i'm trying to layout a fairly basic screen. it's just a details view screen after a list item click.
initially i'm looking to acheive a side by side stacked label value type of screen.
for example, where to the left of colon is static text and to the right of colon being dynamic values based on row clicked.
first name: john
last name: doe
last login date: yesterday
additional info: blah
i've started with a relative layout with a bunch of text views in it all positioned accordingly to acheive something like what i was looking for.
The problem arises when the dynamic data being displayed grows and stretches its enclosing text view. Of course the static labels don't grow and everything gets mis aligned...
I'm wondering if there is a different way of tackling this sort of layout...
i was shying away from stacking a bunch of horizontal linear layouts inside a vertical linear layout.
is table layout the way to go? i've read that "they usually aren’t the best tool for doing so, as they are derived from LinearLayout and not the most efficient of layout controls".
Yes there is. Use a listview with a layout predefined in xml. Use a simplelistadapter and pass it the dataset that you want to populate it with.
Edit
Here is a great tutorial:
http://www.vogella.com/articles/AndroidListView/article.html
For a simple form like you want to create I'd suggest using a TableLayout. It is simple to use. As you said the alternative to a TableLayout would be horizontal LinearLayouts in a parent vertical LinearLayout. Using a TableLayout will also automatically align the right side dynamic content for you. Everything on the right side will be treated as a column so if one resizes, they all resize to match.
In your particular scenario I would believe that the TableLayout would work well (although I have also heard similar issues of efficiency/performance). As long as the entire Viewgroup of this Activity isn't complex, I don't think the performance will be too noticeable.
If you are attempting to make the RelativeLayout version work, perhaps you can try this: Have all of your static labels are aligned to the left using android:layout_alignParentLeft and have each aligned to the top of the dynamic TextView they are corresponding to using android:layout_alignTop. This should keep the static TextViews aligned to the left while aligned to the dynamic view relative to it.
Now that those views are aligned, we can horizontally align the dynamic views to the longest static TextView using android:layout_toRightOf. From there, all the remaining dynamic views can also android:layout_alignLeft to this anchor dynamic TextView, or also align to the longest static TextView in the same manner that the anchor was. This solves the horizontal alignment of all the dynamic TextViews.
Finally, we can set that each dynamic TextView falls under the next, since the dynamic TextViews are our determining our vertical location within this RelativeLayout. Each view can use android:layout_alignBelow to chain the fields to align vertically.
I believe this should work for you and I can edit this post later in the day if you would like a sample of code.
Related
My Idea is adding TextViews with rounded corners background to a horizontal LinearLayout, so if next one wouldn't fit - I will add TextView to another LinearLayout below.
Is there a way to do so? I know it sound like a custom view, but I would like not to bother as much - to adjust height, make click area calculations istead of simple clickListeners
Sounds like a recyclerview using a flexbox layout https://github.com/google/flexbox-layout with flexWrap turned on.
You could also use is in a static layout as well.
With flexWrap it does all the calculations to see if the "item" can fit on a line and if not starts a new line.
Many examples on the github page.
You could keep adding text views in linear layout while checking if newly added text view is outside of linear layout horizontal boundaries, if it is you could remove it from linear layout and add it in new one but I see no reason why you would want to do that.
There is compound drawable option in TextView to avoid using a parent ViewGroup and an ImageView next to TextView. Which is neat and faster in performance as said by lint. I'm trying to do something similar. A TextView with 2 texts inside, one aligned to left, one aligned to write. Sounds strange but it will only allowed for single line TextView.
And to do that, I can extend TextView and set its gravity to right side. And inside onDraw let the super class draw on right side, and then draw text on left side.
Problem is, I'm not really sure about all this. My question is, will there be a big performance difference ? I dont have any slower device to test. I will be using this TextView inside an item layout of GridView, Item layout already have many views, it would be nice if I could merge some views to one. But again, will there be a performance difference, like noticeable by user ? And if there will be, the approach I will be using by extending the TextView, is there any problem or I should try some other way ?
