Maintaining a Custom Back Stack

We are so close to being done with this app. 0:00 All we have left is to figure out how to manually create our own back stack. 0:03 This is one of the headaches about reusing views in an activity like we are, but 0:07 I think it's worth it. 0:11 In our case it's kind of easy. 0:12 We're using ints to control the pages being loaded. 0:14 All we need to do is keep track of the ints we use in our own stack and 0:17 we will be set. 0:20 Lucky for us, Java has a great stack class. 0:21 Let's create a new member variable and see how it works. 0:24 So let's switch to store activity, got to make sure that we're in the right one. 0:26 And up here at the top, let's create a new private stack. 0:30 And it's a generic, so we can't use int, that's a primitive type, 0:35 remember we've got to use the full blown object. 0:38 So we can type Integer like this with a capital I. 0:41 And let's name this pageStack. 0:43 And we can set it right here. 0:47 Let's set this equal to a new Stack type Integer, and there we go. 0:48 So adding items to a stack, like adding a piece of paper on a stack, 0:55 is called pushing something onto the stack. 0:58 So in this example every time we load a page, 1:01 we want to push that page number onto this new stack. 1:03 So let's go down to load page. 1:07 And here the very first thing we can do is add a new line. 1:10 And from our new pageStack variable, 1:14 we want to push the integer, which in this case is pageNumber. 1:17 All right, easy enough. 1:23 So this is going to build up a stack of the pages as we go through them. 1:24 Now, it's time for the opposite. 1:28 When we remove something from a stack, it's called popping from a stack. 1:29 And we want to pop from the stack each time the user taps on the back button. 1:33 When the back button is pressed, a method called onBackPressed is called, and 1:37 we can override that to add our own custom code. 1:41 So let's add that down at the bottom here. 1:44 It's an activity method. 1:45 So at the very bottom before the last curly brace, 1:47 let's type onBackPressed and Enter for autocomplete. 1:50 So in this case, 1:54 the call to super.onBackPressed will execute the normal back function. 1:55 If we leave it alone, it will pop or exit the current activity and 2:00 go back to main activity, no matter which page of the story we're on. 2:03 We only wanna do that when we're on the very first page. 2:06 Lets start by popping the current page number from our page stack, pageStack.pop. 2:09 We don't need to know what the page number is, 2:15 we can just simply remove it from the top of the stack. 2:18 All right lets think through this a little bit more. 2:20 If we're on the first page of our story, 2:22 there will be one page number on the stack. 2:24 So this first line will pop it off, meaning that the stack will now be empty. 2:27 So we can now run a check for an empty stack like this. 2:31 If pageStack.isempty and now in this case, 2:34 we want to call super.onBackPressed, and go back to our main activity. 2:40 If it's not empty though, 2:46 here in the else block, then that means we're on a further page in our story. 2:47 We want to load the previous page. 2:51 Now this gets a little tricky. 2:54 If we get the previous page number and then call load page with it, then we will 2:55 push that same page number on to the stack again because that line we added up here 3:00 in load page, the very first line, you'll push the page number back on to the stack. 3:05 That means that we would end up with the same page number two times in a row 3:10 on the stack. 3:13 I think it's better to always push the page number in this load page method. 3:14 So we can work around this by popping the previous page from the stack 3:17 right when we call loadPage back down here. 3:21 So what I mean is we'll reload the page right away and for 3:24 the page number, we'll pop it right out stack, pageStack.pop 3:28 will actually return the popped int, so we can pass it right back into the loadPage. 3:33 This looks a little bit funny because we end up calling pop twice in a row, but 3:38 it's only because this second call to pop 3:42 will then be pushed right back on because we're reloading the page. 3:45 So let's review this whole thing one more time. 3:49 Let's say we're on page one after starting at page zero. 3:51 Our stack will have zero, followed by one. 3:54 So let's review this one more time, I review it here with comments. 3:57 Let's say we're on page one after starting on page zero. 4:00 Our stack will have zero followed by a one. 4:04 This first call to pop up here will pop page one from our stack, 4:07 leaving only page zero on the page stack. 4:13 It's not empty, so when we check here we're going to skip down to the else 4:15 block, and now this second block will remove page zero. 4:19 But, we are then calling load page, with that zero, and we reload the page and 4:25 we will push page zero back on to the stack. 4:33 I know this can get a little confusing, 4:38 which is why I'm trying to talk through it, in detail. 4:40 I think we're ready to try it out though. 4:43 I'm going to delete this. 4:44 The key is to talk through it and do a lot of testing. 4:45 So let's test it out. 4:48 All right. 4:49 Let's test a few different cases here. 4:52 Start the adventure, and 4:56 we'll click through until we get all the way to the end. 4:58 And now let's use our back button. 5:01 Let's see if we go back through the same pages, yeah, it's working, look at that. 5:02 All right, we're back at page zero, 5:06 and if we hit back again, we go back and the name field is empty. 5:08 Let's try it again. 5:13 Come in here, we'll go back to the end. 5:16 And at this point, 5:18 let's click on the up button and we should go all the way up to main activity. 5:19 And our name is cleared, very good. 5:22 Let's try it one more time. 5:25 Let's go through. 5:28 Click on a couple of things. 5:30 Let's play again, and keep going through. 5:32 Sure thing, we can just keep clicking. 5:37 And we should be able to click on the back button and go all the way back. 5:40 We could even go back, in this case, 5:45 through previous stories; which if we really wanted to fix, 5:46 we could clear our stack each time we hit play again and load page zero. 5:49 But this is great, our app is complete! 5:56 You have done it, you have created the interactive story. 5:59