Develop Reference

Table Layout with dynamic amount of rows and dynamic content

Im pretty new to Android Development, so after like three days of trying different things with the XML Layout Design, i give up and hope for help from you guys.
What i want to achieve:
A table layout with with multiple rows, each filled with calculations im making in the background
The first three rows shall contain the input parameters, the following ~12 rows shall contain output parameters
rows 3 to 6 shall be rearrangeable, so to speak change name and shown values.
This is the concept, thats what one row should look like:
My way of trying things was:
Creating a TableRow for "Taupunkt" and "Td" and another one for three textfields and the +/- picture.
But how on earth am i supposed to insert the ">" arrows picture into the layout? Basically it should be centered between the rows.
I hope i did a clear explanation of my problem and hope that there is someone out there who can help me :)
PS.: App is going to support Android 4.0 and above
EDIT: As seen in the picture, how would i go about centering the plus/minus vertically to the textfields? Like, it should have the same space above and below it to the textfields

You can use ListView or RecyclerView as mentioned in comments.
For second question to make your view centrally aligned you can use android:gravity attribute in LinearLayout. Just made one same which is using center_vertical. Checkout -
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/btn_google"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginBottom="#dimen/standard_padding"
android:background="#drawable/rectangle_round_red"
android:gravity="center_vertical"
android:minHeight="#dimen/standard_height"
android:orientation="horizontal">
<ImageView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:src="#drawable/icon_google" />
<TextView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:gravity="center"
android:text="Google"
android:textColor="#android:color/white"
android:textSize="#dimen/font_18" />
</LinearLayout>
This is how it looks

Re-creating Google+ app's UI

I'm fairly new to Android development and planning to build a simple news reader app to further familiarize myself to the platform.
The problem is; I want each of the news-item to look like Google+'s post item below:
Well, basically a big headline picture with a title and some description underneath.
I tried to re-create it using a Button (because the whole thing needs to be clickable by the user) while setting a drawable at the top of the text. It worked quite nicely.. until I decided to add more drawables to it:
Here's my XML code (although I doubt anyone would need it):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content" >
<Button
android:id="#+id/button1"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:drawableLeft="#drawable/ic_launcher"
android:drawablePadding="8dp"
android:drawableTop="#drawable/temp_jakarta"
android:text="Button" />
</RelativeLayout>
Can you tell me why is this happening or maybe, suggest me another way to accomplish this?
Thanks in advance!
p.s., I'm pretty sorry about the link; as a new user, SO didn't allow me to post images just yet. :(

Put everything inside a RelativeLayout and place one relative to others (event on top, this doesn't matter at all) using the layout_below/above/left_of/right_of/... etc.
See http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/layout/relative.html for usage, http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/RelativeLayout.html for a complete reference of the RelativeLayout class and "Android Layout Tricks" series in the Developer Blog for some tips_
http://android-developers.blogspot.com.es/2009/02/android-layout-tricks-1.html
http://android-developers.blogspot.com.es/2009/02/android-layout-tricks-2-reusing-layouts.html
http://android-developers.blogspot.com.es/2009/03/android-layout-tricks-3-optimize-with.html

LinearLayout in App Widget

I am working with modified version of sample WeatherListWidget to get a better understanding of App Widgets. Things are fine - except when I try to replace the dark_widget_item and light_widget_item layout files with slightly more complex layout files. Here is original layout:
<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#+id/widget_item"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="46dp"
android:paddingLeft="25dp"
android:gravity="center_vertical"
android:background="#drawable/item_bg_light"
android:textColor="#e5e5e1"
android:textSize="24sp" />
I would like to be able to have multiple text lines. But:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#+id/widget_item"
android:background="#drawable/item_bg"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="46dp"
android:paddingLeft="25dp">
<TextView android:id="#+id/type_string"
android:textColor="#666666"
android:textSize="20sp" />
<TextView android:id="#+id/title_string"
android:textColor="#666666"
android:textSize="18sp" />
</LinearLayout>
fails.
In fact, it results in "Sorry! The application Launcher (process com.android.launcher) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. Force close".
Reinstating TextView widget_item.xml fixes this. I suspect that part of the problem is how I reference RemoteViews in WeatherWidgetService.getViewAt() - but I am getting very little help from DDMS or LogCat or anything else.

