Question

Considering this LinearLayout containing..

• One nested Linear Layout with two child views

  • one imageView

  • one Textview

• One textView

• One Button

Why can I successfully show text content on the outer TextView using findViewById and setText while the inner Textview (inside nested linear view) shows blank?

Here is the code for onCreate:

LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(Item.this);
LinearLayout itemLayout = (LinearLayout)inflater.inflate(R.layout.activity_item, null);            
Button proformaButton = (Button)itemLayout.getChildAt(2);

roformaButton.setOnClickListener(this);


setContentView(itemLayout);

TextView titleTitla = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.item_title);
TextView itemBody = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.item_body); 

titleTitla.setText("Tomatoes");
itemBody.setText("Potatoes");

While debugging I can see that the view is found by Id and I can also see that setText does it work (mText field of TextView), but the activity does not show anything for item_title.

I am asking how to fix this but if it’s not a trivial thing a hint of explanation would be very appreciated.

If it helps, here’s the xml:

<LinearLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="vertical">

    <LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="0dip"
        android:orientation="horizontal"
        android:layout_weight="1">

        <ImageView
            android:id="@+id/item_picture"
            android:layout_width="0dip"
            android:layout_height="fill_parent"
            android:contentDescription="@string/image_item">
        </ImageView>

        <TextView 
            android:id="@+id/item_title"
            android:layout_width="0dip"
            android:layout_height="fill_parent">
        </TextView>

    </LinearLayout>

    <TextView 
        android:id="@+id/item_body"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="0dip"
        android:layout_weight="2">
    </TextView>

    <Button
         android:id="@+id/btnOrderItem"
         android:layout_width="fill_parent"
         android:layout_height="wrap_content"
         android:text="@string/order_button"
    />

</LinearLayout>

Answer 1

    <TextView 
        android:id="@+id/item_body"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="0dip"
        android:layout_weight="2">
    </TextView>

It’s the layout_height="0dp". The reason it works on the other LinearLayout is because you have a weight attribute. Change the 0dp to wrap_content.