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1page.title=Notepad Exercise 1
2parent.title=Notepad Tutorial
3parent.link=index.html
4@jd:body
5
6
7<p><em>In this exercise, you will construct a simple notes list that lets the
8user add new notes but not edit them. The exercise demonstrates:</em></p>
9<ul>
10<li><em>The basics of <code>ListActivities</code> and creating and handling menu
11options. </em></li>
12<li><em>How to use a SQLite database to store the notes.</em></li>
13<li><em>How to bind data from a database cursor into a ListView using a
14SimpleCursorAdapter.</em></li>
15<li><em>The basics of screen layouts, including how to lay out a list view, how
16you can add items to the activity menu, and how the activity handles those menu
17selections. </em></li>
18</ul>
19
20<div style="float:right;white-space:nowrap">
21<span style="color:#BBB;">
22	[<a href="notepad-ex1.html" style="color:#BBB;">Exercise 1</a>]</span>
23	[<a href="notepad-ex2.html">Exercise 2</a>]
24	[<a href="notepad-ex3.html">Exercise 3</a>]
25	[<a href="notepad-extra-credit.html">Extra Credit</a>]
26</div>
27
28
29
30<h2>Step 1</h2>
31
32	<p>Open up the <code>Notepadv1</code> project in Eclipse.</p>
33
34    <p><code>Notepadv1</code> is a project that is provided as a starting point. It
35    takes care of some of the boilerplate work that you have already seen if you
36    followed the <a href="{@docRoot}training/basics/firstapp/index.html">Hello,
37    World</a> tutorial.</p>
38
39  <ol>
40    <li>
41      Start a new Android Project by clicking <strong>File</strong> >
42      <strong>New</strong> > <strong>Android Project</strong>.</li>
43    <li>
44      In the New Android Project dialog, select <strong>Create project from existing source</strong>.</li>
45    <li>
46      Click <strong>Browse</strong> and navigate to where you copied the <code>NotepadCodeLab</code>
47      (downloaded during <a href="{@docRoot}training/notepad/index.html#preparing">setup</a>)
48      and select <code>Notepadv1</code>.</li>
49    <li>
50      The Project Name and other properties should be automatically filled for you.
51      You must select the Build Target&mdash;we recommend selecting a target with the
52      lowest platform version available. Also add an integer to the Min SDK Version field
53      that matches the API Level of the selected Build Target.</li>
54    <li>
55      Click <strong>Finish</strong>. The <code>Notepadv1</code> project should open and be
56      visible in your Eclipse package explorer.</li>
57  </ol>
58
59    <p>If you see an error about <code>AndroidManifest.xml</code>, or some
60      problems related to an Android zip file, right click on the project and
61      select <strong>Android Tools</strong> > <strong>Fix Project Properties</strong>.
62      (The project is looking in the wrong location for the library file,
63      this will fix it for you.)</p>
64
65  <h2>Step 2</h2>
66
67  <div class="sidebox-wrapper">
68  <div class="sidebox">
69    <h2>Accessing and modifying data</h2>
70    <p>For this
71    exercise, we are using a SQLite database to store our data. This is useful
72    if only <em>your</em> application will need to access or modify the data. If you wish for
73    other activities to access or modify the data, you have to expose the data using a
74    {@link android.content.ContentProvider ContentProvider}.</p>
75    <p>If you are interested, you can find out more about
76    <a href="{@docRoot}guide/topics/providers/content-providers.html">content providers</a> or the
77whole
78    subject of <a href="{@docRoot}guide/topics/data/data-storage.html">Data Storage</a>.
