Question

i’m making chat app. I want to put timestamp besides the chat bubble. The messages will be aligned left (for received) and right (for sent).

So, I’m looking for a way to change toLeftOf to toRightOf. For now, it looks like this:

Here’s my XML code for each message (I have ArrayAdapter that handle this)

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/wrapper"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/bubble"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:textColor="#ffffff" />

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/timeStamp"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_centerVertical="true"
            android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/bubble" />

</RelativeLayout>

I googling around and found this, but doesn’t work:

RelativeLayout.LayoutParams params = new RelativeLayout.LayoutParams(
     RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
if(isReceivedMessage){
    params.addRule(RelativeLayout.RIGHT_OF, R.id.bubble);
}
else{
    params.addRule(RelativeLayout.LEFT_OF, R.id.bubble);
}
timeStampTextView.setLayoutParams(params);

Any solution? Thanks

Answer 1

Rewrite
Remove the attribute layout_toRightOf from the current TextView, then create two different LayoutParams: one for toRightOf and one for toLeftOf. You can switch the parameters depending on your needs.

An alternative is to use a custom adapter with two layouts. This approach should be faster since you aren’t re-arranging the layout at run-time but maintaining two separate lists of “Reply” and “Send” layouts in the view recycler.

(As a note, API 17 introduced removeRule() but this won’t help just yet.)