One of the most requested enhancements for the Random Contact App is for a way to filter contacts with the custom contact picker that is used in it. Since it seemed like a good reusable component, I added the module named MultiContactPicker along with the rearchitecture of my Andorid library project lib-aeApps.

Lets see how to add a filter for a RecyclerView in an Android app.

I migrated an Android app to AndroidX with the help of the Refactor option from Android Studio. After all the references in the java files were updated, I ran into the below error when I tried running my app.

  android.view.InflateException: Binary XML file line #2 in <>: Error inflating class androidx.constraintlayout.ConstraintLayout  
    Caused by: android.view.InflateException: Binary XML file line #2 in <>: Error inflating class androidx.constraintlayout.ConstraintLayout  
    Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: androidx.constraintlayout.ConstraintLayout  

After a bit of head scratching and internet search, I was able to fix it by simply changing the declaration in the layout XML file. androidx.constraintlayout.ConstraintLayout to androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout

I was expecting atleasst the IDE to throw an error, but had to find and fix it the hard way.

For no reason, I was reminded of a simple code snippet to swap (interchange) two numbers that I had discovered in my early programming days. I may have used it once or twice in my 10 years of being a professional software developer.

Swapping two numbers is a common use case when working with some algorithms and the like.

To simplify a process, I had to quickly build a utility app to create report based on status from a large number of emails on a daily basis.

I had always planned to refactor the single Java source file into a proper design when I found some free time. That’s how I got to implement my version of the Pipeline Design Pattern.

As my old colleague felt the usual title for this post “Bye Bye {Year}” to be a bit negative, I have changed it to “Year in Review”, which is what this post ultimately about.

This is a followup post to my earlier post which listed the internal codenames that were used by the official Android Messages app. It ended with them coming to the end of the Alphabetic order with “Zither” and another update with “Nose Flute”.

A new version has now been released!