79    The NotePad sample in the <code>samples/</code> folder of the SDK also has an example of how
80    to create a ContentProvider.</p>
81  </div>
82  </div>
83
84    <p>Take a look at the <code>NotesDbAdapter</code> class &mdash; this class is provided to
85    encapsulate data access to a SQLite database that will hold our notes data
86    and allow us to update it.</p>
87    <p>At the top of the class are some constant definitions that will be used in the application
88    to look up data from the proper field names in the database. There is also a database creation
89    string defined, which is used to create a new database schema if one doesn't exist already.</p>
90    <p>Our database will have the name <code>data</code>, and have a single table called
91    <code>notes</code>, which in turn has three fields: <code>_id</code>, <code>title</code> and
92    <code>body</code>. The <code>_id</code> is named with an underscore convention used in a number of
93    places inside the Android SDK and helps keep a track of state. The <code>_id</code>
94    usually has to be specified when querying or updating the database (in the column projections
95    and so on). The other two fields are simple text fields that will store data.
96    </p>
97    <p>The constructor for <code>NotesDbAdapter</code> takes a Context, which allows it to communicate with aspects
98    of the Android operating system. This is quite common for classes that need to touch the
99    Android system in some way. The Activity class implements the Context class, so usually you will just pass
100    <code>this</code> from your Activity, when needing a Context.</p>
101    <p>The <code>open()</code> method calls up an instance of DatabaseHelper, which is our local
102    implementation of the SQLiteOpenHelper class. It calls <code>getWritableDatabase()</code>,
103    which handles creating/opening a database for us.</p>
104    <p><code>close()</code> just closes the database, releasing resources related to the
105    connection.</p>
106    <p><code>createNote()</code> takes strings for the title and body of a new note,
107    then creates that note in the database. Assuming the new note is created successfully, the
108    method also returns the row <code>_id</code> value for the newly created note.</p>
109    <p><code>deleteNote()</code> takes a <var>rowId</var> for a particular note, and deletes that note from
110    the database.</p>
111
112    <p><code>fetchAllNotes()</code> issues a query to return a {@link android.database.Cursor} over all notes in the
113    database. The <code>query()</code> call is worth examination and understanding. The first field is the
114    name of the database table to query (in this case <code>DATABASE_TABLE</code> is "notes").
115    The next is the list of columns we want returned, in this case we want the <code>_id</code>,
116    <code>title</code> and <code>body</code> columns so these are specified in the String array.
117    The remaining fields are, in order: <code>selection</code>,
118    <code>selectionArgs</code>, <code>groupBy</code>, <code>having</code> and <code>orderBy</code>.
119    Having these all <code>null</code> means we want all data, need no grouping, and will take the default
120    order. See {@link android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase SQLiteDatabase} for more details.</p>
121    <p class="note"><b>Note:</b> A Cursor is returned rather than a collection of rows. This allows
122    Android to use resources efficiently -- instead of putting lots of data straight into memory
123    the cursor will retrieve and release data as it is needed, which is much more efficient for
124    tables with lots of rows.</p>
125
126    <p><code>fetchNote()</code> is similar to <code>fetchAllNotes()</code> but just gets one note
127    with the <var>rowId</var> we specify. It uses a slightly different version of the
128    {@link android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase} <code>query()</code> method.
