android - ViewPager inside fragment, how to retain state?

Question

In my application the fragment activity holds two fragments, Fragment A and Fragment B. Fragment B is a view pager that contains 3 fragments.

In my activity, to prevent that the fragment is recreated on config changes:

if(getSupportFragmentManager().findFragmentByTag(MAIN_TAB_FRAGMENT) == null) {
    getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction().replace(R.id.container, new MainTabFragment(), MAIN_TAB_FRAGMENT).commit();
}

Code for Fragment B:

public class MainTabFragment extends Fragment {

    private PagerSlidingTabStrip mSlidingTabLayout;
    private LfPagerAdapter adapter;
    private ViewPager mViewPager;

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setRetainInstance(true);
    }

    @Nullable
    @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        return inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_tab, container, false);
    }

    @Override
    public void onViewCreated(View view, Bundle savedInstanceState) {

        this.adapter = new LfPagerAdapter(getChildFragmentManager());

        this.mViewPager = (ViewPager) view.findViewById(R.id.viewpager);
        this.mViewPager.setAdapter(adapter);

        this.mSlidingTabLayout = (PagerSlidingTabStrip) view.findViewById(R.id.sliding_tabs);
        this.mSlidingTabLayout.setViewPager(this.mViewPager);
    }
}

Code for the adapter:

public class LfPagerAdapter extends FragmentPagerAdapter {

    private static final int NUM_ITEMS = 3;

    private FragmentManager fragmentManager;

    public LfPagerAdapter(FragmentManager fm) {
        super(fm);
        this.fragmentManager = fm;
    }

    @Override
    public int getCount() {
        return NUM_ITEMS;
    }

    @Override
    public Fragment getItem(int position) {
        Log.d("TEST","TEST");
        switch (position) {
            case 1:
                return FragmentC.newInstance();
            case 2:
                return FragmentD.newInstance();
            default:
                return FragmentE.newInstance();
        }
    }
}

My problem is that I am not able to retain the state of the view pager an its child fragments on orientation changes.

Obviously this is called on every rotation:

this.adapter = new LfPagerAdapter(getChildFragmentManager());

which will cause the whole pager to be recreated, right? As a result

getItem(int position)

will be called on every rotation and the fragment will be created from scratch and losing his state:

return FragmentC.newInstance();

I tried solving this with:

if(this.adapter == null)
    this.adapter = new LfPagerAdapter(getChildFragmentManager());

in onViewCreated but the result was that on rotation the fragments inside the pager where removed.

Any ideas how to correctly retain the state inside the pager?

Answer 1

You will need to do 2 things to resolve the issue:

1) You should use onCreate method instead of onViewCreated to instantiate LfPagerAdapter;

i.e.:

    public class MainTabFragment extends Fragment {

    private PagerSlidingTabStrip mSlidingTabLayout;
    private LfPagerAdapter adapter;
    private ViewPager mViewPager;

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setRetainInstance(true);
        this.adapter = new LfPagerAdapter(getChildFragmentManager());
    }

    @Nullable
    @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        return inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_tab, container, false);
    }

    @Override
    public void onViewCreated(View view, Bundle savedInstanceState) {


        this.mViewPager = (ViewPager) view.findViewById(R.id.viewpager);
        this.mViewPager.setAdapter(adapter);

        this.mSlidingTabLayout = (PagerSlidingTabStrip) view.findViewById(R.id.sliding_tabs);
        this.mSlidingTabLayout.setViewPager(this.mViewPager);
    }
}

2) You will need to extend FragmentStatePagerAdapter instead of FragmentPagerAdapter