Question

i’m trying to layout a fairly basic screen. it’s just a details view screen after a list item click.

initially i’m looking to acheive a side by side stacked label value type of screen.
for example, where to the left of colon is static text and to the right of colon being dynamic values based on row clicked.

first name:            john
last name:            doe
last login date:     yesterday
additional info:     blah

i’ve started with a relative layout with a bunch of text views in it all positioned accordingly to acheive something like what i was looking for.

The problem arises when the dynamic data being displayed grows and stretches its enclosing text view. Of course the static labels don’t grow and everything gets mis aligned…

I’m wondering if there is a different way of tackling this sort of layout…

i was shying away from stacking a bunch of horizontal linear layouts inside a vertical linear layout.

is table layout the way to go? i’ve read that “they usually aren’t the best tool for doing so, as they are derived from LinearLayout and not the most efficient of layout controls”.

Answer 1

In your particular scenario I would believe that the TableLayout would work well (although I have also heard similar issues of efficiency/performance). As long as the entire Viewgroup of this Activity isn’t complex, I don’t think the performance will be too noticeable.

If you are attempting to make the RelativeLayout version work, perhaps you can try this: Have all of your static labels are aligned to the left using android:layout_alignParentLeft and have each aligned to the top of the dynamic TextView they are corresponding to using android:layout_alignTop. This should keep the static TextViews aligned to the left while aligned to the dynamic view relative to it.

Now that those views are aligned, we can horizontally align the dynamic views to the longest static TextView using android:layout_toRightOf. From there, all the remaining dynamic views can also android:layout_alignLeft to this anchor dynamic TextView, or also align to the longest static TextView in the same manner that the anchor was. This solves the horizontal alignment of all the dynamic TextViews.

Finally, we can set that each dynamic TextView falls under the next, since the dynamic TextViews are our determining our vertical location within this RelativeLayout. Each view can use android:layout_alignBelow to chain the fields to align vertically.

I believe this should work for you and I can edit this post later in the day if you would like a sample of code.