frenchtoast

FrenchToast

Stale Android Toasts made tasty.

Android Toasts are amazing, but they have a few major drawbacks:

• You cannot control when they show up as well as their duration. Other apps can enqueue toasts that will delay yours from showing up.
• They break context: they remain on screen when the user switches to other activities.
• The API is error prone: Toast.makeText(context, "Important Toast", LENGTH_LONG); // Don't forget show()!

FrenchToast gives you absolute control over your app Toasts. It does so by duplicating the internals of Android Toasts and giving you access.

Unlike other Toast-like libraries, FrenchToast doesn't add a view to the root of your activity. Instead, it creates a new Window for each Toast, exactly like the real Android Toasts.

Getting Started

In your build.gradle:

 dependencies {
   implementation 'info.piwai.frenchtoast:frenchtoast:1.0'
 }

You need to setup FrenchToast in your Application class:

public class ExampleApplication extends Application {

  @Override public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    FrenchToast.install(this);
  }
}

You are ready to Toast!

FrenchToast.with(context).showText("I love Baguettes!");

A FrenchToast:

• hides when the Activity is paused,
• shows again when it's resumed,
• has a default duration of Toast.LENGTH_LONG,
• survives configuration changes,
• is queued, so that only one Toast shows at once.

You can customize the default duration:

FrenchToast.with(context).shortLength().showText(R.string.short_bread);

FrenchToast.with(context).longLength().showText(R.string.long_bread);

FrenchToast.with(context).length(3, SECONDS).showText(R.string.bespoke_bread);

The duration of a Toast resets when the activity is paused / resumed, to make sure the user had enough time to see the Toast.

Bespoke Toasts

A Toast can be created from a layout:

FrenchToast.with(context).showLayout(R.layout.toasted_baguette);

You can also dip an Android Toast:

Toast toast = Toast.makeText(context, "BREAD ALL THE THINGS!", LENGTH_SHORT);
toast.setGravity(LEFT | TOP, 0, 0);
FrenchToast.with(context).showDipped(toast);

Unplugging the Toaster

A Toast can be canceled:

Toasted toasted = FrenchToast.with(context).showText("I love Baguettes!");
// I'd rather show a Bagel.
toasted.cancel();

You can also clear all queued Toasts for a given Activity:

FrenchToast.with(context).clear();

Context vs Activity

FrenchToast.with() takes a Context, however it expects that Context to be an Activity or to wrap an Activity, because FrenchToast keeps one ToastQueue for each activity.

Crafting your own Mixture

If you want more control over when to show / hide Toasts, you can directly use Mixture:

Toast toast = Toast.makeText(context, "BREAD ALL THE THINGS!", LENGTH_SHORT);
Mixture mixture = Mixture.dip(toast);
// The Toast is shown forever, as long as the process lives:
mixture.show();
// Or until you call hide:
mixture.hide();

FAQ

What's up with the strange names?

A French toast is a dish made of bread dipped in a mixture of beaten eggs and then fried.

Is this a serious project?

Yes. Despite the puns, this code is production ready. It is heavily inspired from android.widget.Toast.

What's the minimum supported Android?

FrenchToast requires a minimum SDK version of 14 or above, because it uses Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks.

Why reimplement Toast?

Because we can have better Toasts, so we should.

I read the source of Toast when I was flying back, still under a creative influence of Droidcon NYC. I realized it could be done, so I wrote FrenchToast.

License

Copyright 2015 Pierre-Yves Ricau

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.