How do you animate the change of background color of a view on Android?
For example:
I have a view with a red background color. The background color of the view changes to blue. How can I do a smooth transition between colors?
If this can't be done with views, an alternative will be welcome.
I ended up figuring out a (pretty good) solution for this problem!
You can use a TransitionDrawable to accomplish this. For example, in an XML file in the drawable folder you could write something like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<transition xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<!-- The drawables used here can be solid colors, gradients, shapes, images, etc. -->
<item android:drawable="@drawable/original_state" />
<item android:drawable="@drawable/new_state" />
</transition>
Then, in your XML for the actual View you would reference this TransitionDrawable in the android:background
attribute.
At this point you can initiate the transition in your code on-command by doing:
TransitionDrawable transition = (TransitionDrawable) viewObj.getBackground();
transition.startTransition(transitionTime);
Or run the transition in reverse by calling:
transition.reverseTransition(transitionTime);
See Roman's answer for another solution using the Property Animation API, which wasn't available at the time this answer was originally posted.