Just update a widget RemoteViews instead of completly creating a new one?

Question

In my onUpdate method in my AppWidgetProvider class, I ended up executing a non-trivial amount of code so that I can completely recreate a new RemoteView object. The reality is I really only need to be setting the text in one of the TextViews in the RemoteViews each time I update.

Is there any way to just modify the RemoteViews that a particular widget is already using?

Answer 1

First, RemoteView is not a View. It's a set of instructions that build a View hierarchy. It is used to recreate a View in another process (App Widgets do not execute in your app's process). As such it's serializable and mutable.

So, when you initialize a RemoteView just store a reference to it somewhere, e.g. in a field of your custom AppWidgetProvider. Next time you need it, get it from field and the change something on it. For changing the string in a TextView use setString(..).

remoteView.setString(textViewId, "setText", "some text for TextView")