Thank you
From what I have read I would imagine that you are using a custom adapter for your GridView?
If so, cant you just use TableRow and insert 2 TextViews inside that with each layout weight set to 1. Then you will have 2 columns in one row?
Just an idea.
I have a layout that has a series of titles and descriptions that need to be displayed beside each other in the form
Title: Description
Another Title: Description that is long
and goes on two lines
Short Title: Description 3
It needs to have spacing like in the example above.
This would be easy if I could use 2 relative layouts (one for titles and the other for descriptions) then I could set the width of the title layout to wrap content to get the spacing. The problem with this is I cannot use android:layout_toRightOf="..." while referencing an id in another relative layout.
If anyone could help me find a solution to this or let me know if I am looking at this the wrong way then I would greatly appreciate it.
Have you tried using nested linear layouts instead? This is the sort of case where most people use them. You could try a table, but with LinearLayouts I'd suggest one vertical layout with lots of horizontal layouts inside it, with the weights of the left and right TextViews set the same between the rows, so that the text on the right is lined up.
I have read many articles regarding layout, but I am still quitely confused. My questions are:
When to use relative layout? Example?
When to use table layout and why we can't use it instead of relative layout?
When to use linear layout?
I just need brief answers.
When use which layout?
I think It depends on your UI, and most important thing that how you create optimized layout.
From definition : -
LinearLayout – designed to display child View controls in a single row or column. This is a very handy layout method for creating forms.
RelativeLayout – designed to display child View controls in relation to each other. For instance, you can set a control to be positioned “above” or “below” or “to the left of” or “to the right of” another control, referred to by its unique identifier. You can also align child View controls relative to the parent edges.
TableLayout – designed to organize child View controls into rows and columns. Individual View controls are added within each row of the table using a TableRow layout View (which is basically a horizontally oriented LinearLayout) for each row of the table.
References :
Creating Efficient Layouts
Common Layout Objects
And most important Hierarchy Viewer
at first there is some confusion about these layouts but as you start playing with these three layouts u will get idea where to use what.. I worked on relative-layout the most.
Consider i want to use a widget always at bottom of screen then with table or linear layout this is not possible always.. without feeling screen other two can not make item at bottom but relative can do.use of any type of layout depends on your screen requirements.
I started out using relativelayout. But recently I've switched to using mostly linearlayout.
The reason is kind of hard to explain, but take this as an example: Say I want a layout that has two images centered in the middle of the screen. Both images should take up 1/4 of the screen width and 1/4 of the screen height. This is impossible to do with relativelayout assuming you want it to work exactly the same on all devices. But you can do this with Linearlayout. By creating vertical and horizontal parents, you can create "boxes". To accomplish this you must learn about weigthsum and weigth. Parent layouts should have the weigthsum attribute and children should have the weight attribute.
Anyway, my point: Relativelayout is easy to use but it's also deceptive. You may think that your layout will look exactly alike on all device, but most likely, they won't look alike. The reason for this is:
With relativelayout you must define size with either dp or px(assuming you don't fill parent or wrap content).
Different devices have different aspect ratios.
I hoped that helped in terms of understanding relative and linearlayout.
I have a very simple layout with two side by side textviews. Both have the same parent layout that fills the screen horizontally.
I need them to have a visible space between them so that they are visually seperated when both have text. I also need the left textview to take up about 2/3 the screen width and let the other have the rest.
This is fairly easy to do with LinearLayout and a few margin settings, but if either one of the views has no text, I need the other one to fill the entire width.
I'm not quite sure how to have the layout do that without setting the empty view's visibility to GONE in code. Is there any good, efficient way to do all of these things at once? Feel free to use any layout you wish to make it work.
have you tried this using a relative layout? there is a property for layout_alignWithParentIfMissing that might give you what you need...