widget); remoteViews.setImageViewBitmap(R.id.imText, convertToImg("Hello World!", context)); appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetIds, remoteViews); } 

At this all coding ends. Running the application and installing the widget on one of the desktops, we will see a similar picture:


So we got a custom font widget Android .

Conclusion

One way, we all solved the problem. It certainly was a way out, but I wanted something more native. I really hope that there are more ways, but alas, neither come up nor find anything else could not. People on the Internet also ask this question, but have not yet seen the answer. Maybe some of you have already encountered, it would be interesting to hear in the comments :)

Download the entire project here .