is there a way to define a style that affects all Views in an Activity of a given type, without editing all of the xml View tags to define the style. is there a way to define something like "all TextViews in this Activity have a minHeight of 70sp"?
A theme is what you want. Each android widget has a default style that you could override to make it as you want. For example:
<resources xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<style name="TextViewSpecial" parent="#android:style/Theme">
<item name="android:textViewStyle">#style/SpecialTextView</item>
</style>
</resources>
a theme that overrides the style for a TextView. SpecialTextView is a style like this:
<style name="SpecialTextView" parent="#android:style/Widget.TextView">
<item name="android:minHeight">70sp</item> <!-- use dp instead of sp --
</style>
Then simply set the TextViewSpecial theme in the manifest to the desired activity. You can use this method to ovreride the style of what widget you want.
Just define a theme for the layout.
Related
I want to give the user the possibility to switch the colors skin of my entire application. I mean to switch the style of some custom views of the app dynamically when the user presses a button of the screen. I know that if you call Activity.setTheme() before onCreate() method, you can change the theme of the app dynamically, but normal Views (for example, NavigationView) with custom styles applied on their xml layout, do not have setTheme or setStyle methods, so it is does not appear possible to change their style dynamically.
I think that my objective would be possible referencing colors declared in an AppTheme declared inside styles.xml file. I mean, i can have two AppThemes declared, each one with one set of colors, and then, in the custom styles declared for the custom views, reference the colors. Something like this:
<resources>
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat">
<item name="customColor">#111111</item>
</style>
<style name="AppTheme.AnotherColor" parent="Theme.AppCompat">
<item name="customColor">#222222</item>
</style>
<style name="CustomActionBar">
<!-- title text color -->
<item name="android:textColorPrimary">#styles/customColor</item>
</style>
</resources>
So, by default, the custom Color declared on my "AppTheme" will be applied by default, using color 111111. But when I change the theme of my app using setTheme(R.styles.AppTheme_AnotherColor) the color applied will be 222222. If this would be possible it would be perfect! but it is not possible or I don't know how to access to a color declared inside a style directly from another style of the same styles.xml file. I mean that #styles/customColor is not correct and I don't know how to access that color.
How can this be achieved?
Yes, it is definitely possible to add custom attributes and colors to the themes. For this you need to:
Define your custom attribute in your res/values/attrs.xml file:
<resources>
<attr name="customColor" format="color" />
</resources>
Define the attribute's value in your themes:
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat">
<item name="customColor">#111111</item>
</style>
<style name="AppTheme.AnotherColor" parent="Theme.AppCompat">
<item name="customColor">#222222</item>
</style>
Use your custom attribute in your styles:
<style name="CustomActionBar">
<!-- title text color -->
<item name="android:textColorPrimary">?attr/customColor</item>
</style>
I have finished making my app. Now, I want to reset all my editTexts to have the layout width as fill parent instead of wrap content.
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
while currently all my editTexts are
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
Is there any way i can do this in a style xml file, instead of individually in each layout?
I currently have this as my styles.xml
<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Light">
<item name="android:fontFamily">Verdana</item>
<item name="android:editTextStyle">#style/EditTextStyle</item>
</style>
<style name="EditTextStyle" parent="#android:style/Widget.EditText">
<item name="android:layout_width">fill_parent</item>
<item name="android:textColor">#808080</item>
</style>
But i'm getting an exception saying that layout_width must be specified.
This is my exception:
07-15 11:13:34.872: E/AndroidRuntime(1195): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.passwordkeeper.ui/com.passwordkeeper.ui.ActivityLogin}: java.lang.RuntimeException: Binary XML file line #29: You must supply a layout_width attribute.
Any easy way out or do i have to change the attribute in all my editText's individually?
You can try this one.
Here is the part of the manifest file you need to change to call your custom theme (the custom theme called here is AppTheme:
<application android:name="YourApplication"
android:theme="#style/AppTheme" >
Then in your file styles.xml, create and customize this custom theme:
<style name="AppTheme" parent="#android:style/Theme.Holo.Light">
<item name="android:typeface">YourTypeFace</item>
</style>
You can add the parameters you need inside the style. This will apply the style to all your textviews.