129    The first parameter (set <em>true</em>) indicates that we are interested
130    in one distinct result. The <var>selection</var> parameter (the fourth parameter) has been specified to search
131    only for the row "where _id =" the <var>rowId</var> we passed in. So we are returned a Cursor on
132    the one row.</p>
133    <p>And finally, <code>updateNote()</code> takes a <var>rowId</var>, <var>title</var> and <var>body</var>, and uses a
134    {@link android.content.ContentValues ContentValues} instance to update the note of the given
135    <var>rowId</var>.</p>
136
137<h2 style="clear:right;">Step 3</h2>
138
139	<div class="sidebox-wrapper">
140  <div class="sidebox">
141    <h2>Layouts and activities</h2>
142      <p>Most Activity classes will have a layout associated with them. The layout
143    will be the "face" of the Activity to the user. In this case our layout will
144    take over the whole screen and provide a list of notes.</p>
145    <p>Full screen layouts are not the only option for an Activity however. You
146    might also want to use a <a
147href="{@docRoot}resources/faq/commontasks.html#floatingorfull">floating
148    layout</a> (for example, a <a
149href="{@docRoot}resources/faq/commontasks.html#dialogsandalerts">dialog
150    or alert</a>),
151    or perhaps you don't need a layout at all (the Activity will be invisible
152    to the user unless you specify some kind of layout for it to use).</p>
153  </div>
154  </div>
155
156    <p>Open the <code>notepad_list.xml</code> file in <code>res/layout</code>
157and
158    take a look at it. (You may have to
159    hit the <em>xml</em> tab, at the bottom, in order to view the XML markup.)</p>
160
161    <p>This is a mostly-empty layout definition file. Here are some
162    things you should know about a layout file:</p>
163
164
165  <ul>
166    <li>
167      All Android layout files must start with the XML header line:
168      <code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt;</code>.    </li>
169    <li>
170      The next definition will often (but not always) be a layout
171      definition of some kind, in this case a <code>LinearLayout</code>.    </li>
172    <li>
173      The XML namespace of Android should always be defined in
174      the top level component or layout in the XML so that <code>android:</code> tags can
175      be used through the rest of the file:
176      <p><code>xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"</code></p>
177    </li>
178  </ul>
179
180  <h2 style="clear:right;">Step 4</h2>
181    <p>We need to create the layout to hold our list. Add code inside
182    of the <code>LinearLayout</code> element so the whole file looks like this: </p>
183    <pre>
184&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;utf-8&quot;?&gt;
185&lt;LinearLayout xmlns:android=&quot;http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android&quot;
186    android:layout_width=&quot;wrap_content&quot;
187    android:layout_height=&quot;wrap_content&quot;&gt;
188
189  &lt;ListView android:id=&quot;@android:id/list&quot;
190        android:layout_width=&quot;wrap_content&quot;
191        android:layout_height=&quot;wrap_content&quot;/&gt;
192  &lt;TextView android:id=&quot;@android:id/empty&quot;
193        android:layout_width=&quot;wrap_content&quot;
194        android:layout_height=&quot;wrap_content&quot;
195        android:text=&quot;@string/no_notes&quot;/&gt;
196
197&lt;/LinearLayout&gt;
198</pre>
199  <ul>
200    <li>
201      The <strong>&#64;</strong> symbol in the id strings of the <code>ListView</code> and
202      <code>TextView</code> tags means
203      that the XML parser should parse and expand the rest of
204      the id string and use an ID resource.</li>
205    <li>
206      The <code>ListView</code> and <code>TextView</code> can be
207      thought as two alternative views, only one of which will be displayed at once.
208      ListView will be used when there are notes to be shown, while the TextView
209      (which has a default value of "No Notes Yet!" defined as a string
210      resource in <code>res/values/strings.xml</code>) will be displayed if there
211      aren't any notes to display.</li>
212    <li>The <code>list</code> and <code>empty</code> IDs are
213      provided for us by the Android platform, so, we must
214      prefix the <code>id</code> with <code>android:</code> (e.g., <code>@android:id/list</code>).</li>
215    <li>The View with the <code>empty</code> id is used
216      automatically when the {@link android.widget.ListAdapter} has no data for the ListView. The
217      ListAdapter knows to look for this name by default. Alternatively, you could change the
218      default empty view by using {@link android.widget.AdapterView#setEmptyView(View)}
219      on the ListView.
220      <p>
221      More broadly, the <code>android.R</code> class is a set of predefined
222      resources provided for you by the platform, while your project's
223      <code>R</code> class is the set of resources your project has defined.
224      Resources found in the <code>android.R</code> resource class can be
225      used in the XML files by using the <code>android:</code> name space prefix
226      (as we see here).</p>
227    </li>
228  </ul>
229
230  <h2 style="clear:right;">Step 5</h2>
231
232	<div class="sidebox-wrapper">
233  <div class="sidebox">
234    <h2>Resources and the R class</h2>
235    <p>The folders under res/ in the Eclipse project are for resources.
