Android Tile Bitmap

Question

I'm trying to load a bitmap in Android which I want to tile. I'm currently using the following in my view to display a bitmap:

canvas.drawBitmap(bitmap, srcRect, destRect, null)

I essentially want to use this bitmap as a background image in my app and would like to repeat the bitmap in both the X and Y directions.

I've seen the TileMode.REPEAT constant for the BitmapShader class but i am not sure if this is to be used for repeating the actual bitmap or is used for applying a filter to the bitmap.

Answer 1

You would do this in the xml instead of the java code. I haven't attempted this myself but I did find this example.

<xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
android:id="@+id/MainLayout"
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:background="@drawable/backrepeat"
>

then in an xml called backrepeat.xml

<bitmap xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:src="@drawable/back" 
    android:tileMode="repeat" />

reference

Answer 2

Figured out the code version:

  BitmapDrawable TileMe = new BitmapDrawable(MyBitmap);
  TileMe.setTileModeX(Shader.TileMode.REPEAT);
  TileMe.setTileModeY(Shader.TileMode.REPEAT);

  ImageView Item = new ImageView(this);
  Item.setBackgroundDrawable(TileMe);

Then if you have a drawable to tile, this can be used instead to make the BitmapDrawable:

  BitmapDrawable TileMe = new BitmapDrawable(BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.tile));

Answer 3

The backrepeat.xml above is buggy

<bitmap
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:src="@drawable/tile"
    android:tileMode="repeat"
    android:dither="true" />

Answer 4

It seems that some people are interested in doing this in a View, at the onDraw method. The following code has worked for me:

bgTile = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.bg_tile);

float left = 0, top = 0;
float bgTileWidth = bgTile.getWidth();
float bgTileHeight = bgTile.getHeight();

while (left < screenWidth) {
    while (top < screenHeight) {
        canvas.drawBitmap(bgTile, left, top, null);
        top += bgTileHeight;
    }
    left += bgTileWidth;
    top = 0;
}

Answer 5

<xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
    android:id="@+id/MainLayout"
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:background="@drawable/back"
    android:tileMode="repeat"
>

This worked fine for me. I did not have to create the bitmap seperately. I used the tileMode attribute in the layout.