Question

I have the following setup to get a layout with header and footer. Since the activity is displayed in a dialog, i want to set the height of the top element to “wrap_content”. Regarding to the android docs this not possible as long as you set alignParentBottm=”true” to a child element.

In an other question someone proposed to use a LinearLayout and set the maxHeight programmatically. Are there any other ways to avoid alignParentBottom=”true” ?

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
     android:layout_width="match_parent"
     android:layout_height="wrap_content">

    <LinearLayout
        android:id="@+id/LNL_TOP"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="60dip"
    android:layout_alignParentTop="true"> 
    </LinearLayout>

    <LinearLayout
        android:id="@+id/LNL_BOTTOM"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="60dip"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true">
    </LinearLayout>

    <LinearLayout
        android:id="@+id/LNL_CONTENT"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_below="@id/LNL_TOP"
    android:layout_above="@+id/LNL_BOTTOM">

         <ListView
             android:layout_width="match_parent"
             android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>

    </LinearLayout>   
 </RelativeLayout>

Here is an image of what it currently looks like, I want the layout to wrap the content and avoid the empty space under the list.

Answer 1

Use a vertical LinearLayout instead:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="vertical" >

    <TextView 
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="HEAD"/>
    <!--LinearLayout containing the list here, to go with your posted code, 
it would also work to just have the list outside the layout.-->
    <LinearLayout 
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:layout_weight="1">
        <ListView 
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>
    </LinearLayout>
    <TextView 
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="FOOT"/>
</LinearLayout>

With this, the body will grow with its content until there is no more space. Then it will start to go down behind the footer (although this shouldn’t be a problem as you use a ListView for the contents, so the view will expand to maximum size and then stop, and the scrolling will start to work).