236     There is a <a href="{@docRoot}resources/faq/commontasks.html#filelist">specific structure</a>
237to the
238     folders and files under res/.</p>
239    <p>Resources defined in these folders and files will have
240    corresponding entries in the R class allowing them to be easily accessed
241    and used from your application. The R class is automatically generated using the contents
242    of the res/ folder by the eclipse plugin (or by aapt if you use the command line tools).
243    Furthermore, they will be bundled and deployed for you as part of the application.</p>
244    </p>
245  </div>
246  </div>
247
248    <p>To make the list of notes in the ListView, we also need to define a View for each row:</p>
249  <ol>
250    <li>
251      Create a new file under <code>res/layout</code> called
252      <code>notes_row.xml</code>.    </li>
253    <li>
254      Add the following contents (note: again the XML header is used, and the
255      first node defines the Android XML namespace)<br>
256      <pre style="overflow:auto">
257&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;utf-8&quot;?&gt;
258&lt;TextView android:id=&quot;&#64;+id/text1&quot;
259    xmlns:android=&quot;http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android&quot;
260    android:layout_width=&quot;wrap_content&quot;
261    android:layout_height=&quot;wrap_content&quot;/&gt;</pre>
262    <p>
263      This is the View that will be used for each notes title row &mdash; it has only
264      one text field in it.    </p>
265    <p>In this case we create a new id called <code>text1</code>. The
266      <strong>+</strong> after the <strong>@</strong> in the id string indicates that the id should
267      be automatically created as a resource if it does not already exist, so we are defining
268      <code>text1</code> on the fly and then using it.</p>
269    </li>
270    <li>Save the file.</li>
271  </ol>
272      <p>Open the <code>R.java</code> class in the
273      project and look at it, you should see new definitions for
274      <code>notes_row</code> and <code>text1</code> (our new definitions)
275      meaning we can now gain access to these from the our code. </p>
276
277  <h2 style="clear:right;">Step 6</h2>
278<p>Next, open the <code>Notepadv1</code> class in the source. In the following steps, we are going to
279    alter this class to become a list adapter and display our notes, and also
280    allow us to add new notes.</p>
281
282<p><code>Notepadv1</code> will inherit from a subclass
283    of <code>Activity</code> called a <code>ListActivity</code>,
284    which has extra functionality to accommodate the kinds of
285    things you might want to do with a list, for
286    example: displaying an arbitrary number of list items in rows on the screen,
287    moving through the list items, and allowing them to be selected.</p>
288
289<p>Take a look through the existing code in <code>Notepadv1</code> class.
290    There is a currently an unused private field called <code>mNoteNumber</code> that
291    we will use to create numbered note titles.</p>
292    <p>There are also three override methods defined:
293    <code>onCreate</code>, <code>onCreateOptionsMenu</code> and
294    <code>onOptionsItemSelected</code>; we need to fill these
295    out:</p>
296    <ul>
297      <li><code>onCreate()</code> is called when the activity is
298      started &mdash; it is a little like the "main" method for an Activity. We use
299      this to set up resources and state for the activity when it is
300      running.</li>
301     <li><code>onCreateOptionsMenu()</code> is used to populate the
302      menu for the Activity. This is shown when the user hits the menu button,
303and
304      has a list of options they can select (like "Create
305      Note"). </li>
306     <li><code>onOptionsItemSelected()</code> is the other half of the
307      menu equation, it is used to handle events generated from the menu (e.g.,
308      when the user selects the "Create Note" item).
