Question

Basically I’m trying to make an application for tablets.
There going to be a bunch of widgets added and removed by the user inside a table layout. It needs to be dynamic so that the widgets are sized differently based on the width and height of the table layout.

To do this, I’m trying to make a 3×3 grid in a tablelayout. As I’m sure you guessed, each square has 33% width and height of the tablelayout.

This is what I got:

DisplayMetrics metrics;
int totalScreenSizeH; 
int totalScreenSizeW;

TableLayout contentTable;
LinearLayout contentLayout;

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);

    //Get the UI detail
    metrics  = new DisplayMetrics();
    getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getMetrics(metrics);
    totalScreenSizeH = metrics.heightPixels;
    totalScreenSizeW = metrics.widthPixels;



    contentTable=(TableLayout)findViewById(R.id.tableLayout1);
    contentLayout=(LinearLayout)findViewById(R.id.contentLayout);

    int tableWidth =contentTable.getWidth();
    int tableHeight=contentTable.getHeight();

    int layoutWidth=contentLayout.getWidth();
    int layoutHeight=contentLayout.getHeight();

    Log.v("Table Width",""+tableWidth);
    Log.v("Table Height",""+tableHeight);

    Log.v("Layout Width",""+layoutWidth);
    Log.v("Layout Height",""+layoutHeight);

So just to explain this a bit better. The linearLayout contains the tablelayout which has 3 table rows. I figured that I would be able to get the width and height of these but for some reason, both are coming back as 0 in size. One I have the width and height dims, Im going to save that variable and the create the widgets based on those variables/3.

So 2 questions:

1: is this the right way to handle dynamically sized widgets. Or is this the wrong way to handle a problem like this?

2: Any ideas why those 2-4 variables are all coming back as 0?

Answer 1

I would advise against doing pixel-perfect designs on android, due to the vast amount of resolutions and densities you have to deal with.

My suggestion would be to look at android:layout_width/height="wrap_content" and android:layout_weight="INTEGER" that will help you make floating 3×3. You can also achieve this with a GridView