One solution to your problem is to apply a custom theme to all of your activities. In order to do that, you can inherit properties from an existing theme and override the properties that you want to change.
In AndroidManifest.xml, locate the <application> element.
Add the attribute to it:
android:theme="#style/"
Locate styles.xml file in the values folder.
Use the following template:
<style name="ApplicationStyle" parent="android:Theme.Light">
<item name="#android:editTextStyle">#style/customEditText</item>"
</style>
Names used in the above are just examples, you may use your own. As to the parent theme, that is also up to you.
All that is left is the definition of editTextStyle (or whatever name you have chosen for the style). You should inherit properties from Widget.EditText and override the properties that you want to change, like the following:
<style name="customEditText" parent="#android:style/Widget.EditText">
<item name="android:textColor" >#ffffff</item>
</style>
To quote the official android guide:
The parent attribute in the element is optional and specifies
the resource ID of another style from which this style should inherit
properties. You can then override the inherited style properties if
you want to.
I tried to make it easy to understand and follow. I'm a junior dev so while the above solution works for me, it may not be the best one out there. As I said though, it solves the problem rather efficiently.
Unfortunately it is not possible to set layout attributes (layout_*) from a theme (see Layout Parameters documentation and this answer from an Android framework engineer). You must set them on each element or set the layout attributes in a style and let each element reference the style like this:
<Button style="#style/ButtonBig" android:text="my text" />
where ButtonBig is defined like this:
<style name="ButtonBig" parent="android:Widget.Holo.Light.Button">
<item name="android:textSize">20sp</item>
<item name="android:layout_width">match_parent</item>
<item name="android:layout_height">100dp</item>
</style>
I was having this exact issue. For some reason it helped me to drop the android: part in the AppTheme definition, and leave it only as editTextStyle (as mentioned in this answer):
<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Light">
<item name="android:fontFamily">Verdana</item>
<item name="editTextStyle">#style/EditTextStyle</item>
</style>
You'll have to set the property style="#styles/EditTextStyle" to all of your EditText components in your application.
define the style attribute for all EditText like below:
<EditText
android:id="#+id/editText1"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
style="#style/EditTextStyle">
You have to specify layout_width individually to each and every View. There is no way To escape. You can create a LayoutParams object and set its width and height in it and set in it every EditText like
textView1.setLayoutParams(lParams);
textView2.setLayoutParams(lParams);
...
I'm trying to put a style in all my app, so i created a theme with my style inside :
<resources>
<style name="MyTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light">
<item name="android:textAppearance">#style/subtitle</item>
</style>
<style name="subtitle parent="#android:style/TextAppearance">
<item name="android:textColor">#color/purple</item>
<item name="android:textSize">40sp</item>
</style>
</resources>
But textAppearance doesn't work it stay the same, but when i put something like textColor in my theme, it works
This is a quite old question, but the answer may help someone.
The key to solve this is in the "precedence order of styling techniques" here:
on the top is the highest precedence, at the bottom is the lowest precedence.
As we can see theme has the lowest precedence, in your example, your android:textAppearance property is being overridden by the default style of every view that accepts this attribute, the default style property is defined in every them for every specific view that accepts this attribute, in this case android:Theme.Holo.Light provides the default style for textView as android:textViewStyle... for buttons is android:buttonStyle (which inherits its textAppearance from TextView), and so on.
So if you are trying to apply that android:textAppearance property to a TextVew you should use <item name="android:textViewStyle">#style/subtitle</item> instead of <item name="android:textAppearance">#style/subtitle</item> inside MyTheme. Away to veryfy this is setting android:textViewStyle to null, that way your current code will work fine with textViews <item name="android:textViewStyle">null</item>
This post explains this precedence a bit deeper:
https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/whats-your-text-s-appearance-f3a1729192d
What I can see is, you have not declared the color in your xml for theme. Please add the following line within the <resources> and try. Your xml will look like:
<resources>
<style name="MyTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light">
<item name="android:textAppearance">#style/subtitle</item>
</style>
<color name="purple">code for your color</color>
<style name="subtitle parent="#android:style/TextAppearance">
<item name="android:textColor">#color/purple</item>
<item name="android:textSize">40sp</item>
</style>
I think this will do.