309      </li>
310    </ul>
311
312  <h2>Step 7</h2>
313    <p>Change the inheritance of <code>Notepadv1</code> from
314<code>Activity</code>
315    to <code>ListActivity</code>:</p>
316    <pre>public class Notepadv1 extends ListActivity</pre>
317    <p>Note: you will have to import <code>ListActivity</code> into the
318Notepadv1
319    class using Eclipse, <strong>ctrl-shift-O</strong> on Windows or Linux, or
320    <strong>cmd-shift-O</strong> on the Mac (organize imports) will do this for you
321    after you've written the above change.</p>
322
323  <h2>Step 8</h2>
324    <p>Fill out the body of the <code>onCreate()</code> method.</p>
325    <p>Here we will set the title for the Activity (shown at the top of the
326    screen), use the <code>notepad_list</code> layout we created in XML,
327    set up the <code>NotesDbAdapter</code> instance that will
328    access notes data, and populate the list with the available note
329    titles:</p>
330    <ol>
331    <li>
332      In the <code>onCreate</code> method, call <code>super.onCreate()</code> with the
333      <code>savedInstanceState</code> parameter that's passed in.</li>
334    <li>
335      Call <code>setContentView()</code> and pass <code>R.layout.notepad_list</code>.</li>
336    <li>
337      At the top of the class, create a new private class field called <code>mDbHelper</code> of class
338      <code>NotesDbAdapter</code>.
339    </li>
340    <li>
341      Back in the <code>onCreate</code> method, construct a new
342<code>NotesDbAdapter</code>
343      instance and assign it to the <code>mDbHelper</code> field (pass
344      <code>this</code> into the constructor for <code>DBHelper</code>)
345    </li>
346    <li>
347      Call the <code>open()</code> method on <code>mDbHelper</code> to open (or create) the
348      database.
349    </li>
350    <li>
351      Finally, call a new method <code>fillData()</code>, which will get the data and
352      populate the ListView using the helper &mdash; we haven't defined this method yet.    </li>
353  </ol>
354    <p>
355      <code>onCreate()</code> should now look like this:</p>
356      <pre>
357    &#64;Override
358    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
359        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
360        setContentView(R.layout.notepad_list);
361        mDbHelper = new NotesDbAdapter(this);
362        mDbHelper.open();
363        fillData();
364    }</pre>
365      <p>And be sure you have the <code>mDbHelper</code> field definition (right
366      under the mNoteNumber definition): </p>
367      <pre>    private NotesDbAdapter mDbHelper;</pre>
368
369  <h2>Step 9</h2>
370
371  <div class="sidebox-wrapper">
372  <div class="sidebox">
373    <h2>More about menus</h2>
374    <p>The notepad application we are constructing only scratches the
375     surface with <a href="{@docRoot}resources/faq/commontasks.html#addmenuitems">menus</a>. </p>
376    <p>You can also <a href="{@docRoot}resources/faq/commontasks.html#menukeyshortcuts">add
377shortcut keys for menu items</a>, <a
378href="{@docRoot}resources/faq/commontasks.html#menukeyshortcuts">create
379submenus</a> and even <a href="{@docRoot}resources/faq/commontasks.html#addingtoothermenus">add
380menu items to other applications!</a>. </p>
381  </div>
382  </div>
383
384<p>Fill out the body of the <code>onCreateOptionsMenu()</code> method.</p>
385
386<p>We will now create the "Add Item" button that can be accessed by pressing the menu
387button on the device. We'll specify that it occupy the first position in the menu.</p>
388
389  <ol>
390    <li>
391      In <code>strings.xml</code> resource (under <code>res/values</code>), add
392      a new string named "menu_insert" with its value set to <code>Add Item</code>:
393     <pre>&lt;string name="menu_insert"&gt;Add Item&lt;/string&gt;</pre>
394      <p>Then save the file and return to <code>Notepadv1</code>.</p>
395    </li>
396    <li>Create a menu position constant at the top of the  class:
397      <pre>public static final int INSERT_ID = Menu.FIRST;</pre>
398    </li>
399    <li>In the <code>onCreateOptionsMenu()</code> method, change the
400    <code>super</code> call so we capture the boolean return as <code>result</code>. We'll return this value at the end.</li>
401    <li>Then add the menu item with <code>menu.add()</code>.</li>
402  </ol>
403  <p>The whole method should now look like this:
404      <pre>
405    &#64;Override
406    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
407        boolean result = super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
408        menu.add(0, INSERT_ID, 0, R.string.menu_insert);
409        return result;
410    }</pre>
411  <p>The arguments passed to <code>add()</code> indicate: a group identifier for this menu (none,
412  in this case), a unique ID (defined above), the order of the item (zero indicates no preference),
413  and the resource of the string to use for the item.</p>
414
415<h2 style="clear:right;">Step 10</h2>
416    <p>Fill out the body of the <code>onOptionsItemSelected()</code> method:</p>
