Month: November 2021

Think about the most popular apps that contain a feed, such as Twitter or Instagram. The more you scroll, the more posts you’re shown. Although the posts have different content, the overall layout of each post is identical to the next, this is RecyclerView. RecyclerView is used to efficiently display large amounts of data on android applications. The entire RecyclerView is known as a ViewGroup, and the individual “post” layout is known as View Holder.

The fragment class is where the actual adapter is instantiated, and the ViewModel class is where the actual database call is made. In the example below, we use the Parse Database.

This is the code for a fragment that contains a Recyclerview. You’ll notice the data binding in the layout file, with the data element in the view root element

The individual item (e.g. one tweet) has a separate layout file. This is what each individual data item will be binded to.

RecyclerView binds the individual view holder to its data, this is done in the adapter class.

The adapter contains the onBindViewHolder function, where the viewHolder is bound to an item. In the above example, we have a list of notes. The onBindViewHolder takes a note at each index (or position) and binds it to the viewHolder.

The fragment class contains a function, onCreateView, where the adapter is instantiated. You’ll notice it also creates a new savedNoteViewModel.

The savedNoteViewModel sets out “notes” to the actual data that it receives from making the database call:

In this example, we use the Parse database. This function shown below queries the user’s saved notes, along with the actual data for each note. Then the list of notes is returned.

Once you run your app, you should see something like this:

And there you have it! A short example using recyclerView, Data Binding, and Parse

This week I made my first video! Although I don’t think I’m going to be the next big youtube star, I really enjoyed getting to create on a new medium and found a way to create and edit videos easily.

To record my video, I used QuickTime on mac, and to edit my videos, I used OpenShot Video Editor, which is free and open source.
Once QuickTime is opened, you can access the recording options in the File menu.

For my video, I used the Audio Recording and Screen Recording options.
If you want audio recorded while you do a screen recording, you have to open the options menu and click a microphone source:

Once you have your recordings, you’ll want to open OpenShot and create a new project. You can add your video, audio, and even image records by dragging these into your project tab.

Adding the media from your project files to your final video is as easy as dragging them into different tracks. You can use the cut tool if you need to split up videos and/or delete sections. If you want to add transitions, effects, and emojis, you can access these next to the project files.

If you want to check out what your video looks and sounds like, pressing play will start the video from the beginning of the slider.

Once you’re happy with your video, press the export video button, and voila! You are on your way to winning a Youtube Creator Award!!