Padding Precedence in Xamarin.Android

Question

Padding Precedence in Xamarin.Android

Nathan Sokalski 4,111

When creating my layout (*.xml) files for Xamarin.Android, one thing that constantly drives me crazy is when I need to override a padding property. I have a Style that includes the following:

<item name="android:padding">0px</item>

Based on what I could find at

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View#attr_android:padding

The precedence is as follows:

Highest Precedence

paddingStart, paddingEnd
padding
paddingHorizontal, paddingVertical
paddingLeft, paddingTop, paddingRight, paddingBottom

Lowest Precedence

For example, if I want my padding on the right to be 5dp, I would think using my Style along with android:paddingEnd="5dp" would work, since paddingEnd is higher precedence, but that does not seem to work. Sure, I could just change my Style, but that kind of defeats the purpose of Styles. I would have thought that Left, Top, Right, and Bottom would be highest precedence so that you could individualize all Views, but regardless of what I think and what is true, is there a way to set the padding(s) and still use my Style? Thanks.

JarvanZhang 23,971 Reputation points

2021-08-27T08:55:30.93+00:00
For example, if I want my padding on the right to be 5dp, I would think using my Style along with android:paddingEnd="5dp" would work

Hi, njsokalski. How do you define the layout? Could you post the related code about the xaml? I created a basic demo to test the function, it works fine with the following code.

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent"> <TextView android:id="@+id/text" android:text="SecondActvity" android:padding="15px" android:paddingEnd="0px" android:background="#ff00" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/> </LinearLayout> <style name="CustomTextViewStyle"> <item name="android:padding">0px</item> </style>

But if I change the layout_width of the textView to match_parent, the android:paddingEnd will not work. This is because the textView's content width is less than the screen's width, there are much space on the right of the textView's text content.

Nathan Sokalski 4,111

Here is my xml (the other TextView(s) are exactly the same, I removed them here for sake of space):

<GridLayout tools:layout_width="120dp" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:columnCount="1" android:rowCount="4">  
	<TextView android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="30dp" style="@style/ScoreLabelTextViewStyle" android:layout_column="0" android:layout_row="0" android:gravity="center_vertical|right" tools:background="@color/Pink" tools:text="25"/>  
	<!--Other TextViews-->  
</GridLayout>

This gives me following:

I notice that in your code you define both padding & paddingEnd directly in the TextView & do not use the Style. My code uses a GridLayout instead of a LinearLayout. Is it possible that this is causing the padding problem?

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JarvanZhang 23,971 Reputation points

2021-08-27T08:55:30.93+00:00

For example, if I want my padding on the right to be 5dp, I would think using my Style along with android:paddingEnd="5dp" would work

Hi, njsokalski. How do you define the layout? Could you post the related code about the xaml? I created a basic demo to test the function, it works fine with the following code.

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent"> <TextView android:id="@+id/text" android:text="SecondActvity" android:padding="15px" android:paddingEnd="0px" android:background="#ff00" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/> </LinearLayout> <style name="CustomTextViewStyle"> <item name="android:padding">0px</item> </style>

But if I change the layout_width of the textView to match_parent, the android:paddingEnd will not work. This is because the textView's content width is less than the screen's width, there are much space on the right of the textView's text content.
Nathan Sokalski 4,111 Reputation points

2021-08-27T15:26:34.537+00:00

Here is my xml (the other TextView(s) are exactly the same, I removed them here for sake of space):

<GridLayout tools:layout_width="120dp" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:columnCount="1" android:rowCount="4"> <TextView android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="30dp" style="@style/ScoreLabelTextViewStyle" android:layout_column="0" android:layout_row="0" android:gravity="center_vertical|right" tools:background="@color/Pink" tools:text="25"/>  </GridLayout>

This gives me following:

I notice that in your code you define both padding & paddingEnd directly in the TextView & do not use the Style. My code uses a GridLayout instead of a LinearLayout. Is it possible that this is causing the padding problem?

Answer 1

Hi, @Nathan Sokalski Here is the test result, please see the screenshot.

   <GridLayout   
       xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"  
       android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"   
       android:columnCount="1"   
       android:rowCount="4">  
        <TextView   
           android:layout_width="match_parent"   
           android:layout_height="30dp"   
           style="@style/CustomTextViewStyle"   
           android:layout_column="0"   
           android:layout_row="0"   
           android:paddingStart="15px"  
           android:background="#f00"  
           android:gravity="center_vertical|right"   
           android:text="25"  
           />  
        <!--Other TextViews-->  
    </GridLayout>  
     
   <style name="CustomTextViewStyle">  
     <item name="android:padding">0px</item>  
   </style>

The debug test result:

It seems you add tools:Text for these textViews. Did you check the function in xml preview? Please debug the project to check the test result. The result of the 'padding' seems not correct when adding both padding for a view in the style and the layout.xml.

Here is the preview 'padding' result.

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Padding Precedence in Xamarin.Android

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