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androidbuttonviewviewgroup

How to create a Button that contains multiple Views?


On Android, I would like to create a button that contains some other Views. For example, something like this:

+---------------------------+
| Hello world!    +-------+ |
|                 | image | |
| Some more info  +-------+ |
+---------------------------+

But I'd like it to be more flexible than this specific example. Ideally, the button would simply be able to contain a ViewGroup, so that I could implement its layout in a separate XML file. However, because Button extends View, but not ViewGroup, this doesn't seem possible.

Is there any way to achieve this using standard Android components, or do I have to resort to writing a custom button class?


As requested, some example XML that does the trick:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:focusable="true"
    android:clickable="true"
    android:background="@android:drawable/btn_default">
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/name"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:textColor="@android:color/primary_text_light"/>
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/additional_line_1"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:textColor="@android:color/primary_text_light"/>
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/additional_line_2"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:textColor="@android:color/primary_text_light"/>
</LinearLayout>

I had to set the colour on the TextViews explicitly, otherwise they would be nearly unreadable (they're white by default). I dug up the identifier from the SDK: .../platforms/android-7/data/res/values/public.xml. Strangely, primary_text_light gives black text, whereas primary_text_dark results in white...


Solution

  • Create the layout of the desired button, and set it's android:background to @android:drawable/btn_default. Make the outermost View that contains the rest clickable and focusable and you're done.