How can I specify the position of editText in CardView?

Question

<androidx.cardview.widget.CardView
    app:cardCornerRadius="5dp"
    app:cardElevation="8dp"
    android:layout_width="370dp"
    android:layout_height="450dp"
    app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
    android:descendantFocusability="beforeDescendants">

    <EditText
        android:id="@+id/heightText"
        android:layout_width="140dp"
        android:layout_height="60dp"
        android:hint="Name"
        android:textAlignment="center"
        android:textStyle="bold" />
</androidx.cardview.widget.CardView>

Here is the EditText code I placed inside the CardView.

How can I change the location of the editText placed as in the image as I wish? For example, when I try to hold the editText with the mouse, it automatically returns to its position in the image. It's like it's magnetized to the top left corner.

Answer 1

To position views within a CardView you need to nest them in a layout container view, like a LinearLayout, RelativeLayout, ConstraintLayout, etc. inside the CardView.

Here is an example using a ConstraintLayout:

<androidx.cardview.widget.CardView
    app:cardCornerRadius="5dp"
    app:cardElevation="8dp"
    android:layout_width="370dp"
    android:layout_height="450dp"
    app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
    android:descendantFocusability="beforeDescendants">

    <androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent">

        <EditText
            android:id="@+id/heightText"
            android:layout_width="140dp"
            android:layout_height="60dp"
            android:hint="Name"
            android:textAlignment="center"
            android:textStyle="bold" 
            app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
            app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
            app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"/>
        
    </androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>
</androidx.cardview.widget.CardView>

then you can use the rules of the layout container to position them properly.

If your CardView had dynamic height (wrap_content) you would want to also set the ConstraintLayout view height to wrap_content too instead of match_parent.

If you only have a single view that you want to put in the card, you could also control its position using android:layout_gravity attributes instead of using a layout container. CardView inherits from FrameLayout, so the same guidance about positioning views applies:

FrameLayout is designed to block out an area on the screen to display a single item. Generally, FrameLayout should be used to hold a single child view, because it can be difficult to organize child views in a way that's scalable to different screen sizes without the children overlapping each other. You can, however, add multiple children to a FrameLayout and control their position within the FrameLayout by assigning gravity to each child, using the android:layout_gravity attribute.