Android Shared Preferences Tutorial

Shared Preferences

                       

                        Shared Preferences store small amount of data and it is private to your application.The SharedPreferences class provides a general framework that allows you to save and retrieve persistent key-value pairs of primitive data types. You can use Shared Preferences to save any primitive data: booleans, floats, ints, longs, and strings. This data will persist across user sessions (even if your application is killed).

Basically there are two methods for Shared Preferences:

     1.    getSharedPreferences(<name of the File>,<mode>)

         

         Use this if you need multiple preferences files identified by name, which you specify with the first parameter.What ever file name you are giving in getSharedPerferences(),the file will create the same name of xml file.

     2.    getPreferences(<mode>)

  

         Use this if you need only one preferences file for your Activity. Because this will be the only preferences file for your Activity, you don't supply a name. Here we are not passing any file name, your file name automatically taken as ActivityName.xml.

Creating and Writing into Shared Preferences File:

            1.    Get the Editor

                SharedPreferences.Editor e = s.edit();

            2.    Modify the Editor

                e.putBoolean(<VariableName>,<Value>);

      3. Save the Editor

                  e.commit();

Let’s See the Program:

SharedPerferencesTestActivity.java

public class SharedPerferencesTestActivity extends Activity

{

            //Preference File Name

            public static final String MY_PREF = "MyPreferences";

    /** Called when the activity is first created. */

    @Override

    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)

    {

        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        setContentView(R.layout.main);

       

        final Button btn = (Button)findViewById(R.id.button1);

        final Intent it = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), TargetActivity.class);

       

        //Creating Instance of SharedPreferences

        SharedPreferences sp = getSharedPreferences(MY_PREF, 0);

       

        //Getting the Editor

        SharedPreferences.Editor edit = sp.edit();

       

        //Modifying Editor

        edit.putInt("No of Item", 3);

        edit.putString("item1", "One");

        edit.putString("item2", "Two");

        edit.putString("item3", "Three");

       

        //Save the Editor value

        edit.commit();

       

        btn.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {

                                   

                                    @Override

                                    public void onClick(View v)

                                    {

                                                startActivity(it);

                                    }

                        });

    }

}

TargetActivity.java

public class TargetActivity extends Activity

{

                @Override

                protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)

                {

                                super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

                               

                                //Reading the Preferences File

                                SharedPreferences s = getSharedPreferences(SharedPerferencesTestActivity.MY_PREF, 0);

                                int i = s.getInt("No of Item", 0);

                               

                                if(i>0)

                                {

                                                String item1 = s.getString("item1", "");

                                                Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), item1, 0).show();

                                               

                                                String item2 = s.getString("item2", "");

                                                Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), item2, 0).show();

                                               

                                                String item3 = s.getString("item3", "");

                                                Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), item3, 0).show();

                                }

                }

}

Result:

            >>When you click on the Button, Shared Preferences will read the values what ever you have store in xml file.

You can also Check that xml file created or not. For that you need to follow bellow steps:

Go to Window-> ShowView -> File Explorer(Click on It)

Now Go to DDMS -> Click your Device Name(Which is Running Currently) -> Click on File Explorer -> data -> data -> Choose Your Package name(Ex.  Com.shared) -> Under that package you can See your Preferences File Name.