Remove Fragment Page from ViewPager in Android

I'm trying to dynamically add and remove Fragments from a ViewPager, adding works without any problems, but removing doesn't work as expected.

Everytime I want to remove the current item, the last one gets removed.

I also tried to use an FragmentStatePagerAdapter or return POSITION_NONE in the adapter's getItemPosition method.

What am I doing wrong?

Here's a basic example:

MainActivity.java

public class MainActivity extends FragmentActivity implements TextProvider {

    private Button mAdd;
    private Button mRemove;
    private ViewPager mPager;

    private MyPagerAdapter mAdapter;

    private ArrayList<String> mEntries = new ArrayList<String>();

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);

        mEntries.add("pos 1");
        mEntries.add("pos 2");
        mEntries.add("pos 3");
        mEntries.add("pos 4");
        mEntries.add("pos 5");

        mAdd = (Button) findViewById(R.id.add);
        mRemove = (Button) findViewById(R.id.remove);
        mPager = (ViewPager) findViewById(R.id.pager);

        mAdd.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View view) {
                addNewItem();
            }
        });

        mRemove.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View view) {
                removeCurrentItem();
            }
        });

        mAdapter = new MyPagerAdapter(this.getSupportFragmentManager(), this);

        mPager.setAdapter(mAdapter);

    }

    private void addNewItem() {
        mEntries.add("new item");
        mAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
    }

    private void removeCurrentItem() {
        int position = mPager.getCurrentItem();
        mEntries.remove(position);
        mAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
    }

    @Override
    public String getTextForPosition(int position) {
        return mEntries.get(position);
    }
    @Override
    public int getCount() {
        return mEntries.size();
    }


    private class MyPagerAdapter extends FragmentPagerAdapter {

        private TextProvider mProvider;

        public MyPagerAdapter(FragmentManager fm, TextProvider provider) {
            super(fm);
            this.mProvider = provider;
        }

        @Override
        public Fragment getItem(int position) {
            return MyFragment.newInstance(mProvider.getTextForPosition(position));
        }

        @Override
        public int getCount() {
            return mProvider.getCount();
        }

    }

}

TextProvider.java

public interface TextProvider {
    public String getTextForPosition(int position);
    public int getCount();
}

MyFragment.java

public class MyFragment extends Fragment {

    private String mText;

    public static MyFragment newInstance(String text) {
        MyFragment f = new MyFragment(text);
        return f;
    }

    public MyFragment() {
    }

    public MyFragment(String text) {
        this.mText = text;
    }

    @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
            Bundle savedInstanceState) {

        View root = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment, container, false);

        ((TextView) root.findViewById(R.id.position)).setText(mText);

        return root;
    }

}

activity_main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:orientation="vertical" >

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/add"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="add new item" />

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/remove"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="remove current item" />

    <android.support.v4.view.ViewPager
        android:id="@+id/pager"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="0dip"
        android:layout_weight="1" />

</LinearLayout>

fragment.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:orientation="vertical" >

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/position"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:gravity="center"
        android:textSize="35sp" />

</LinearLayout>

The ViewPager doesn't remove your fragments with the code above because it loads several views (or fragments in your case) into memory. In addition to the visible view, it also loads the view to either side of the visible one. This provides the smooth scrolling from view to view that makes the ViewPager so cool.

To achieve the effect you want, you need to do a couple of things.

1. Change the FragmentPagerAdapter to a FragmentStatePagerAdapter. The reason for this is that the FragmentPagerAdapter will keep all the views that it loads into memory forever. Where the FragmentStatePagerAdapter disposes of views that fall outside the current and traversable views.

2. Override the adapter method getItemPosition (shown below). When we call mAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged(); the ViewPager interrogates the adapter to determine what has changed in terms of positioning. We use this method to say that everything has changed so reprocess all your view positioning.

And here's the code...

private class MyPagerAdapter extends FragmentStatePagerAdapter {

    //... your existing code

    @Override
    public int getItemPosition(Object object){
        return PagerAdapter.POSITION_NONE;
    }

}

The solution by Louth was not enough to get things working for me, as the existing fragments were not getting destroyed. Motivated by this answer, I found that the solution is to override the getItemId(int position) method of FragmentPagerAdapter to give a new unique ID whenever there has been a change in the expected position of a Fragment.

