Develop Reference

Adding Textviews Dynamically goes out of focus to a Linear Layout

I am trying to achieve a dynamic list of textviews like in the image below :-
Here is my code :-
LayerDrawable dashboardResShape_community= (LayerDrawable) getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.upcomingtask_tags_shape);
// The background effect is by the layer list drawable from the above code
LinearLayout tags_view2=(LinearLayout)findViewById(R.id.tags_view);
LayoutParams lp = new LayoutParams( LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
lp.setMargins(10, 2, 2, 2);
TextView[] tx = new TextView[15];
for(int i=0; i<15; i++) {
tx[i] = new TextView(getActivity());
tx[i].setPadding(8, 4, 8, 4);
tx[i].setBackground(dashboardResShape_community);
tx[i].setLayoutParams(lp);
tx[i].setText("Tag"+i);
tags_view2.addView(tx[i]);
}
and in my xml there is only a linear layout :-
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:id="#+id/tags_view"
android:orientation="horizontal" >
</LinearLayout>
This is what i achieve :-
When i am adding 15 textviews, only 8 are shown like below, the rest should come in the next line but they are not.
If i add more textviews, it goes out of screen but i want to add the textview in the second line when the first line is full. What i am doing wrong here?

Its LinearLayout's limitation.
If you want the explained behavior than
You have to make your own Layout/View refer this link or
Impliment LinearLayout Horizontal orientation with wrapping children like this

you cannot get more text views on next line after linear layout is filled( screen width ), you already the made linear layout orientation as horizontal. Better solution add one more linear layout or use relative (do some child count coding and set parameters). The best solution i prefer for u is table layout. Easier to code code and handle

What you can do is add as many textviews as will fit on the screen to your linearlayout, but then when a textview would go off the screen, you could add another linearlayout below the one that you already had, and then add on to that. You could keep doing that and you would end up with no textviews goind off the screen. You could also try using a gridview.
Here is what this layout looks like:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/layout/gridview.html
And here is the documentation:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/GridView.html

android adding views dynamically

I am adding views dynamically in a linear layout as follows:
xml:
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/part1"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="right"
android:gravity="right"
android:orientation="horizontal" >
</LinearLayout>
java:
View linearLayout = findViewById(R.id.part1);
((LinearLayout) linearLayout).removeAllViews();
for (int i = 0; i < 15; i ++){
TextView tv = new TextView(this);
tv.setText(String.valueOf(i));
LinearLayout.LayoutParams lay = new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(
LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
tv.setLayoutParams(lay);
tv.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.msg);
tv.setId(i);
((LinearLayout) linearLayout).addView(tv);
}
Now i have two questions:
1) the text views are added horizontally correctly but if not fitting screensize, some of them won't appear, how to force it to continue adding in a new line once the horizontal space is full ?
2) textviews are added from left to right, how to add them from right to left ?
thanks

You need to understand how ViewGroups work, in this case, LinearLayout will add items horizontally or vertically without making position calculations for you unless you explicitly specify (jumping to next line is not one of them...), think of it as an item holder that will show items only on the space you specify for it (thats why some of the elements disappear...), by default the way LinearLayout arrange items is from left to right or up to down, if this do not fit your needs, you could go for any of the ViewGroup options android has, the most important might be:
RelativeLayout
FrameLayout
TableLayout
AbsoluteLayout(not recommended)
If you need some sort of Free Draw on the screen, you can always go for a View object, override onDraw, and play with the canvas of that object...
Regards!