Thanks guys, I got the notification. (SO requires a username with length > 2, hence the dot)
Answer as per comment:
I don't see any layout_width and layout_height attributes for both of the TextViews in your LinearLayout - they are mandatory. Also, if you want the two TextViews to be above eachother, add android:orientation="vertical" to the LinearLayout. And just to the record, you can break a CharSequence to multiple lines in a single TextView by adding "\n" inbetween the different elements.
If you're going to include an image as well, then you're probably better off with a LinearLayout than a single TextView indeed, although you could potentially use the intrinsic drawable option of the latter. That could get a little messy though, especially if you're planning on using different styles for the different lines of text... Not impossible, but I'd stick with the LinearLayout. ;)

iOS to Android: How to display a TextView

I have a background in iPhone development, which may be a cause of some of my confusion with Android, which I am very new at developing.
My question is this: How to I create two TextViews, and specify their exact location on screen? For example, on the iPhone, I would create a UILabel, generate a rectangular frame that specified the label's size and position, and then set this rectangle to the frame property of the UILabel.
If you can help me understand the similarities with Objective C and iOS' UILabel, that would be most helpful.

On Android, we don't use absolute screen positions. This is highly discouraged. It's pretty understandable that you think this way if you are coming from iOS. But you need to revise your habits.
Instead of absolute positions, we use layouts, such as LinearLayout, RelativeLayout or FrameLayout. All of these allow you to arrange your views dynamically. And in many cases, it will automagically adapt to the screen size, which vary a lot from device to device.
Actually, there's nothing exotic about dynamic layouts. Many major UI toolkits, such as GTK, or Qt, work similarly. Pixel position are a bad idea in my opinion, except maybe in the Apple world, where the OS and the hardware are tightly coupled, but this is an exception actually.
So, in your case, all that you need is to put your text views into the appropriate layout. Please read the documentation and tutorials about the different types of layouts mentioned above to decide which one is best. The question is how you want your views to be placed relatively to each other.

Create a basic Android project in eclipse. You will be having a main.xml layout file in your project. You can open it in Eclipse using Ctrl+Shift+r and keying in main.xml
copy paste this in your xml after clearing its content.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="horizontal"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/textView1"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:text="TextView One"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:layout_weight="1"></TextView>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/textView2"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:text="TextView Two"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:layout_weight="1"></TextView>
</LinearLayout>

android: which view should I use for showing text and image?

My app shows a list of items, where each line is an item title with its image asides, the line reserves 70% of space for text and 30% for image. Imagine what iphone app store looks like. Which view/layout combo is recommended for this purpose?
I googled and find this article:
http://www.curious-creature.org/2009/02/22/android-layout-tricks-1/
Does this view sound good?
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="?android:attr/listPreferredItemHeight"
android:padding="6dip">
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/icon"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
android:layout_marginRight="6dip"
android:src="#drawable/icon" />
<TextView
android:id="#+id/secondLine"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="26dip"
android:layout_toRightOf="#id/icon"
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:singleLine="true"
android:ellipsize="marquee"
android:text="Simple application that shows how to use RelativeLayout" />
<TextView
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_toRightOf="#id/icon"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_above="#id/secondLine"
android:layout_alignWithParentIfMissing="true"
android:gravity="center_vertical"
android:text="My Application" />

If by the "what the iPhone app store looks like", you mean "pretty much every single list out there" (well, at least as far as I can judge by the description, having never actually seen the iPhone app store), there seems to be only one way which works. The 'ideal' solution would be to use a RelativeLayout as that allows you to have two lines of text next to the image without needing to a complex layout structure. However, as you can see in this question and this other question, there seems to be some issue with that. So, the fallback is to use a horizontal LinearLayout, and nest a second vertical LinearLayout in it if you need multiple lines of text. See those posts for more details about what your LinearLayout should look like.
Note: I'm assuming you know how to use a ListView. If you don't know how ListViews work, then I recommend this article as a good starting place. It's a bit old, but still good. Just make sure you read its sequels as well, which explain how to use the convertView optimisation.
Edit: For anyone else reading this, here is a tutorial on Lists with much better formatting, making it easier to read.

ListView with a custom layout for the row. When you create the ListAdapter(SimpleAdapter/ArrayAdapter) you can pass in a layout in the constructor. Its real easy if the image will always be the same, but if the image will vary you will need to override the getView method to create the view for the row.