Programming Tutorials

Introduction In Android app development, creating interactive UI elements is essential for enhancing user experience. Jetpack Compose, Android’s modern toolkit for building native UI, offers developers a declarative way to design interfaces with reactive components. One common task in UI design is making components clickable, such as displaying a counter that updates on tap or click. In Jetpack Compose, implementing click behavior is streamlined and straightforward, allowing you to control how elements respond to user interactions with minimal boilerplate. This article explains how to create clickable cards in Jetpack Compose. In the example code, we build two cards that react differently when clicked: one card increments a counter when tapped, and the other decrements it. By following this breakdown, you’ll gain a solid understanding of how to use Jetpack Compose to handle user interactions and dynamically update the UI. Code Breakdown : Main Activity Setup The entry point of the app ...

Compose Card Content Alignment The Card is a widget of the jetpack compose library. A Card layout displays a single widget inside it. The Card is useful to render a specified shape with elevation. The Card also can draw a background color on its surface. The jetpack compose developer can put a border/stroke around the Card layout itself. But how can they align the content inside of a Card layout? By default, the Card widget constructor has no argument to directly set alignment for its child element. So we have to write extra code to define the alignment of a Card child. The following jetpack compose tutorial will demonstrate to us how we can set a Card content alignment in an android application. The Box is another layout widget of the android jetpack compose library. We can set alignment for the Box content using its constructor’s ‘contentAlignment’ argument. The Card widget tries to expand its child size to fill the parent Card size. To align the Card content, we have to wr...

Introduction In Android development, Jetpack Compose offers a modern toolkit for building native UI using a declarative approach. This toolkit simplifies the UI creation process by enabling developers to define UI components directly within the code, making layout and design easier to implement and customize. One of the frequently used UI elements in Jetpack Compose is the Card component, which allows you to organize content in a visually appealing way. By leveraging color, shape, and background customizations, developers can create engaging cards that enhance the user experience. This example demonstrates how to create two custom-styled Card components in Jetpack Compose. The first card has a solid background color, while the second card showcases a gradient background achieved through the Brush.radialGradient function. This example also utilizes Scaffold , a high-level layout component, to add a top app bar and handle the screen’s overall background color, making it easier to main...

Introduction In this article, we will explore how to implement a simple UI layout using Jetpack Compose in Android by focusing on how to manage padding inside a card. Jetpack Compose is Google's modern toolkit for building native UI, which simplifies UI development by using Kotlin-based declarative programming. Instead of building UI components through XML layouts, Compose allows developers to define UI components directly in Kotlin, which brings flexibility and ease of use. In this particular example, we will look at how to create a Card component with proper padding, alignment, and visual structure. This is achieved through various composable functions, leveraging the powerful Jetpack Compose framework. Let's dive into the different sections of the code to understand how these UI elements are constructed. Main Activity Setup The main entry point for this app is the MainActivity class, which extends AppCompatActivity . The onCreate() method is overridden to set the content ...

Introduction Jetpack Compose, Google's modern toolkit for building native UI, provides a powerful and flexible way to design Android apps. One of the essential UI components is the Card , which offers an easy-to-use container for displaying content with visual appeal. Customizing the appearance of a Card is a common requirement, and one way to enhance its design is by adding a border. In this article, we will explore how to add different types of borders to a Card using Kotlin in Jetpack Compose. We will break down the code to show how to implement both a solid and gradient border to enhance the UI experience. The ability to style components like cards with borders allows developers to create visually engaging and unique designs. This tutorial demonstrates how to add a solid color border and a gradient border, two commonly used techniques, to Card elements within a layout using Jetpack Compose. Setting up the Scaffold The main user interface is built within a Scaffold , which pr...

Introduction Jetpack Compose, Android’s modern toolkit for building native UI, allows developers to create beautiful, responsive applications with less code. One of the appealing features of Jetpack Compose is its simplicity in designing UI components such as cards, which are widely used to display information. A common requirement when using cards is to add shadow effects or elevation to enhance visual aesthetics, giving a more defined and interactive feel. In this guide, we’ll explore how to add shadow to a card component in Jetpack Compose, using simple steps to control elevation for better user experience. This tutorial walks you through creating a basic layout with multiple cards in Android using Jetpack Compose. It covers how to control the elevation (which adds a shadow effect) and how to customize the card’s appearance with different shapes and background colors. Each card in the example has a different elevation value, showing how the shadow effect varies based on this propert...