Source Code:

private class MyPagerAdapter extends FragmentPagerAdapter {

    private TextProvider mProvider;
    private long baseId = 0;

    public MyPagerAdapter(FragmentManager fm, TextProvider provider) {
        super(fm);
        this.mProvider = provider;
    }

    @Override
    public Fragment getItem(int position) {
        return MyFragment.newInstance(mProvider.getTextForPosition(position));
    }

    @Override
    public int getCount() {
        return mProvider.getCount();
    }


    //this is called when notifyDataSetChanged() is called
    @Override
    public int getItemPosition(Object object) {
        // refresh all fragments when data set changed
        return PagerAdapter.POSITION_NONE;
    }


    @Override
    public long getItemId(int position) {
        // give an ID different from position when position has been changed
        return baseId + position;
    }

    /**
     * Notify that the position of a fragment has been changed.
     * Create a new ID for each position to force recreation of the fragment
     * @param n number of items which have been changed
     */
    public void notifyChangeInPosition(int n) {
        // shift the ID returned by getItemId outside the range of all previous fragments
        baseId += getCount() + n;
    }
}

Now, for example if you delete a single tab or make some change to the order, you should call notifyChangeInPosition(1) before calling notifyDataSetChanged(), which will ensure that all the Fragments will be recreated.

Why this solution works

Overriding getItemPosition():

When notifyDataSetChanged() is called, the adapter calls the notifyChanged() method of the ViewPager which it is attached to. The ViewPager then checks the value returned by the adapter's getItemPosition() for each item, removing those items which return POSITION_NONE (see the source code) and then repopulating.

Overriding getItemId():

This is necessary to prevent the adapter from reloading the old fragment when the ViewPager is repopulating. You can easily understand why this works by looking at the source code for instantiateItem() in FragmentPagerAdapter.

    final long itemId = getItemId(position);

    // Do we already have this fragment?
    String name = makeFragmentName(container.getId(), itemId);
    Fragment fragment = mFragmentManager.findFragmentByTag(name);
    if (fragment != null) {
        if (DEBUG) Log.v(TAG, "Attaching item #" + itemId + ": f=" + fragment);
        mCurTransaction.attach(fragment);
    } else {
        fragment = getItem(position);
        if (DEBUG) Log.v(TAG, "Adding item #" + itemId + ": f=" + fragment);
        mCurTransaction.add(container.getId(), fragment,
                makeFragmentName(container.getId(), itemId));
    }

As you can see, the getItem() method is only called if the fragment manager finds no existing fragments with the same Id. To me it seems like a bug that the old fragments are still attached even after notifyDataSetChanged() is called, but the documentation for ViewPager does clearly state that:

Note this class is currently under early design and development. The API will likely change in later updates of the compatibility library, requiring changes to the source code of apps when they are compiled against the newer version.

So hopefully the workaround given here will not be necessary in a future version of the support library.

my working solution to remove fragment page from view pager

public class MyFragmentAdapter extends FragmentStatePagerAdapter {

    private ArrayList<ItemFragment> pages;

    public MyFragmentAdapter(FragmentManager fragmentManager, ArrayList<ItemFragment> pages) {
        super(fragmentManager);
        this.pages = pages;
    }

    @Override
    public Fragment getItem(int index) {
        return pages.get(index);
    }

    @Override
    public int getCount() {
        return pages.size();
    }

    @Override
    public int getItemPosition(Object object) {
        int index = pages.indexOf (object);

        if (index == -1)
            return POSITION_NONE;
        else
            return index;
    }
}

And when i need to remove some page by index i do this

pages.remove(position); // ArrayList<ItemFragment>
adapter.notifyDataSetChanged(); // MyFragmentAdapter

Here it is my adapter initialization

MyFragmentAdapter adapter = new MyFragmentAdapter(getSupportFragmentManager(), pages);
viewPager.setAdapter(adapter);

The fragment must be already removed but the issue was viewpager save state

Try

myViewPager.setSaveFromParentEnabled(false);

Nothing worked but this solved the issue !

Cheers !

I had the idea of simply copy the source code from android.support.v4.app.FragmentPagerAdpater into a custom class named CustumFragmentPagerAdapter. This gave me the chance to modify the instantiateItem(...) so that every time it is called, it removes / destroys the currently attached fragment before it adds the new fragment received from getItem() method.

Simply modify the instantiateItem(...) in the following way:

@Override
public Object instantiateItem(ViewGroup container, int position) {
    if (mCurTransaction == null) {
        mCurTransaction = mFragmentManager.beginTransaction();
    }
    final long itemId = getItemId(position);

    // Do we already have this fragment?
    String name = makeFragmentName(container.getId(), itemId);
    Fragment fragment = mFragmentManager.findFragmentByTag(name);

    // remove / destroy current fragment
    if (fragment != null) {
        mCurTransaction.remove(fragment);
    }

    // get new fragment and add it
    fragment = getItem(position);
    mCurTransaction.add(container.getId(), fragment,    makeFragmentName(container.getId(), itemId));

    if (fragment != mCurrentPrimaryItem) {
        fragment.setMenuVisibility(false);
        fragment.setUserVisibleHint(false);
    }

    return fragment;
}