Android Making a table look like I want

I am having a little bit of trouble making the table look like I intend to.
These are a few questions, but since they all refer to the picture below and the details I provide I thought they should all be in a single post.
Here is what I achieved so far:
The header row contains one element of type Button.
TableRow.LayoutParams params = new TableRow.LayoutParams(TableRow.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT, TableRow.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
Button bt = new Button(getContext());
bt.setText("Column1");
mHeader.addView(bt, params);
mHeader.setLayoutParams(new TableRow.LayoutParams(TableRow.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, TableRow.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
addView(mHeader);
The rest of the table is poulated like this:
(Messagerow extends TableRow and has a TextView member)
for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
MessageRow mr = new MessageRow(getContext());
// stuff to set the TexView text and color
mr.setLayoutParams(new TableRow.LayoutParams(TableRow.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, TableRow.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
this.addView(mr);
}
1. How can I make the header row height be more like the rows?
2. How can I make the button occupy the full width of the row?
If the table is empty, no text rows just header, then the button matches the row width. As soon as I add a row of text, the column width is adapted but the button width is not.
3. How can I make the row fill the screen width? (MATCH_PARENT does not do it)
4. How can I draw a thin line between the table rows?
I tried to override the onDraw() function on MessageRow, but it never gets called, not even once.
Don't get me wrong. I am not asking that you do my work for me. These are issues I tried to solve by myself and googled them and read similar posts, but did not find an answer.Note: I find that UI design in Javascript for Android lacks clear control and clear documentation over all these little details.
Edit
This is how I create the table:
TableLayout mTable = new TableLayout(this);
HorizontalScrollView hview = (HorizontalScrollView) findViewById(R.id.hscroll);
populate(mTable);
mTable.setLayoutParams(new TableLayout.LayoutParams( TableLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT, TableLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
mTable.setBackgroundColor(Color.WHITE);
hview.addView(mTable);

How can I make the header row height be more like the rows?
Using the default Button there isn't much to do. The Button uses a nine-patch image that has some space between the button's text and the borders that you see. You could use a smaller font but that you'll probably look ugly. Another thing to try is using your own background for the Button and get rid of the default extra space(of the default nine-patch image) so the final height is near the height of the text from the TextViews. Or try to enforce a standard height for all rows using a fixed value.
How can I make the button occupy the full width of the row?
I think that you have more then one TextView in MessageRow so when you add the Button it moves to the first column(corresponding to the first TextView). If this is the case, make your Button span across the number of columns representing the number of TextViews in MessageRow:
TableRow.LayoutParams params = new TableRow.LayoutParams(TableRow.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT, TableRow.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
params.span = 3; // if you have 3 `TextView` in the MessageRow
Button bt = new Button(getContext());
bt.setText("Column1");
mHeader.addView(bt, params);
If this is not the case add more details.
How can I make the row fill the screen width? (MATCH_PARENT does not do it)
As I said on one of your previous questions, I don't know why that happens(but I gave you some solutions there to overcome this issue). Also:
mHeader and the other MessageRow are children of a Tablelayout and the correct LayoutParams to use on them is the LayoutParams of the parent: TableLayout.LayoutParams and not TableRow.LayoutParams.
You add some TextView in the MessageRow(from what I seen in your previous questions), add those child views with TableRow.LayoutParams to MessageRow.
You use only WRAP_CONTENT for your LayoutParams everywhere in your code, you might want to set the width(the first parameter in the constructor) to FILL_PARENT/MATCH_PARENT
How can I draw a thin line between the table rows?
You could use a simple View that will act as a separator:
for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
MessageRow mr = new MessageRow(getContext());
// stuff to set the TexView text and color
mr.setLayoutParams(new TableLayout.LayoutParams(TableLayout.LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, TableLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
this.addView(mr);
View separator = new View(getContext());
separator.setLayoutParams(new TableLayout.LayoutParams(TableLayout.LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, 3)));
separator.setBackgroundColor(Color.RED);
this.addView(separator);
}
Because you have 100 rows you could try to set a drawable with a separator line as the background for theTableRow(header and MessageRow) instead of the above method that adds another 100 Views to the layout.
Extra Note:
You have a lot of views to add to a single activity layout, you are talking about 100 rows, and if your MessageRow is more complex than a simple TextView(and I think it is) you could get in some performances problems. I suggest you take a look at the wonderful ListView widget.

Don't have a programming environment here, but I'll try and answer some of your questions.
The reason your header row (button) is taller than your test based rows is because the button requires more space and the row accomodates it. The default button has padding on both the top/bottom of the text. I think your best option is to create your own button, which gives you the additional benefit of being able to control the look and feel. It seems like other people have had this issue before: Can't get rid of bottom padding on button
Your button is set to wrap_content which means it won't be any bigger than it needs to be (It will grow/shrink so it can fit the text "Column1" or whatever you put there). Instead of making the Button WRAP, I suspect you'll need to make it FILL_PARENT.
It's not your Table Row that needs to fill the screen width, it's your table that needs to fill the screen. Wherever you define your table, it's probably set to WRAP_CONTENT for the Horizontal dimension. Set it to FILL_PARENT and your table should expand to the full width of whatever it's container is (In this case, it should expand the full width of the screen)
There are probably several different ways you can do this. One method I used somewhat recently is to utilize the View tag which essentially looks like a horizontal bar across the screen. Below is a link to how to implement it.
http://sonnygill.net/android/horizontal-rule/

TableLayout (TableRow?) not sizing child Views as expected when adding them dynamically

Context: I have a TableLayout (created using XML), which has one TableRow, which has one TextView. The code:
<ScrollView
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:fillViewport="true"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
>
<TableLayout
android:id="#+id/mytable"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:stretchColumns="1"
>
<TableRow>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/add_alarm"
android:layout_weight="1"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:gravity="center"
android:text="New\nItem"
android:textSize="30sp"
/>
</TableRow>
</TableLayout>
</ScrollView>
In my Activity's onCreate() method, I am trying to add another View to the TableRow dynamically. Here is the code:
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(this);
View mainLayout = inflater.inflate(R.layout.main, null);
TableLayout tl = (TableLayout) mainLayout.findViewById(R.id.mytable);
TableRow tr = (TableRow) tl.getChildAt(0);
Log.d(TAG, "tr class = " + tr.getClass().getName() + " | width = " + tr.getWidth() + "\n");
final RelativeLayout rl = (RelativeLayout) inflater.inflate(R.layout.alarm_widget, null);
LinearLayout.LayoutParams lp = new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(0, LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, 1);
tr.addView(rl, lp);
tl.invalidate();
setContentView(mainLayout);
}
Question: This code is not having the intended effect of displaying both the Views (the one in the XML layout already & the other added dynamically) in a columns of equal width.
With the code given above, the dynamically added View has a width of '0' and is therefore invisible.
If I change the code to tr.addView(rl) (i.e. without reference to LayoutParams), the dynamically added view is visible, but the columns are not equal in width.
How can I achieve this?
Edit: I changed the code based on the comments to the following. It still doesn't work as expected:
TableLayout.LayoutParams lp = new TableLayout.LayoutParams(TableLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
TableLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, 1f);
tr.addView(rl, lp);

The problem is this behavior defined for TableRow:
The children of a TableRow do not need to specify the layout_width and layout_height attributes in the XML file. TableRow always enforces those values to be respectively MATCH_PARENT and WRAP_CONTENT.
Rather than add your text views directly to the TableRow, have the TableRow hold a horizontal LinearLayout and add the second view to that holder.
(Also, using LinearLayout.LayoutParams for something that's going into a TableRow is wrong. You should have been using TableRow.LayoutParams. But that wouldn't be the way to get equal-width TextViews. Use a LinearLayout holder.)

I think it's not a good idea to dynamically add an item to a TableRow - it defeats the purpose of using a table. Imagine if you add an item to the first row of the table, but not on the second, meaning the first row has more elements. It wouldn't look much like a table.
But if you insist,
From developer guide:
The children of a TableRow do not need to specify the layout_width and layout_height attributes in the XML file. TableRow always enforces those values to be respectively MATCH_PARENT and WRAP_CONTENT.
You may need to start looking on the layout_weight of each element. Try adding layout_weight=1 on the row's static elements, and then setting your dynamic RelativeLayout's weight to 1 before adding it to the row.
rl.setLayoutParams(new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, 1f));
The last parameter is weight.

Set height like this to the layout containing the ScrollView.
It solved my own problem where tablelayout does not show last lines.
android:layout_height="0dp"

android: two issues using Tablerow+TextView in Tablelayout

I am using Tablerow+TextView to make a simple view for blog posts and their replies. In each TableRow I put a TextView in. Now I have two issues:
The text which is longer than the screen won't automatically wrap up to be multi-line. Is it by design of TableRow? I've already set tr_content.setSingleLine(false); [update] This has been addressed, I think I should change Fill_parent to be Wrap_content in textView.tr_author_time.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(
LayoutParams.**WRAP_CONTENT**,
LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
The Table won't scroll like ListView. My rows are more than the screen size. I expect the table could be scrolled down for viewing just like ListView. Is that possible?
Here is my code:
TableLayout tl = (TableLayout) findViewById(R.id.article_content_table);
TextView tr_title = new TextView(this);
TextView tr_author_time = new TextView(this);
TextView tr_content = new TextView(this);
TableRow tr = new TableRow(this);
for(int i = 0; i < BlogPost.size(); i++){
try{
// add the author, time
tr = new TableRow(this);
/////////////////add author+time row
BlogPost article = mBlogPost.get(i);
tr_author_time = new TextView(this);
tr_author_time.setText(article.author+"("+
article.post_time+")");
tr_author_time.setTextColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.black));
tr_author_time.setGravity(0x03);
tr_author_time.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(
LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT,
LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
tr.addView(tr_author_time);
tl.addView(tr,new TableLayout.LayoutParams(
LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT,
LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
////////////////////// then add content row
tr = new TableRow(this);
tr_content = new TextView(this);
tr_content.setText(article.content);
tr_content.setSingleLine(false);
tr_content.setGravity(0x03);
tr_content.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(
LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT,
LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
tr.addView(tr_content);
tr.setBackgroundResource(R.color.white);
tl.addView(tr,new TableLayout.LayoutParams(
LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT,
LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
}

A more appropriate thing to do for wrapping items would have been to add android:shrinkColumns="*" or android:shrinkColumns="1" to the TableLayout, this would probably have fixed the wrapping issue.
For Details

This isn't really a complete answer, but it really seems like you're doing this the hard way.
Instead of constructing your TableRows manually, you should set them up in xml like this:
tablerow.xml:
<TableRow xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<TextView android:id="#+id/content"
android:singleLine="false"
android:textAppearance="#style/someappearance" />
</TableRow>
Prior to your loop, get a reference to a LayoutInflater:
LayoutInflater inflater = getLayoutInflater();
Then, inside your loop, create an instance of tablerow using the LayoutInflater:
TableRow row = (TableRow)inflater.inflate(R.layout.tablerow, tl, false);
TextView content = (TextView)row.findViewById(R.id.content);
content.setText("this is the content");
tl.addView(row);
This will allow you to set your layout, appearance, layout params in xml making it much easier to read and debug.
For the scrolling problem, you'll need to add your TableLayout to a ScrollView. Something like this in your xml:
<ScrollView>
<TableLayout android:id="#+id/arcitle_content_table" />
</ScrollView>

To wrap text in table rows:
By default, TableLayout rows fit the width of their content, no matter it goes over the screen bounds. To get the wider-than-screen text cells to wrap to multi-line, use android:shrinkColumns attribute on TableLayout.
<TableLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:shrinkColumns="*" />
android:shrinkColumns is zero-based index of the columns to shrink. It removes unnecessary extra space from a column and shrinks it :
android:shrinkColumns="*" shrinks all columns
android:shrinkColumns="0" shrinks first column
android:shrinkColumns="1,2" shrinks the second and third columns
android:stretchColumns does the opposite. It stretches a column to the maximum available width.
Both "shrink" and "stretch" consider all rows of the table to compute space.
To scroll down a TableLayout:
If your TableLayout is higher than the screen, move it in a ScrollView.