Update tabs from a tab's activity in a Android TabHost

Question

I have a TabActivity and am going to have 3 or 4 tabs.

In TabA, I would like to have an ExpandableListView, which will list products. I would like TabC to act as a sort of "shopping cart", probably with a ListView of itself.

Is there a way to interact with the TabHost from the Activity? I would like to be able to click a button inside of TabA and have it update and switch to TabC. Is this possible? Can I get the Tab's activities call its parents methods?

Calefaction

Answer 1

If you implement your tabs as views, rather than individual activities, this would be far simpler, run faster, take up less memory, and be a better solution IMHO.

That being said, in the Tab A Activity, call getParent() to get at the TabActivity. Then, you can use the methods pointed out by disretrospect.

Semester

+1 for the getParent() tip - although I do not understand the recommendation to use views instead of activities. I prefer activities to seperate the life cycles and also to seperate the code belonging to each tab. – Adam

@K. Claszen: "to seperate the life cycles" -- their lifecycles aren't separate. "also to seperate the code belonging to each tab" -- code separation in the form of Java class files has been around for 15 years. You do not need to use separate activities for this. – Semester

Thanks for the response. As I observe, the activities lifecycle methods (onCreate, etc.) are only called if the associated tab is selected. And I like to be able to extend provided activities like ExpandableListActivity in a tab. However, both possibilities are provided and make sence depending on the requirement so I just wondered if there could be a general recommendation. – Adam

Answer 2

Try to use this code to change activity within a tab:

TabActivity parent = (TabActivity) getParent();
TabHost tabhost = parent.getTabHost();
tabhost.setCurrentTab(0);

Cryptograph

Answer 3

You can call getTabHost from a TabActivity, see public TabHost getTabHost().

See Tabhost for setCurrentTab, public void setCurrentTab(int index).

Eadie

Answer 4

1. In your Activity, use getParent() to get the TabActivity parent
2. In your TabActivity class, use getLocalActivityManager().getActivity(tabId) to get the Activity object
3. call the Activity object's method

Loosestrife

how about getting the view in that Activity #3 – Atalie