How to use the Android Navigation component (Nav Graph) in a Drawer Layout (with navigation drawer Menu)?

Question

I have a navigation graph that uses this fragment as a home in the main activity XML.

        <fragment
        android:id="@+id/fragment_container"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        app:layout_behavior="@string/appbar_scrolling_view_behavior"
        class="androidx.navigation.fragment.NavHostFragment"
        app:navGraph="@navigation/main_nav_graph"
        app:defaultNavHost="true"/>

I have a Drawer layout with a menu , I can't manage to make the navigation to work when I click on the navigation drawer button (it works from main fragment but not when I click on Drawer buttons), If I use the old way to program the navigation drawer using : getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction().replace(R.id.fragment_container, new_fragment).commit();, my navcontroller is lost!! and I get errors like

destination fragment in unknown by navcontroller , because the controller will see the home fragment as currently displayed even if it is not the case (from debug)

public boolean onNavigationItemSelected(MenuItem item) {

        switch (item.getItemId()){
            case R.id.action_1:
                //doesn't work when it current fragment doesnt match the 
                //action_fromfragmentx_to_fragmenty
                Navigation.findNavController(this,R.id.fragment_container)
                .navigate(R.id.action_fromfragmentx_to_fragmenty);
                break;

            //Other menu options...
        }

Hence my question : How should I override this onNavigationItemSelected in Java to make the navigation component work? any link or relative doc about this subject(in Java) ?.

Hi Yes I was reading it and I couldn't really get the Kotlin code of onOptionsItemSelected since I am not that good with kotlin. That is why I wrote (In Java) on the question — Aness
@John Joe sorry I can't up the project to github. But I do appreciate your Kotlin based article recommendation. could be nice if you have some pointers in Java. — Aness
You don't have to override onNavigationItemSelected at all if you're using the NavigationUI.setupWithNavController() - that's doing all that work for you by launching the destination with the same ID as your menu item. What are you actually trying to do? — ianhanniballake
@ianhanniballake Thank you very much for your response (setupWithNavController() didn't know about this function). Well I usually use drawer menu in my App and it is my first time trying to use the Nav Graph utility. It is a small android project (stock and inventory) so I am discovering the NavGraph which is great so far. However I really want to keep the navigation drawer in my app. Anyway Thanks I will try to read more about this setupWithNavController() — Aness

ianhanniballake ianhanniballake · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-31T04:26:33

The Navigation component offers a helper class in NavigationUI in the navigation-ui artifact. As per the Update UI components with Navigation documentation for navigation drawers, you can use the setupWithNavController() method to automatically hook up menu items to navigation destinations you set up in your navigation graph by tying the destination item to a menu item:

If the id of the MenuItem matches the id of the destination, the NavController can then navigate to that destination.

Therefore you don't need a onNavigationItemSelected implementation at all, nor do you need to do any FragmentTransactions. Just make sure that the android:id="@+id/fragment_y" in your menu XML matches the android:id="@+id/fragment_y" in your navigation XML and call setupWithNavController():

NavigationView navView = findViewById(R.id.nav_view);
// This is what sets up its own onNavigationItemSelected
NavigationUI.setupWithNavController(navView, navController);

How to use the Android Navigation component (Nav Graph) in a Drawer Layout (with navigation drawer Menu)?

1 Answers