IN THIS DOCUMENTWrite the XML
Load the XML Resource
AttributesID
Layout Parameters
Layout Position
Size, Padding and Margins
Common Layouts
Building Layouts with an AdapterFilling an adapter view with data
Handling click events
KEY CLASSESView
ViewGroup
ViewGroup.LayoutParams
SEE ALSOBuilding a Simple User Interface
A layout defines the visual structure for a user interface, such as the UI for an activity or app widget. You can declare a layout in two ways:Declare UI elements in XML. Android provides a straightforward XML vocabulary that corresponds to the View classes and subclasses, such as those for widgets and layouts.
Instantiate layout elements at runtime. Your application can create View and ViewGroup objects (and manipulate their properties) programmatically.
The Android framework gives you the flexibility to use either or both of these methods for declaring and managing your application's UI. For example, you could declare your application's default layouts in XML, including the screen elements that will appear in them and their properties. You could then add code in your application that would modify the state of the screen objects, including those declared in XML, at run time.
The ADT Plugin for Eclipse offers a layout preview of your XML — with the XML file opened, select theLayout tab.
You should also try the Hierarchy Viewer tool, for debugging layouts — it reveals layout property values, draws wireframes with padding/margin indicators, and full rendered views while you debug on the emulator or device.
The layoutopt tool lets you quickly analyze your layouts and hierarchies for inefficiencies or other problems.
The advantage to declaring your UI in XML is that it enables you to better separate the presentation of your application from the code that controls its behavior. Your UI descriptions are external to your application code, which means that you can modify or adapt it without having to modify your source code and recompile. For example, you can create XML layouts for different screen orientations, different device screen sizes, and different languages. Additionally, declaring the layout in XML makes it easier to visualize the structure of your UI, so it's easier to debug problems. As such, this document focuses on teaching you how to declare your layout in XML. If you're interested in instantiating View objects at runtime, refer to the ViewGroup andView class references.
In general, the XML vocabulary for declaring UI elements closely follows the structure and naming of the classes and methods, where element names correspond to class names and attribute names correspond to methods. In fact, the correspondence is often so direct that you can guess what XML attribute corresponds to a class method, or guess what class corresponds to a given xml element. However, note that not all vocabulary is identical. In some cases, there are slight naming differences. For example, the EditText element has a text attribute that corresponds toEditText.setText().
Tip: Learn more about different layout types in Common Layout Objects. There are also a collection of tutorials on building various layouts in the Hello Views tutorial guide.
Write the XML
Using Android's XML vocabulary, you can quickly design UI layouts and the screen elements they contain, in the same way you create web pages in HTML — with a series of nested elements.
Each layout file must contain exactly one root element, which must be a View or ViewGroup object. Once you've defined the root element, you can add additional layout objects or widgets as child elements to gradually build a View hierarchy that defines your layout. For example, here's an XML layout that uses a vertical LinearLayout to hold a TextView and a Button:<?xml version="1.0"encoding="utf-8"?>
After you've declared your layout in XML, save the file with the .xml extension, in your Android project's res/layout/directory, so it will properly compile.
More information about the syntax for a layout XML file is available in the Layout Resources document.
Load the XML Resource
When you compile your application, each XML layout file is compiled into a View resource. You should load the layout resource from your application code, in your Activity.onCreate() callback implementation. Do so by callingsetContentView(), passing it the reference to your layout resource in the form of: R.layout.layout_file_name For example, if your XML layout is saved as main_layout.xml, you would load it for your Activity like so:publicvoidonCreate(BundlesavedInstanceState){super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);setContentView(R.layout.main_layout);}
The onCreate() callback method in your Activity is called by the Android framework when your Activity is launched (see the discussion about lifecycles, in the Activities document).
Attributes
Every View and ViewGroup object supports their own variety of XML attributes. Some attributes are specific to a View object (for example, TextView supports the textSize attribute), but these attributes are also inherited by any View objects that may extend this class. Some are common to all View objects, because they are inherited from the root View class (like the id attribute). And, other attributes are considered "layout parameters," which are attributes that describe certain layout orientations of the View object, as defined by that object's parent ViewGroup object.
ID
Any View object may have an integer ID associated with it, to uniquely identify the View within the tree. When the application is compiled, this ID is referenced as an integer, but the ID is typically assigned in the layout XML file as a string, in the id attribute. This is an XML attribute common to all View objects (defined by the View class) and you will use it very often. The syntax for an ID, inside an XML tag is:android:id="@+id/my_button"
The at-symbol (@) at the beginning of the string indicates that the XML parser should parse and expand the rest of the ID string and identify it as an ID resource. The plus-symbol (+) means that this is a new resource name that must be created and added to our resources (in the R.java file). There are a number of other ID resources that are offered by the Android framework. When referencing an Android resource ID, you do not need the plus-symbol, but must add the android package namespace, like so:android:id="@android:id/empty"
With the android package namespace in place, we're now referencing an ID from the android.R resources class, rather than the local resources class.
In order to create views and reference them from the application, a common pattern is to:Define a view/widget in the layout file and assign it a unique ID:
Then create an instance of the view object and capture it from the layout (typically in the onCreate() method):ButtonmyButton=(Button)findViewById(R.id.my_button);
Defining IDs for view objects is important when creating a RelativeLayout. In a relative layout, sibling views can define their layout relative to another sibling view, which is referenced by the unique ID.
An ID need not be unique throughout the entire tree, but it should be unique within the part of the tree you are searching (which may often be the entire tree, so it's best to be completely unique when possible).
Layout Parameters
XML layout attributes named layout_something define layout parameters for the View that are appropriate for the ViewGroup in which it resides.
Every ViewGroup class implements a nested class that extends ViewGroup.LayoutParams. This subclass contains property types that define the size and position for each child view, as appropriate for the view group. As you can see in figure 1, the parent view group defines layout parameters for each child view (including the child view group).