navigation drawer - Android: NavigationDrawer/multiple activities/same menu

Question

What I am trying to do, is have a NavigationDrawer menu like this: NavigationDrawer

I've figured out how to change layouts when menu items are clicked, but how do I load a new activity without losing the menu?

My main question:

For example let's say one of my menu options takes you to a layout where there are some buttons that do something. I need to load an accompanying activity/class, that will handle the actions and functionality of that specific "page" in the App. If another menu option takes you to a layout with only an image, for example, that would be another activity without all that code that handles the functionality of the buttons, since there are no buttons in this screen.

I hope that makes sense! I followed many tutorials/videos online using several methods (Fragments etc.) but nothing quite answered my question.

Answer 1

Thanks to the above answers I was able to do exactly what I wanted, here's exactly what I did for anyone looking for this in the future:

My activity_main.xml looks like this:

<!--When the DrawerLayout is the root layout, the first child-->
<!--of that layout is the contents of the main screen, and the-->
<!--second child is the contents of the menu-->

<!--First child layout-->

<LinearLayout
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:orientation="vertical">

    <include
        layout="@layout/toolbar_layout"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

    <FrameLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:id="@+id/content_frame"/>

</LinearLayout>

<!--Second child layout-->
<android.support.design.widget.NavigationView
    android:id="@+id/navigation_view"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_gravity="start"
    app:headerLayout="@layout/navigation_drawer_header"
    app:menu="@menu/drawer_menu">

</android.support.design.widget.NavigationView>

This is the standard DrawerLayout which pulls together all the bits and pieces for the NavigationDrawer menu. The important addition to this is the FrameLayout... bit to which I gave the ID content_frame. This is where all the other layouts used by other activities will be pushed/added/inflated.

My BaseActivity.java looks like this:

package com.example.test;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.support.design.widget.NavigationView;
import android.support.v4.widget.DrawerLayout;
import android.support.v7.app.ActionBarDrawerToggle;
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar;
import android.view.MenuItem;

public class BaseActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    DrawerLayout drawerLayout;
    ActionBarDrawerToggle actionBarDrawerToggle;
    Toolbar toolbar;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        NavigationView navigationView = (NavigationView) findViewById(R.id.navigation_view);

        toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.toolbar);
        setSupportActionBar(toolbar);
        drawerLayout = (DrawerLayout) findViewById(R.id.drawer_layout);
        actionBarDrawerToggle = new ActionBarDrawerToggle(this, drawerLayout, toolbar, R.string.drawer_open, R.string.drawer_closed);
        drawerLayout.setDrawerListener(actionBarDrawerToggle);

        navigationView.setNavigationItemSelectedListener(new NavigationView.OnNavigationItemSelectedListener() {
            @Override
            public boolean onNavigationItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
                switch (item.getItemId()) {

                    case R.id.menu_home:
                        Intent anIntent = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), TheClassYouWantToLoad.class);
                        startActivity(loadPlayer);
                        drawerLayout.closeDrawers();
                        break;

                }
                return false;
            }
        });

    }

    @Override
    protected void onPostCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onPostCreate(savedInstanceState);

        actionBarDrawerToggle.syncState();
    }

}

Now, within the onNavigationItemSelected method, there is a switch statement that handles what happens when each menu item is selected. This is the important bit:

Intent anIntent = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), TheClassYouWantToLoad.class);
startActivity(anIntent);
drawerLayout.closeDrawers(); 

You need to replace "TheClassYouWantToLoad" with your own class. Now within this new class (which presumably requires some new UI elements to be loaded), you need the following:

public class TheClassYouWantToLoad extends BaseActivity {

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

FrameLayout contentFrameLayout = (FrameLayout) findViewById(R.id.content_frame); //Remember this is the FrameLayout area within your activity_main.xml
getLayoutInflater().inflate(R.layout.the_layout_you_want_to_load, contentFrameLayout);
    }
}

and replace "the_layout_you_want_to_load" with the name of the Layout you want to load.