417    <p>This is going
418    to handle our new "Add Note" menu item.  When this is selected, the
419    <code>onOptionsItemSelected()</code> method will be called with the
420    <code>item.getId()</code> set to <code>INSERT_ID</code> (the constant we
421    used to identify the menu item). We can detect this, and take the
422    appropriate actions:</p>
423  <ol>
424    <li>
425      The <code>super.onOptionsItemSelected(item)</code> method call goes at the
426      end of this method &mdash; we want to catch our events first!    </li>
427    <li>
428      Write a switch statement on <code>item.getItemId()</code>.
429      <p>In the case of <var>INSERT_ID</var>, call a new method, <code>createNote()</code>,
430      and return true, because we have handled this event and do not want to
431      propagate it through the system.</p>
432    </li>
433    <li>Return the result of the superclass' <code>onOptionsItemSelected()</code>
434    method at the end.</li>
435   </ol>
436    <p>
437      The whole <code>onOptionsItemSelect()</code> method should now look like
438      this:</p>
439      <pre>
440    &#64;Override
441    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
442        switch (item.getItemId()) {
443        case INSERT_ID:
444            createNote();
445            return true;
446        }
447
448        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
449    }</pre>
450
451<h2>Step 11</h2>
452    <p>Add a new <code>createNote()</code> method:</p>
453    <p>In this first version of
454    our application, <code>createNote()</code> is not going to be very useful.
455We will simply
456    create a new note with a title assigned to it based on a counter ("Note 1",
457    "Note 2"...) and with an empty body. At present we have no way of editing
458    the contents of a note, so for now we will have to be content making one
459    with some default values:</p>
460  <ol>
461    <li>Construct the name using "Note" and the counter we defined in the class: <code>
462      String noteName = "Note " + mNoteNumber++</code></li>
463    <li>
464      Call <code>mDbHelper.createNote()</code> using <code>noteName</code> as the
465      title and <code>""</code> for the body
466    </li>
467    <li>
468      Call <code>fillData()</code> to populate the list of notes (inefficient but
469      simple) &mdash; we'll create this method next.</li>
470  </ol>
471    <p>
472      The whole <code>createNote()</code> method should look like this: </p>
473      <pre>
474    private void createNote() {
475        String noteName = &quot;Note &quot; + mNoteNumber++;
476        mDbHelper.createNote(noteName, &quot;&quot;);
477        fillData();
478    }</pre>
479
480
481<h2>Step 12</h2>
482  <div class="sidebox-wrapper">
483  <div class="sidebox">
484    <h2>List adapters</h2>
485    <p>Our example uses a {@link android.widget.SimpleCursorAdapter
486     SimpleCursorAdapter} to bind a database {@link android.database.Cursor Cursor}
487     into a ListView, and this is a common way to use a {@link android.widget.ListAdapter
488     ListAdapter}. Other options exist like {@link android.widget.ArrayAdapter ArrayAdapter} which
489     can be used to take a List or Array of in-memory data and bind it in to
490     a list as well.</p>
491  </div>
492  </div>
493
494  <p>Define the <code>fillData()</code> method:</p>
495   <p>This
496    method uses <code>SimpleCursorAdapter,</code> which takes a database <code>Cursor</code>
497    and binds it to fields provided in the layout. These fields define the row elements of our list
498    (in this case we use the <code>text1</code> field in our
499    <code>notes_row.xml</code> layout), so this allows us to easily populate the list with
500    entries from our database.</p>
501    <p>To do this we have to provide a mapping from the <code>title</code> field in the returned Cursor, to
502    our <code>text1</code> TextView, which is done by defining two arrays: the first a string array
503    with the list of columns to map <em>from</em> (just "title" in this case, from the constant
504    <code>NotesDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE</code>) and, the second, an int array
