How do I create a border around two or more views in Android?

Question

I have a TextView and an EditText in a RelativeLayout. I'd like to create a border behind them with a white background, like a card. I have a few more complex examples, with images and text as well.

The only way I can think of to do this is to introduce multiple nested ViewGroups (say another RelativeLayout), so each card is a ViewGroup which contains the two other Views, and automatically sizes correctly and has a border set.

However, this ends up with a view hierarchy like:

• RelativeLayout
  • RelativeLayout
    • TextView
    • EditView
  • RelativeLayout
    • TextView
    • EditView
  • RelativeLayout
    • ImageView
    • TextView
    • TextView
    • Button

etc

Which seems excessive and potentially problematic, particularly if I end up having nested cards.

Apart from changing the RelativeLayouts for LinearLayouts (which I imagine won't have a large impact), is there any way of simplifying this layout hierarchy?

Answer 1

I think it is ok according to Google to have up to 6 or 7 nested layouts without a need to worry.

Think of the gmail application. each mail is consisted of (at least 1) ViewGroup that is displayed in a listView which is probably nested inside another (at least 1) ViewGroup...

In short, I think your hierarchy is ok