Media playback

In the previous recipe, we retrieved search results from YouTube and displayed them in a list and detail fragment. The entries found represent videos, so it would be nice if we were able to play them as well in our app. Let's find a way to do this.

Since we do know the video ID, it is not that difficult to compose a URL for it and load them in a web view; however, Google provides an easier solution for this and offers the YouTube Android Player API for this purpose. It has a couple of limitations but is interesting enough to explore.

Getting ready

To go through this recipe, you need to complete the previous recipe as this one picks up where we left off. While I recommend you to test the app on a physical phone and tablet, you can, of course, use Genymotion as well.

If you are using virtual devices, then Google apps (and the YouTube app on which the API and the player depend) will be missing, and the app will fail for that reason. You need to download and install them on the virtual device first.

How to do it...

Let's see how we can extend the app using the following steps, so it can play back a video for us:

  1. Download the YouTube Player API from https://developers.google.com/youtube/android/player/downloads.
  2. In the downloaded file, find the YouTubeAndroidPlayerApi.jar file in the libs folder and copy it.
  3. Open the project from the previous recipe.
  4. Find the libs folder within the app module and paste the YouTubeAndroidPlayerApi.jar file.
  5. The dependencies in the build.gradle file may have already been prepared to include any files in the lib file; however if it is not, add the dependency:
    compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['YouTubeAndroidPlayerApi.jar'])
  6. Click on the Sync now link, or in case it does not appear, click on the Sync project with Gradle files button on the toolbar.
  7. In the MainActivity class, add a static tag for the player fragment that we are going to create. Also add the private member for YouTubePlayerFragment and a public member to store the YouTube player if the initialization succeeds:
    public static String TAG_PLAYER_FRAGMENT = "PLAYER";
private YouTubePlayerFragment mPlayerFragment;
public YouTubePlayer mYouTubePlayer = null;
  8. Open activity_main.xml in the layout-large directory, change the height of the detail fragment to 300dp, and add YouTubePlayerFragment to it. The preview might complain as it is not aware of how things should be rendered, but that is not really an issue as long as the package is being recognized, which will be the case if you have completed steps 5 and 6 successfully:
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FrameLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"android:layout_width="match_parent"android:layout_height="match_parent"android:id="@+id/main_container">
<FrameLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"android:layout_width="300dp"android:layout_height="match_parent"android:background="@android:color/holo_orange_light"android:id="@+id/main_container_for_list_fragment"></FrameLayout>
<FrameLayout
android:id="@+id/main_container_for_detail_fragment"android:background="@android:color/holo_blue_light"android:layout_marginLeft="300dp"android:layout_width="match_parent"android:layout_height="300dp"></FrameLayout>
<fragment
android:name="com.google.android.youtube.player.YouTubePlayerFragment"
android:id="@+id/main_youtube_player_fragment"android:layout_marginTop="300dp"android:layout_marginLeft="300dp"android:layout_width="match_parent"android:layout_height="match_parent"android:layout_weight="3"/>
</FrameLayout>
  9. In onCreateView, just before ft.commit, find the container for the player fragment and initialize YouTuberPlayer:
    mPlayerFragment = (YouTubePlayerFragment)  
 getFragmentManager().findFragmentById(
  R.id.main_youtube_player_fragment);if (mPlayerFragment != null) {
  ft.add(mPlayerFragment, TAG_PLAYER_FRAGMENT);  mPlayerFragment.initialize("Your API key", new 
   YouTubePlayer.OnInitializedListener() 
  {
   @Override 
     public void onInitializationSuccess( YouTubePlayer.Provider   
     provider, YouTubePlayer youTubePlayer, boolean isRestored) 
   {
     mYouTubePlayer = youTubePlayer;}
   @Override 
    public void onInitializationFailure(YouTubePlayer.Provider    
    provider, YouTubeInitializationResult 
     youTubeInitializationResult) {
      Log.d(this.getClass().toString(),   
       youTubeInitializationResult.toString()); 
 });
}
  10. In DetailFragment, add an on click handler for the Play button in the onCreateView method, just before returning the view object:
    view.findViewById(R.id.detail_button_play).setOnClickListener(
 new View.OnClickListener() {
  @Override
  public void onClick(View v) {
    playVideo();}
});
  11. Create the playVideo method in DetailFragment. If the player fragment is there (on devices with large screens) and has been initialized, it will play the video; if it is not there (on devices with smaller screens), we will create a player fragment, initialize it, and add it to the stack:
    private void playVideo(){
if (getActivity() != null && 
 ((MainActivity)getActivity()).mYouTubePlayer != null){
    ((MainActivity)getActivity()  
     ).mYouTubePlayer.cueVideo(mVideo.getId());
 }
 else {
    FragmentTransaction ft =  
     getFragmentManager().beginTransaction();
    YouTubePlayerFragment playerFragment = new 
    YouTubePlayerFragment();
   ft.add(R.id.main_container_for_list_fragment,   
    playerFragment, MainActivity.TAG_DETAILS_FRAGMENT);
   ft.addToBackStack(MainActivity.TAG_PLAYER_FRAGMENT);
   ft.commit();
   playerFragment.initialize("Your API key", new 
    YouTubePlayer.OnInitializedListener() {
      @Override
     public void onInitializationSuccess(YouTubePlayer.Provider 
       provider, YouTubePlayer youTubePlayer, boolean 
       isRestored) {
         if (!isRestored) {
             youTubePlayer.cueVideo(mVideo.getId());
          }
      }
      @Override
	   public void onInitializationFailure(YouTubePlayer.Provider 
       provider, YouTubeInitializationResult 
        youTubeInitializationResult) {
        Log.d(this.getClass().toString(),   
         youTubeInitializationResult.toString()); 
      }
   });
 }
}

And with that, we have added a simple but fully functional implementation to play the selected video.

There's more...

There are many options available to play a video, such as fullscreen or in place, with or without buttons, and so on. Using Chrome Cast, media can also be sent to your TV or as we will see in the final recipe, we can create an app for an Android TV.

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset