Develop Reference

Android ListView width keeps changing

Firstly, I am new to android so if I have missed something basic I apologise.
I have a page which has two ListViews side by side, both with varying amounts of content. I also have a TextView above the ListViews and another TextView below the listviews. These text view boxes change based on items selected in either of the two ListViews.
These two ListViews sit side by side, taking up half of the screen each, while a Textview sits directly above and directly below, both centred to the page. An image is shown below.
This is the page looking normal on load.
The problem is when I select an item from either list. I have a feeling I am missing some XML properties, but I am not sure which properties or if this is even the case. When an item is selected, let's say from the ListView on the right, the TextView at the bottom is updated with text taken from an array. The ListView also decides to change the width and I am not sure why this is.... I don't want the ListView to change width. I want it to remain taking up half of the page and half of the page only.
This is the page after an item from the right ListView has been selected.
I would also like to keep things in RelativeLayout. I also believe it is only an XML issue and not to do with the adapter or any other code so I will not include that for now. I can include it if required.
Any help would be great. Thanks in advance.
content_titles.xml my activity xml file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context=".TitlesActivity">
<ListView
android:id="#+id/unlocked_titles_list"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:longClickable="true"
android:layout_below="#+id/current_title"
android:layout_alignEnd="#+id/requirements"
android:layout_marginEnd="26dp"
android:layout_above="#+id/requirements">
</ListView>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/current_title"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginTop="65dp"
android:text="Current Title: Novice"
android:textSize="24sp"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"/>
<ListView
android:id="#+id/locked_titles_list"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_alignStart="#+id/requirements"
android:layout_marginStart="28dp"
android:layout_above="#+id/requirements"
android:layout_below="#+id/current_title"/>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/requirements"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginBottom="34dp"
android:text="temp"
android:textAlignment="center"
android:textSize="24sp"
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"/>
</RelativeLayout>
activity_listview.xml used as the individual rows of the ListViews
<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#+id/label"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:padding="10dip"
android:textSize="16dip"
android:textStyle="bold" >
</TextView>

The problems with layout could be caused by ScrollView to be the wrapper
I stumbled upon some note in http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ExpandableListView.html
"...Note: You cannot use the value wrap_content for the android:layout_height attribute of a ExpandableListView in XML if the parent's size is also not strictly specified (for example, if the parent were ScrollView you could not specify wrap_content since it also can be any length. However, you can use wrap_content if the ExpandableListView parent has a specific size, such as 100 pixels."
I removed wrapping ScrollView and linear layout started working properly. Now its only to understand how to wrap the stuff to ScrollView. God help me
But anyway this is really weird behavior. I think that fill_parent is not really correct wording. When using heirarchyviewer tool I always see WRAP_CONTENT and MATCH_PARENT values for layout_width and leayout_height. So probably fill_parent is actually means match_parent which puts me in cognitive dissonance.

You have your layout_width properties set to wrap_content. This means that they could change as the data changes. I would recommend putting your ListViews in a LinearLayout with orientation:horizontal and set the amount of space that each element takes up with layout_weight. Here is a relevant SO question What does android:layout_weight mean?

text wrapping in two lines - recyclerview

i am designing the app having expected UI like this
i am using RecyclerView with
StaggeredGridLayoutManager manager=new StaggeredGridLayoutManager(3,1);
recyclerView.setLayoutManager(manager);
and this is the row xml file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginBottom="#dimen/padding_8dp"
android:layout_marginLeft="#dimen/padding_4dp"
android:layout_marginRight="#dimen/padding_4dp"
>
<com.skcsllp.mutterfly.views.widgets.MfTextView
android:id="#+id/tagName"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
style="#style/textview"
android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
android:gravity="center"
android:textSize="#dimen/text_18"
android:background="#drawable/selector_tags"
android:textColor="#color/tags_text_color"
/>
</LinearLayout>
using this much i am getting the output as
i don't want tags to go into second line. i am aware about the fact that i have used the span count as 3 and so getting 3 tags in one line but is there any way to avoid the text wrapping in two lines?

Instead of RecyclerView i would suggest you to use AndroidTagView
need to add dependency
dependencies {
compile 'co.lujun:androidtagview:1.0.3'
}
in your main xml, instead of RecyclerView
<co.lujun.androidtagview.TagContainerLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_margin="0dp"
android:padding="10dp"
app:container_enable_drag="false"
app:horizontal_interval="10dp"
app:vertical_interval="10dp"
app:tag_clickable="true"
app:tag_theme="pure_teal" />
and in your activity/fragment
TagContainerLayout mTagContainerLayout = (TagContainerLayout) findViewById(R.id.tagcontainerLayout);
mTagContainerLayout.setTags(List<String> tags);
you will get output something like below, for more you can refer that library, they have given nice example project also.
other usefull libraries are listed below :
https://github.com/loopeer/MultiTextTagView
https://github.com/klinker41/android-chips
https://github.com/ApmeM/android-flowlayout
https://github.com/blazsolar/FlowLayout

I think , you have to write a custom ViewGroup. Using the ViewGroup's onMeasure and onLayout, Get the total width of the screen. Then measure the size of TextView. If the TextView width is less than the screen width, place the TextView. Continue to next TextView, with remaining width. If the TextView width is greater than the remaining screen width, then place the TextView at the next line. Continue this until you placed all the TextViews.

RelativeLayout takes all its space, even though I've set its height to "wrap_content"

Background
I have a RelativeLayout inside a FrameLayout/RelativeLayout (doesn't matter to me), which should be at the bottom of the screen (like a toolbar), and should hold a few views in it.
Its height is set to "wrap_content" and so does its child-views.
The child-views of this layout are : A textView that is on the left, and a Horizontal LinearLayout on the right with a few buttons.
The problem
It seems that no matter what I do, the textview is causing the RelativeLayout to take the whole space, instead of just its children.
The code
Here's the minimal XML content that causes this problem. I've removed the extra stuff (LinearLayout and its children, and also some attributes that don't matter) since they don't cause this problem in case I remove the TextView:
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:background="#FF000000" >
<!-- Here I've put some views that don't have any relation with the views below, so it doesn't have anything with do with the problem -->
<RelativeLayout
android:id="#+id/RelativeLayout1"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
android:background="#drawable/vertical_gradient_transparent_to_black" >
<!-- Here I've put a LinearLayout that doesn't cause the problem, so I've removed it for simplicity-->
<TextView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"/>
</RelativeLayout>
</RelativeLayout>
I've tried many possible attributes, and also tried adding additional layouts to try to "fool" the RelativeLayout, but none of those have succeeded.
The question
Why does it occur?
A working solution would be to use a Horizontal LinearLayout (with a weight for the TextView ) instead RelativeLayout , but I still want to know why can't I use a RelativeLayout, and why it occurs. Also how to fix it while still using RelativeLayout.

From the RelativeLayout doc:
Class Overview
A Layout where the positions of the children can be described in relation to each other or to the parent.
Note that you cannot have a circular dependency between the size of the RelativeLayout and the position of its children. For example, you cannot have a RelativeLayout whose height is set to WRAP_CONTENT and a child set to ALIGN_PARENT_BOTTOM
Class documentation
Which is exactly your case. RelativeLayout can not do that.

I have encountered the same issue before, this might be caused by android:layout_alignParentBottom attribute.Maybe you can find another way to achieve your desired effect. See this for more information.

This is some kind of Strange issue. Maybe someone else has the explanation.
I found it working when i removed the line
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"/>
and it also worked when i tried some like this
<TextView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>

Using layout_gravity="bottom" to place at bottom of LinearLayout

I would like to place a layout on the bottom of a LinearLayout, but I can't seem to get it to work. I know that I can use RelativeLayout to do this, but I should be able to use LinearLayout, shouldn't I?
EDIT: Actually this is more confusing than I thought. The layout below is simplified. In reality, I'm using fragments on a pre-3.0 device, with the compatibility layer.
I used Hierarchy Viewer to examine what's going on, and found that an android.support.v4.app.NoSaveStateFrameLayout was added to my layout, and that layout has layout_height set to wrap_content. That seems to be what's causing my problem, but I haven't yet figured out how to fix it.
Specifically, why doesn't this work? Shouldn't the layout_gravity place it at the bottom?
<LinearLayout
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent">
... stuff here ...
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="bottom"
android:orientation="horizontal">
... more stuff here ...
</LinearLayout>
</LinearLayout>
BTW, changing layout_height to fill_parent or setting layout_weight don't seem to work either. I just want to better understand what is going on, because clearly I'm missing something important. Thanks.

First of all nice question.
Android behaves we can say weird in the situation like this.
if you have selected your parent linear layout's orientation horizontal then you can set its child component at bottom by setting its layoug_gravity=bottom. suppose you have added 2 text views in that horizontal linear layout and second textview's layout_gravity is bottom then it will set to bottom but it work like it is set at bottom in other column then the first text view. NOTE : you can set textview's layout_gravity = "left" or "right" when its parent linearlayout is horizontal but you cant see its result.
Oppositely, if you have selected parent linearlayout's orientation vertical then you can set its child component at left or right by using layout_gravity. but the second textview will shown in you can say next row with left or right gravity as you have set. NOTE you can set textview's layout_gravity = "top" or "bottom" when its linear layout is vertical but you can not see its result.
Try to make sample xml design as i have stated above so you get better idea.
Strange but True!!! Try to understand this behavior. :)

Just add space between what you want at the bottom and all the rest:
<Space
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_weight="1"/>

So I resolved the problem. It's a two-part solution:
First, the way to do this without using LinearLayout is to provide weight to the element above so that it takes up all of the empty space. BTW, you can see this example in the API demos: http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/ApiDemos/res/layout/linear_layout_3.html
<LinearLayout
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent">
... stuff here ...
<TextView
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:weight="1"/>
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal">
... more stuff here ...
</LinearLayout>
</LinearLayout>
This by itself didn't solve my problem, as I had a NoSaveStateFrameLayout with layout_width="wrap_content" as a parent view, and so I needed to get that fixed first. I'm using code based on the wonderful Google I/O App, and when I searched the code for NoSaveStateFrameLayout, I found this:
// For some reason, if we omit this, NoSaveStateFrameLayout thinks we are
// FILL_PARENT / WRAP_CONTENT, making the progress bar stick to the top of the activity.
mRootView.setLayoutParams(new ViewGroup.LayoutParams(ViewGroup.LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT,
ViewGroup.LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT));
Thanks for an awesome comment Google!!! I added this into my source and everything worked great!
The moral of the story: Hierarchy Viewer and comments are your friends.

LinearLayout will just stack things as they are placed in there. Since it is vertical, it will keep placing items one after the next in a vertical manner. Can you change the android:gravity of the linearLayout and not the layout_gravity of the nested one and see if that works.
RelativeLayout of course should be the first way but you stated you didnt want to do that. Is there reason for that?

It could be that, as per https://stackoverflow.com/a/13366783/513038, you need to set the parent LinearLayout to have android:baselineAligned="false". Worked in my case.

Android horizontal LinearLayout with wrapped text in TextView

I've observed a behavior with layout_weight that I can't explain. The following is a trivial example:
<?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="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal"
>
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center_vertical"
android:text="This is a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very long string."
android:layout_weight="1"
/>
<View
android:layout_width="32dp"
android:layout_height="32dp"
android:layout_gravity="center_vertical"
android:background="#ffffffff"
/>
</LinearLayout>
In a QVGA display, the TextView wraps the text. The white square is displayed to the right of the text.
However, if I remove android:layout_weight="1" from the TextView, the TextView now takes up the entire display width. The white square is no longer displayed.
Why would layout_weight in the TextView affect whether or not the white square is displayed? Shouldn't the View with the white background always be assigned 32dpx32dp first? (It makes no difference if the view were any other types - ImageView or TextView).
The problem I was working on is that I want the white square to always be displayed to the right of the TextView (whether or not the text is wrapped), but I don't want any empty space between the TextView and the white square. (If I add android:layout_weight="1" to the TextView, then there is a gap if the text is not wrapped.)
Any help would be appreciated!