Depends on your target API you need to put your customization code in different /res/values-vxx/style.xml files.
For TextView, try android:textAppearanceSmall inside your theme instead.
I hope I can explain what I'm after. In essence, my users have asked me to allow different looks in my application, which I hope I can do with themes.
I hoped I could do something like this:
<style name="NewTheme" parent="android:Theme.Dark">
<item name="labelColor">#f90</item>
<item name="buttonColor">#fff</item>
<item name="buttonBg">#drawable/button</item>
</style>
<style name="OldTheme" parent="android:Theme.Dark">
<item name="labelColor">#fa0</item>
<item name="buttonColor">#88f</item>
<item name="buttonBg">#drawable/button_old</item>
</style>
And then reference these values in my styles.xml:
<style name="labelStyle">
<item name="android:textColor>#labelColor</item>
</style>
<style name="buttonStyle">
<item name="android:textcolor">#buttonColor</item>
<item name="android:background">#buttonBg</item>
</style>
I know this syntax is wrong, but what might be the right syntax? Basically, I want to create sets of attributes (color, background, a couple other things) and select them based on theme.
To work with themes and styles in Android you have to:
Define one or more themes in themes.xml and set the definitions of
your styles there.
Define custom attributes, a.k.a. custom styles, in attrs.xml.
Describe what the values of your custom styles are in styles.xml.
In your layout files, give your views a style attribute, which has a
custom style name as their values.
Set the theme of your application or activity in either
AndroidManifest.xml or in the Activity's onCreate(). This is done by calling setTheme() in the activity's onCreate() method, before any call to setContentView().
To change the theme, you simply need to restart your activity.
Iadvice you to look at this tutorial it deals with all that a programmer want to work on android themes (text color, text formatting, state list drawable etc ...)
I have a TextView and I want to apply a Style which I use for all TextView elements plus another style which I only use within a specific Activity. Is there any possibility to do that?
Just a little piece of information that might add to the overall value of the question - shamelessly copied from: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html#DefiningStyles
If you want to inherit from styles that you've defined yourself, you do not have to use the parent attribute. Instead, just prefix the name of the style you want to inherit to the name of your new style, separated by a period. For example, to create a new style that inherits the CodeFont style defined above, but make the color red, you can author the new style like this:
<style name="CodeFont.Red">
<item name="android:textColor">#FF0000</item>
</style>
Notice that there is no parent attribute in the tag, but because the name attribute begins with the CodeFont style name (which is a style that you have created), this style inherits all style properties from that style. This style then overrides the android:textColor property to make the text red. You can reference this new style as #style/CodeFont.Red.
You can continue inheriting like this as many times as you'd like, by chaining names with periods. For example, you can extend CodeFont.Red to be bigger, with:
<style name="CodeFont.Red.Big">
<item name="android:textSize">30sp</item>
</style>
A style under Android can have a parent style.
So just have MyActivityTextView define GeneralTextView as parent style, and change/add style properties.
Then you can use MyActivityTextView for some views and GeneralTextView for the others.
It's described in Defining Styles.
You can extend one style with another in your style.xml:
<style name="current_weekday_white" parent="current_day_white">
<item name="android:textColor">#FFABAB</item>
</style>
Inherit one style from another and copy elements from third.
<style name="Button.Style1" parent="android:style/Widget.Button">
<item name="android:gravity">center</item>
<item name="android:textSize">12sp</item>
<item name="android:background">#drawable/shape_button</item>
<!-- Here are attributes from third style -->
<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-medium</item>
<item name="android:textColor">#112233</item>
</style>