Android layout_below not working

Question

I use RelativeLayouts extensively in my app and thought I knew how to specify them, but this has me at a loss. I am basically positioning 4 TextViews in two rows of two each consisting of a label and text that will be supplied. It should look something like:

Born: 23 Aug 1810 Mason Co., Kentucky

Died: 15 Jul 1865 Cincinnati, Hamilton Co., Ohio

This is the relevant portion of the layout:

        <TextView android:id="@+id/birth_lbl"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_below="@+id/given_layout"
            android:layout_alignLeft="@+id/given_layout"
            android:layout_marginTop="6dip"
            style="@style/label"
            android:text="@string/born"
        />
        <TextView android:id="@+id/birth"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/birth_lbl"
            android:layout_alignBaseline="@+id/birth_lbl"
            android:layout_marginLeft="10dip"
            android:layout_marginRight="6dip"
            style="@style/main_text"
            android:text="dd Mmm yy"
        />
        <TextView android:id="@+id/death_lbl"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_below="@+id/birth"
            android:layout_alignLeft="@+id/birth_lbl"
            android:layout_marginTop="4dip"
            style="@style/label"
            android:text="@string/died"
        />
        <TextView android:id="@+id/death"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/death_lbl"
            android:layout_alignLeft="@+id/birth"
            android:layout_alignBaseline="@+id/death_lbl"
            android:layout_marginRight="6dip"
            style="@style/main_text"
            android:text="dd Mmm yy"
        />

For some reason, this displays the death line views ABOVE the birth line views! If I change the spec of the death_lbl view to instead be 'layout_below="@+id/birth_lbl"', the lines are positioned correctly! However, it is possible for the "birth" view to wrap to multiple lines, so I really need to position the 2nd line below "birth", not "birth_lbl".

Anyone know the reason for this behavior? It occurs both in the Graphical Layout editor in Eclipse and at runtime on my tablet running Android 4.0.

Answer 1

Try changing android:layout_below="@+id/birth" in death_lbl to android:layout_below="@id/birth", because at this point it is already declared, which the + implies, it could lead to problems when declaring it again.

Answer 2

I was also facing the same problem because I was using constraint layout, but align_below works only in Relative Layout. so check which layout you are using.

Answer 3

If fixing your + signs doesn't help, you could always position your id/death below id/birth, and then put id/death_label toLeftOf id/death.

Answer 4

I was actually able to duplicate this phenomenon by coding up a temporary layout with only those fields, and was able to determine that the problem went away if I did not position the initial birth_lbl view relative to the view above it ("given_layout" in this case).

So I'm not sure if this is classified as a fix, a workaround, or a kludge (is that still a word these days?), but what I did was to position the text views inside their own RelativeLayout and position the RelativeLayout relative to id/given_layout. In any case, it works...