Question

I need your advice regarding my design and if you have a better idea (or you agree with me) that it is good. for some reason I have a feeling it is a “stone age programming style” but lets see.

Basically I have my xml relative layout. In the center (vertical and horizenatlly). I want to display “either” 3 buttons OR 3 texts depending on some user input. So what I did is the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/mainLayout"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:clipChildren="false"
    android:clipToPadding="false" >

    <RelativeLayout android:id="@+id/Buttons"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true" >
        <Button1 .../>
        <Button2 .../>
        <Button3 .../>
    </RelativeLayout>

    <RelativeLayout android:id="@+id/Texts"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true" >
       <TextView1 .../>
       <TextView2.../>
       <TextView3.../>
    </RelativeLayout>

</RelativeLayout>

Depending on the user input in the code I set visibility to either Visible or Invisible

Is this alright? and if not what do you suggest?

Answer 1

In my opinion, what you have done may be primitive, but it is simple, which is good 🙂 But if you still want some options and make life complicated, then

1. Put each of the blocks in a separate xml and use include.
2. Make 2 views and then use ViewFlipper to flip them based on user requirements.

But for the simple requirement that you have, I think u r doing fine.

The include option would work something like this,

layout_1.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        android:id="@+id/Buttons"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true" >
        <Button1 .../>
        <Button2 .../>
        <Button3 .../>
</RelativeLayout>

layout_2.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        android:id="@+id/Texts"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true" >
       <TextView1 .../>
       <TextView2.../>
       <TextView3.../>
</RelativeLayout>

your main_layout.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/mainLayout"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:clipChildren="false"
    android:clipToPadding="false" >

    <include layout="@layout/layout_1" />
    <include layout="@layout/layout_2" />   

</RelativeLayout>

The include helps you in making reusable layouts and also helps in keeping your xml files grow out of proportions, specially when you have complicated UIs.