To answer my question #1: One thing I learned by looking at the source for LinearLayout: Not only does layout_weight assign unused space to a child, it also shrinks a child with layout_weight if the child extends beyond the bounds of the LinearLayout. That explains why a TextView with wrapped text is shrunk in my layout.
As for the answer to my question #2, I think you meant android:toRigthOf instead of android:layout_alignRight. Using a RelativeLayout instead of a LinearLayout doesn't change the layout behavior. The tricky part is placing a view immediately to the right of a TextView, without gaps, whether or not the text is wrapped. Setting a maxWidth would limit the TextView's width, but that solution doesn't scale across portrait/landscape and different display dimensions.
Solution - Looks like Dyarish's solution is the best available. My layout problem exists regardless of the layout you use. The key is to set a maxWidth for the TextView so that it doesn't take up the all of the horizontal space in the layout. Because hardcoding a android:maxWidth value in the TextView doesn't scale across different displays, setting the maxWidth at runtime, as Dyarish suggested, is a good solution.

Hopefully this is what you are looking for.
First off, here is a great resource I found for Creating UI's.
layout_weight - Specifies how much of the extra space in the layout to be allocated to the View.
If you want to ensure that the white square is always to the right of the textview, you can use a Relative View, and add the parameter to the view. android:layout_alignRight="+id#yourTextViewID". This should always make the box appear right beside the textView area. You should probably also add something like android:maxWidth="250px" This will ensure that you don't push the white box completely out of the screen.
Here is a code sample:
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal"
>
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:maxWidth="250px"
android:id="#+id/TextForWhiteBox"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center|left"
android:text="This is a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very long string."
/>
<View android:background="#ffffffff" android:layout_width="32dp" android:layout_height="32dp" android:id="#+id/view1" android:layout_toRightOf="#+id/TextForWhiteBox"></View>
</RelativeLayout>
You could also add to the View:
android:layout_alignTop="#+id/TextForWhiteBox" android:layout_alignBottom="#+id/TextForWhiteBox"
to make the white box the same size as the TextView.

Firstly I've tested the code from my other answer and it does exactly what you've described you've wanted. (unless I'm misunderstanding what you are asking for). You definitely do not want to use the android:layout_alignRight which is not what is in the code sample. That would simply keep the box on the right hand of the screen and not be affected by the textview at all. This sample uses android:layout_toRightOf="#+id/TextForWhiteBox" which is possible due to it being a relative layout. Since the Relative Layout allows you to place objects in relation to others. That line will always place the box just to the right of the textview with no gaps.
As for the screen orientation changes:
When the orientation changes it creates a new instance of the view.
Here is a simple solution.
//Add to oncreate in your Activity
private TextView textStatus;
textStatus = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.TextForWhiteBox);
// This get's the width of your display.
DisplayMetrics displaymetrics = new DisplayMetrics();
getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getMetrics(displaymetrics);
int width = displaymetrics.widthPixels;
// Now you know the screen orientation, and it's width. So just set the maxwidth of the text view to match the display width - the pixels of your white box.
textStatus.setMaxWidth(width - 32); // 32 is here because you already know the size of the white box. More logic is needed to dynamically get this value, because you would need to wait for the activity to be fully created.
}
Here is the main.xml I used:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal"
>
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:id="#+id/TextForWhiteBox"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center|left"
android:text="This is a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very long string."
/>
<View android:background="#ffffffff" android:layout_width="32px" android:layout_height="32px" android:id="#+id/view1" android:layout_toRightOf="#+id/TextForWhiteBox"></View>
</RelativeLayout>
You might need some additional logic to keep screen values.
This code has been tested, you should be able to literally copy and paste this to work as you asked.
Also depending on your logic you could use something like this to return the screen orientation.
int orient = getResources().getConfiguration().orientation;
Hope this helps!
If this helped you, please click the accepted button. =) Cheers!