An example illustrating a Navigation Drawer in Android, which is an user interface panel that shows your app's main navigation menu.

A Navigation Drawer is an excellent way to displaying your app's navigation options, as well as other options, to the user. Usually hidden when not in use, it saves valuable screen space and declutters your app's user interface.

This article will show you how to do the following:

• Implement a simple Navigation Drawer as per standard Navigation Drawer Design
• Handle navigation click events to navigate to other fragments
• Add custom switch button to the Navigation Drawer and handle the click events

There is comprehensive documentation on how to implement a simple Navigation Drawer in Android here, so I won't repeat it here. Instead, I will show how to add other features not covered in the documentation.

To handle menu item click events, read this part of the documentation under Handle navigation click events. In order to show another fragment on screen, first check the id of the menu item clicked using getItemId(), then use getSupportFragmentManager() to switch to another fragment:

@Override
    public boolean onNavigationItemSelected(@NonNull MenuItem menuItem) {
        switch (menuItem.getItemId()){
            case R.id.first_menu_id:
                getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction().replace(R.id.layout_container_id, new InstanceOfNewFragment())
                        .commit();
                // To close the drawer
                drawerLayout.closeDrawer(GravityCompat.START)
                break;

When a menu item clicked is not part of a group of single-selectable menu items, the previously selected item will remain highlighted even when its fragment is not displayed on screen. To deselect it, iterate through all the menu items and set their checked state to false:

int noOfItems = navigationView.getMenu().size();
for (int i=0; i<noOfItems;i++){
    navigationView.getMenu().getItem(i).setChecked(false);
    }

If you want to have menu items grouped together and have a header on top, in your menu item xml file:

<item android:title="Communicate">
        <menu>
            <item
                android:id="@+id/nav_send_id"
                android:icon="@drawable/ic_send_black_24dp"
                android:title="Send" />
            <item
                android:id="@+id/nav_share_id"
                android:icon="@drawable/ic_publish_black_24dp"
                android:title="Share" />
            <item
                android:id="@+id/nav_photos_id"
                android:title="Photos"
                android:icon="@drawable/ic_photo_black_24dp"
                />
            <item
                android:id="@+id/nav_trash_id"
                android:title="Trash"
                android:icon="@drawable/ic_delete_black_24dp"
                />
        </menu>

Note that this removes the ability to make them single-selectable.

If you want the navigation drawer to close when the back button is pressed, override onBackPressed():

@Override
    public void onBackPressed() {
        //Checks if the navigation drawer is open -- If so, close it
        if (drawerLayout.isDrawerOpen(GravityCompat.START)) {
            drawerLayout.closeDrawer(GravityCompat.START);
        }
        // If drawer is already close -- Do not override original functionality
        else {
            super.onBackPressed();
        }
    }

onCreate() is called when the activity is initialized. By default, no fragment is displayed before the user selects a menu item in the drawer and hence the screen will be blank.

In order to show a default fragment when the app is first runned, check if the savedInstanceState passed to onCreate() is null by implementing to following lines of code in onCreate():

if (savedInstanceState == null){
        // Get the menu item at the itemIndex position
        MenuItem menuItem = navigationView.getMenu().getItem(itemIndex).setChecked(true);
        // Override
        onNavigationItemSelected(menuItem);
        }

To add a switch button as a menu item in the navigation drawer, first create a seperate xml file for it with android.support.v7.widget.SwitchCompat. You do not necessarily need to give it an id.

<android.support.v7.widget.SwitchCompat                
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"/>

In the drawer menu xml file, use app:actionLayout to include it as part of a menu item:

    <item
        android:id="@+id/nav_darkmode_id"
        android:title="Dark Mode"
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_brightness_3_black_24dp"
        app:actionLayout="@layout/nav_drawer_darkmode_switch"           
        />

In java code, instantiate the switch button and attach a setOnCheckedChangeListener to it:

private SwitchCompat darkModeSwitch;
@Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        darkModeSwitch = (SwitchCompat)navigationView.getMenu().findItem(R.id.nav_darkmode_id).getActionView();

        // Attach listener
        darkModeSwitch.setOnCheckedChangeListener(new CompoundButton.OnCheckedChangeListener() {
            @Override
            public void onCheckedChanged(CompoundButton buttonView, boolean isChecked) {
                if (!isChecked){
                    // Switch is unchecked - Do something
                }
                else {
                   // Switch is checked - Do something
                }
            }
    }

• Design Support Library - The Design package provides APIs to support adding material design components and patterns to your apps
• CircleImageView by hdodenhof - A circular ImageView for Android

dependencies {
  // Design Support Library
  implementation 'com.android.support:design:28.0.0'
  //CircleImageView
  implementation 'de.hdodenhof:circleimageview:2.2.0'
}

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2018 Nicholas Gan

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