Set tabbackground-colours for each tab

Question

I'm sorry if there is already an answer to this but i havn't found anything that could help me.

I have created my tabs like so:

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {


private SectionsPagerAdapter mSectionsPagerAdapter;

private ViewPager mViewPager;

String account_information;

TabLayout tabLayout;
Window window;
Context context;

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

    context = this;


    Toolbar toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.toolbar);
    setSupportActionBar(toolbar);
    // Create the adapter that will return a fragment for each of the three
    // primary sections of the activity.
    mSectionsPagerAdapter = new SectionsPagerAdapter(getSupportFragmentManager());


    // Set up the ViewPager with the sections adapter.
    mViewPager = (ViewPager) findViewById(R.id.container);
    mViewPager.setAdapter(mSectionsPagerAdapter);
    mViewPager.setCurrentItem(1);
    //mViewPager.setOnTouchListener(View.OnTouchListener());

    tabLayout = (TabLayout) findViewById(R.id.tabs);
    tabLayout.setupWithViewPager(mViewPager);
    tabLayout.setSelectedTabIndicatorColor(getColor(R.color.BLACK));


    account_information = getIntent().getStringExtra("CURRENT_ACCOUNT");

}



@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
    getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.menu_main, menu);
    return true;
}

@Override
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    // Handle action bar item clicks here. The action bar will
    // automatically handle clicks on the Home/Up button, so long
    // as you specify a parent activity in AndroidManifest.xml.
    int id = item.getItemId();

    //noinspection SimplifiableIfStatement
    if (id == R.id.action_settings) {
        Intent intent = new Intent(MainActivity.this, SettingsActivity.class);
        startActivity(intent);
    }

    return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
}


/**
 * A {@link FragmentPagerAdapter} that returns a fragment corresponding to
 * one of the sections/tabs/pages.
 */
public class SectionsPagerAdapter extends FragmentPagerAdapter {

    public SectionsPagerAdapter(FragmentManager fm) {
        super(fm);
    }

    @Override
    public Fragment getItem(int position) {

       //returning the current tabs
        switch (position) {
            case 0:

                contactstab_main contactstab1 = new contactstab_main(); 
                return contactstab1;
            case 1:
                dashboardtab_main dashboardtab2 = new dashboardtab_main();                    
                return dashboardtab2;
            case 2:
                dropdowntab_main dropdowntab3 = new dropdowntab_main();
                Bundle bundle = new Bundle();
                bundle.putString("current_account", account_information);
                dropdowntab3.setArguments(bundle);
                return dropdowntab3;
            default:
                return null;
        }
    }


    @Override
    public int getCount() {
        // Show 3 total pages.
        return 3;
    }

    @Override
    public CharSequence getPageTitle(int position) {
        switch (position) {
            case 0:
                return "CONTACTS";
            case 1:
                return "DASHBOARD";
            case 2:
                return "PROFILE-DROPDOWN";
        }
        return null;
    }
}
}

Any information I have found about changing the colour of the tabs is only for selected and unselected tabs but I want to have each ?Tabtitlebackground? to be in a different colour so that you can see the tabbar with 3 colors and each one is representing one tab.

Answer 1

Doing this relies on undocumented code, so it could break... but I doubt it's likely to.

A TabLayout hosts a private class called SlidingTabStrip (which extends from LinearLayout). Each child of the SlidingTabStrip is a TabView, i.e. the view that represents a single tab. So you can write code like this to set the background color of the various tabs:

    ViewGroup tabStrip = (ViewGroup) tabLayout.getChildAt(0);
    int[] colors = new int[] { 0xffccaaff, 0xffffccaa, 0xffaaffcc };

    for (int i = 0; i < tabStrip.getChildCount(); i++) {
        tabStrip.getChildAt(i).setBackgroundColor(colors[i]);
    }