505    containing references to the views that we'll bind the data <em>into</em>
506    (the <code>R.id.text1</code> TextView).</p>
507    <p>This is a bigger chunk of code, so let's first take a look at it:</p>
508
509    <pre>
510    private void fillData() {
511        // Get all of the notes from the database and create the item list
512        Cursor c = mDbHelper.fetchAllNotes();
513        startManagingCursor(c);
514
515        String[] from = new String[] { NotesDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE };
516        int[] to = new int[] { R.id.text1 };
517
518        // Now create an array adapter and set it to display using our row
519        SimpleCursorAdapter notes =
520            new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.notes_row, c, from, to);
521        setListAdapter(notes);
522    }</pre>
523
524  <p>Here's what we've done:</p>
525  <ol>
526    <li>
527      After obtaining the Cursor from <code>mDbHelper.fetchAllNotes()</code>, we
528      use an Activity method called
529      <code>startManagingCursor()</code> that allows Android to take care of the
530      Cursor lifecycle instead of us needing to worry about it. (We will cover the implications
531      of the lifecycle in exercise 3, but for now just know that this allows Android to do some
532      of our resource management work for us.)</li>
533    <li>
534      Then we create a string array in which we declare the column(s) we want
535      (just the title, in this case), and an int array that defines the View(s)
536      to which we'd like to bind the columns (these should be in order, respective to
537      the string array, but here we only have one for each).</li>
538    <li>
539      Next is the SimpleCursorAdapter instantiation.
540      Like many classes in Android, the SimpleCursorAdapter needs a Context in order to do its
541      work, so we pass in <code>this</code> for the context (since subclasses of Activity
542      implement Context). We pass the <code>notes_row</code> View we created as the receptacle
543      for the data, the Cursor we just created, and then our arrays.</li>
544   </ol>
545    <p>
546      In the future, remember that the mapping between the <strong>from</strong> columns and <strong>to</strong> resources
547      is done using the respective ordering of the two arrays. If we had more columns we wanted
548      to bind, and more Views to bind them in to, we would specify them in order, for example we
549      might use <code>{ NotesDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE, NotesDbAdapter.KEY_BODY }</code> and
550      <code>{ R.id.text1, R.id.text2 }</code> to bind two fields into the row (and we would also need
551      to define text2 in the notes_row.xml, for the body text). This is how you can bind multiple fields
552      into a single row (and get a custom row layout as well).</p>
553    <p>
554      If you get compiler errors about classes not being found, ctrl-shift-O or
555      (cmd-shift-O on the mac) to organize imports.
556    </p>
557
558<h2 style="clear:right;">Step 13</h2>
559    <p>Run it!
560  <ol>
561    <li>
562      Right click on the <code>Notepadv1</code> project.</li>
563    <li>
564      From the popup menu, select <strong>Run As</strong> &gt;
565      <strong>Android Application</strong>.</li>
566    <li>
567      If you see a dialog come up, select Android Launcher as the way of running
568      the application (you can also use the link near the top of the dialog to
569      set this as your default for the workspace; this is recommended as it will
570      stop the plugin from asking you this every time).</li>
571    <li>Add new notes by hitting the menu button and selecting <em>Add
572    Item</em> from the menu.</li>
573  </ol>
574
575<h2 style="clear:right;">Solution and Next Steps</h2>
576    <p>You can see the solution to this class in <code>Notepadv1Solution</code>
577from
578the zip file to compare with your own.</p>
579
580<p>Once you are ready, move on to <a href="notepad-ex2.html">Tutorial
581Exercise 2</a> to add the ability to create, edit and delete notes.</p>
582
583