Updates to documentation and project are still in progress

A highly customizable Android ViewGroup for displaying Chips (specified in the Material Design Guide)!

Here's some of the core features of this library:

• You can allow the user to filter chips as they type
• You can allow the user to enter custom chips
• You can specify if the chips show details, is deletable, or has an avatar
• You can specify how the chips are managed/stored in memory
• ChipsInputView can validate chips that are selected
• Most views (seen in screenshots) are highly customizable
• Sticks to the Material Design Guide as much as possible

Honorable Mentions:

• This was based on the design of: https://github.com/pchmn/MaterialChipsInput
• This uses a RecyclerView layout manager: https://github.com/BelooS/ChipsLayoutManager

The basic usage of this library is to allow users to input chips and for them to be displayed like in the Material Design Guide. To achieve this functionality, you'll need to use the ChipsInputLayout view.

ChipsInputLayout can be used in any ViewGroup and supports all width and height attributes. Simple usage is shown here:

<com.tylersuehr.library.ChipsInputLayout android:id="@+id/chips_input" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:hint="Start typing for chips... " android:textColorHint="#757575" android:textColor="#212121" app:detailedChipsEnabled="true" app:customChipsEnabled="true"/>

Here is a table of all the XML attributes available for this view:

ChipsInputLayout can be programmatically added into any ViewGroup. Simple usage in an Activity is shown here:

@Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); ChipsInputLayout chipsInputLayout = new ChipsInputLayout(this); // Set any properties for chips input layout setContentView(chipsInputLayout); }

Here is a table of all the accessible attributes available for this view:

Where this library capitalizes, is how it decentralizes where and how the selected and filterable chips are stored. This makes accessing and receiving updates to data source changes from various Android components really simple.

All chips are managed by, ChipDataSource, which is an abstraction to decouple the concrete implementation of how the abstract methods manage the chips. This means that other implementations of ChipDataSource can be made at your own leisure. Currently, there is no method on ChipsInputLayout to programmatically change the data source; however, these will be future additions to the library.

The current default implementation of ChipDataSource is ListChipDataSource, and it uses ArrayList as the list implementation for selected and filtered chip lists.

ChipDataSource has the ability to notify observers that want to observe specific chip selection events in ChipDataSource. The observers will be notified if a chip has been selected or unselected from the selected chip list in ChipDataSource. Both selection and deselection events will afford the chip that was selected or deselected respectively.

To use this functionality, you'll want to implement the 'ChipSelectionObserverand register it onChipDataSource`. Be sure to manage unregistering the observer, if need be, as well.

Since components outside of the library cannot, and should not, directly access ChipDataSouce, you'll use ChipsInputLayout to set the observer; using its setChipSelectionObserver(ChipSelectionObserver) method.

Here is a simple example:

public class CoolActivity extends AppCompatActivity implements ChipSelectionObserver { @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_cool); // Get the ChipsInputLayout from the layout file ChipsInputLayout chipsInput = (ChipsInputLayout)findViewById(R.id.chips); chipsInput.setChipSelectionObserver(this); } @Override public void onChipSelected(Chip selectedChip) { // Cool chip selection stuff here... } @Override public void onChipUnselected(Chip unselectedChip) { // Cool chip unselection stuff here... } }

ChipDataSource has the ability to notify observers that want to observe any type of change to the data in ChipDataSource. The observers will be notified if a chip has been added or removed from either the selected or filtered lists in the ChipDataSource; however, there's no information about the event though.

This is used internally by the library to trigger UI updates on RecyclerView adapters when the data has changed.

Currently, ChipsInputLayout, does not have a method to set this type of observer on the ChipDataSource because this is for internal components of the library. However, this may be an addition to the library, if needed\requested, in the future.

To use this functionality, you'll want to implement the ChipChangedObserver and register it on ChipDataSource. Be sure to manage unregistering the observer, if need be, as well.

Here is a simple example:

public class CoolAdapter extends RecyclerView.Adapter<RecyclerView.ViewHolder> implements ChipChangedObserver { public CoolAdapter(ChipDataSource dataSource) { dataSource.addChipChangedObserver(this); } // adapter implementation to do really cool adapter stuff... @Override public void onChipDataSourceChanged() { // This example would just update the Recycler when the chip data source changes notifyDataSetChanged(); } }