Introduction Jetpack Compose, the modern UI toolkit from Android, provides a simple and powerful way to design user interfaces using a declarative approach. One of the key features of Compose is its flexibility when it comes to customizing UI components, such as applying different shapes, including corner radii, to visual elements like Cards. In this Kotlin example, we explore how to use Jetpack Compose to create cards with varying corner radius effects, demonstrating the power and ease of UI customization. This description breaks down the code of an Android activity that showcases the use of Compose Card components with different shapes, including rounded corners and circular shapes. The use of Scaffold to structure the layout and the way Card elements are styled with custom radii will be highlighted in this detailed walkthrough. Main Structure The core of this example lies in MainActivity , which inherits from AppCompatActivity . Inside the onCreate() method, the setContent func...

Introduction In modern Android development, Jetpack Compose is transforming how we build UI elements, providing a declarative way to design layouts. Among the many components available in Jetpack Compose, the Card is a useful element that helps organize content with elevation, background colors, and rounded corners. This example showcases how to place content in the center of a Card component using Jetpack Compose in Kotlin. Understanding the use of Card and its layout behavior is essential for creating clean and visually appealing interfaces. This article describes a simple Android project that places text content in the center of a Card component. It walks through the different composable functions involved and explains how Jetpack Compose layouts, such as Scaffold , Column , Card , and Box , can be combined to achieve the desired UI behavior. Project Breakdown The project begins with an AppCompatActivity class where the main composable function is set up. Inside the onCreate m...

Introduction This example demonstrates the use of Jetpack Compose’s Box composable in an Android app to explore alignment and gravity within a UI. The Kotlin-based example showcases how to structure a simple user interface, positioning elements within a Box using different alignment settings. The sample app is designed to help Android developers understand how Box works in Jetpack Compose and how to apply various layout and alignment options effectively. It uses simple components, including a Scaffold , to wrap the layout and provide a consistent structure with a top bar. Structure and Setup The starting point of this project is the MainActivity , which extends AppCompatActivity . Upon creation of the activity, the setContent function is called to initiate the composable functions. The core layout is defined by the GetScaffold() composable, which is responsible for organizing the entire screen content. Within this scaffold, there is a TopAppBar that gives the app a standard navig...

Compose Box Content Alignment The Box is a layout widget of the android jetpack compose library. The Box layout size itself fits the content. When a Box layout size is bigger than the content size, then we have to align the content. Such as a Box layout may be filled the screen size, in this situation we need to show the content widget at the specified position of the Box layout. The following jetpack compose tutorial will demonstrate to us how we can align Box content in an android application. The Box widget constructor has an argument name ‘contentAlignment’ whose data type is ‘Alignment’. So, using this argument we can set the Box content alignment. Alignment is an interface to calculate the position of a sized box inside an available space. The ‘Alignment’ is often used to define the alignment of a layout inside a parent layout. The default value of this ‘contentAlignment’ argument is ‘Alignment.TopStart’. There are many available values for the ‘contentAlignment’ argume...

Introduction Jetpack Compose is a modern toolkit for building native UI in Android, simplifying and accelerating UI development by using Kotlin code. One of its key strengths is the flexibility it provides in designing user interfaces, including easily customizing shapes, layouts, and components. In this example, we focus on using Box components in Jetpack Compose to create UI elements with rounded corners and circular shapes, illustrating how to handle custom shapes in your UI. In this article, we will break down an example Android app that demonstrates how to implement different box shapes such as boxes with rounded corners and circular shapes. The components are composed using Jetpack Compose’s powerful layout system, and the app includes a top app bar, background colors, and neatly arranged elements. We will walk through the core components and techniques used to achieve these shapes. Scaffold Layout and AppBar Setup The app's UI is built inside a Scaffold composable, which p...