CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidxmllayoutesri
user1111781
user1111781

Reputation: 133

Android - How to create layout as generic as possible?

I am having trouble in creating generic layouts for my application. As expected, it can be used in a variety of devices and I want it to work properly for each of them. There are several approaches to achieve this problem but I want to create an xml file (similar like web.config files) and at the very beginning of my application I want to take the device's screen width and height and calculate each control's (textview, spinner, button etc.) attributes (such as margin, padding,width, height...) according to this width and height and save these calculated values into my xml file. Finally I want to reach these values from my layout xmls so my layout's visual will be independent from the device and will work properly for each device. Can this be achieved? I could not find any similar solution on the internet. Can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1574

Answers (2)

Booger
Booger

Reputation: 18725

I would not use custom measurements to dynamically set layout parameters. Android specifically has a variety of functionality to address this for you (including supplying multiple image resources, or layouts specific to a screen size).

I have discovered that the more you try to customize the Android layout with hard-coded values (always use DP if you do want to set specific parameters).

Bottom line, you should not try to re-invent the wheel, and just use the well-designed functionality that Android has already built-in to accomplish what you want.

Upvotes: 1

Rich
Rich

Reputation: 36806

You can do most of this without hard coding values using RelativeLayout and similar mechanisms. The two pass dynamic layout system is made for exactly what you're describing.

However, when you need to be more specific, that's where the dynamic resource system can help you out. For everything you define in res/drawable, res/layout, res/values, etc, you can define specific implementations for device orientation, pixel densities, screen size or even language by qualifying sibling directories with the correct format. Provide a resource with the same name in different folders, and the system will decide which to use based on the runtime environment.

Give this a look:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/providing-resources.html

Upvotes: 2

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