A simple builder based changelog library that shows a changelog in a RecyclerView

Changelog

This is a simple builder based changelog library that shows a changelog in a RecyclerView, a RecyclerView dialog or a RecyclerView activity with following features:

Features

• filtering
  • based on a min version (useful for app start to only show new changelog entries)
  • based on a custom filter string (useful for filtering changelog based on build flavour)
• builder supports any in layout RecyclerView or provides a ready to use Dialog or Activity
• also supports automatic handling of showing changelogs on app start (uses preference to save last seen changelog version and handles everything for you automatically to only show new changelogs and only show those once)
• shows loading progress in Dialog or Activity while parsing changelog
• customise look
  • optional bullet lists
  • custom and automatic version names (e.g. version 100 will be formatted as "v1.00" by default if no custom version name is provided)
  • fully customised layouts via a custom renderer
  • custom xml tags + custom rendering of them
  • automatic and custom sorting

Examples - activity, dialog, automatically sorted activity, custom layout

Gradle (via JitPack.io)

1. add jitpack to your project's build.gradle:

repositories {
    maven { url "https://jitpack.io" }
}

2. add the compile statement to your module's build.gradle:

dependencies {
    compile 'com.github.MFlisar:changelog:1.0.1'
}

Demo

Just check out the demo activity, it will show the base usage of the builder and it's settings.

Simple usage example

You must add a changelog.xml to your xml resource file. Then you can use it like following:

ChangelogBuilder builder = new ChangelogBuilder()
	.withUseBulletList(bulletList) // true if you want to show bullets before each changelog row, false otherwise
	.withMinVersionToShow(110)     // provide a number and the log will only show changelog rows for versions equal or higher than this number
	.withFilter(new ChangelogFilter(ChangelogFilter.Mode.Exact, "somefilterstring", true)) // this will filter out all tags, that do not have the provided filter attribute
	.withManagedShowOnStart(true)  // library will take care to show activity/dialog only if the changelog has new infos and will only show this new infos
	.buildAndShowDialog(activity, false); // second parameter defines, if the dialog has a dark or light theme

Example changelog.xml

<changelog>

	<!-- simple example - no version name => will be generated based on verionCode: 100 => v1.00 -->
	<release versionCode="120" versionName="v1.2" date="2018-03-04">
		<info>Some info</info>
		<new>Some improvement</new>
		<bugfix>Some bugfix</bugfix>
	</release>
	
	<!-- simple example - no filter -->
	<release versionCode="120" versionName="v1.2" date="2018-03-04">
		<info>Some info</info>
		<new>Some improvement</new>
		<bugfix>Some bugfix</bugfix>
	</release>
	
	<!-- example with custom filter in release tag -->
	<release versionCode="110" versionName="v1.1" date="2018-03-03" filter="dogs">
		<info>Some dogs info - filter only set in release tag</info>
		<new>Some dogs improvement - filter only set in release tag</new>
		<bugfix>Some dogs bugfix - filter only set in release tag</bugfix>
	</release>
	
	<!-- example with filters in rows -->
	<release versionCode="100" versionName="v1.0" date="2018-03-01">
		<info filter="cats">New cats added - this info has filter text 'cats'</info>
		<info filter="dogs">New dogs added - this info has filter text 'dogs'</info>
		<new filter="cats">Some cats improvement - this info has filter text 'cats'</new>
		<new filter="dogs">Some dogs improvement - this info has filter text 'dogs'</new>
		<bugfix filter="cats">Some cats bugfix - this info has filter text 'cats'</bugfix>
		<bugfix filter="dogs">Some dogs bugfix - this info has filter text 'dogs'</bugfix>
	</release>
</changelog>

Advanced usage

Custom layouts

Simply provide custom a custom renderer (very simply interface), derive it from the default ChangelogRenderer to only adjust small things.

ChangelogBuilder builder = new ChangelogBuilder()
	.withRenderer(...); // provide a custom item renderer

Have a look at following classes to see how this works:

• default renderer: ChangelogRenderer.java
• example custom renderer: ExampleCustomRenderer.java

Custom tags

• create a custom tag class that implements IChangelogTag.java
• register this class like ChangelogSetup.get().registerTag(...)
• optionally unregister all 3 default tags before adding custom tags if don't want to use them: ChangelogSetup.get().clearTags()

Custom sorting

• create a custom tag class that implements IChangelogSorter.java or use the integrated sorter that sorts by importance (new > info > bugfix > custom)
• add it to the builder like following:

ChangelogBuilder builder = new ChangelogBuilder()
	.withSorter(new ImportanceChangelogSorter()); // or provide a custom sorter

GitHub