Voice notes

MonkeyKit UI supports creating and viewing voice notes. For this, you need more than a UI library. You need classes that can manipulate different media file types. We decided to include such classes so that you can quickly have a functioning chat. Some of these classes are very basic and don't implement the functionalities for every need. However , you can extend this classes to implement your own functionalities without having to completely change how the UI Kit works.

Playing voice notes

A voice note message can be played by pressing the play button in the MonkeyHolder. For the user to actually be able to listen to it, you must set an object that implementes VoiceNotePlayer to MonkeyAdapter. MonkeyAdapter will call this class when the user wants to start or pause playback. VoiceNotePlayer also calls MonkeyAdapter to update the SeekBar periodically in the voice note's UI during playback. These are the public methods:

• initPlayer

Initializes the media player. It should be called on the onStart() callback of your activity.

• initPlayerWithFrontSpeaker

Initializes the media player with audio stream type STREAM_VOICE_CALL, so that it uses the front speaker, which is the one used for voice calls.

• onPauseButtonClicked

MonkeyAdapter calls this method when the user presses the pause button. It pauses playback.

• onPlayButtonClicked

MonkeyAdapter calls this method when the user presses the play button. It starts/resumes playback.

• onProgressManuallyChanged

Pauses media playback. this is useful to pause playback in other events not only when the user presses the pause button. For example, you might want to pause playback when your activity is stopped.

• releasePlayer

Releases the media player. This should be used for cleanup in the activity's onStop() callback.

• isPlayingAudio

Boolean flag that is set to true when a voice note is playing and consequentially, false when a voice note is paused or if there is no currently playing item.

• getPlaybackProgress

Returns an int between 0 - 100 indicating the playback progress.

• getPlaybackPosition

Returns an int with the playback position in miliseconds.

Aditionally there are two attributes that you should be aware of.

• currentlyPlayingItem is an object that holds the MonkeyItem that is prepared in the media player. MonkeyAdapter will use this attribute to find the playing item.

• updateProgressEnabled is boolean flag that if set to true, the seekbar of the MonkeyHolder of the playing item will update itself periodically. This should be true during playback so that the user can see that the audio is being played, but should be set to false when the user is manipulating the seekbar so that it doesn't move while the user is dragging it.

The UI kit includes an implementation called DefaultVoiceNotePlayer which you can set to MonkeyAdapter to enable voice note playback. If you need a different implementation, you can extend VoiceNotePlayer and override these methods.

Recording voice notes

A voice note can be recording by holding down the record button in AudioInputView. The class that actually records the user's voice and saves it into an audio file must extend the abstract class VoiceNoteRecorder. AudioInputView calls methods from VoiceNoteRecorder when the user wants to record a new voice note. The methods that you need to implement in your custom VoiceNoteRecorder are:

• startRecording called when the user starts the recording.
• stopRecording called when the user successfully finishes the recording.
• cancelRecording callled when the user cancells the recording.

By default AudioInputView uses its own implementation, DefaultVoiceRecorder. You can use a different one using the function setVoiceNoteRecorder().