Android: set view style programmatically

Question

Technically you can apply styles programmatically, with custom views anyway:

private MyRelativeLayout extends RelativeLayout {
  public MyRelativeLayout(Context context) {
     super(context, null, R.style.LightStyle);
  }
}

The one argument constructor is the one used when you instantiate views programmatically.

So chain this constructor to the super that takes a style parameter.

RelativeLayout someLayout = new MyRelativeLayout(new ContextThemeWrapper(this,R.style.RadioButton));

---

Or as @Dori pointed out simply:

RelativeLayout someLayout = new RelativeLayout(new ContextThemeWrapper(activity,R.style.LightStyle));

---

Now in Kotlin:

class MyRelativeLayout @JvmOverloads constructor(
    context: Context, 
    attributeSet: AttributeSet? = null, 
    defStyleAttr: Int = R.style.LightStyle,
) : RelativeLayout(context, attributeSet, defStyleAttr)

or

 val rl = RelativeLayout(ContextThemeWrapper(activity, R.style.LightStyle))

What worked for me:

Button b = new Button(new ContextThemeWrapper(this, R.style.ButtonText), null, 0);

• Use a ContextThemeWrapper

AND

• Use the 3-arguments constructor (won't work without this)

Update: At the time of answering this question (mid 2012, API level 14-15), setting the view programmatically was not an option (even though there were some non-trivial workarounds) whereas this has been made possible after the more recent API releases. See @Blundell's answer for details.

OLD Answer:

You cannot set a view's style programmatically yet, but you may find this thread useful.

For a new Button/TextView:

Button mMyButton = new Button(new ContextThemeWrapper(this, R.style.button_disabled), null, 0);

For an existing instance:

mMyButton.setTextAppearance(this, R.style.button_enabled);

For Image or layouts:

Image mMyImage = new ImageView(new ContextThemeWrapper(context, R.style.article_image), null, 0);