Android View shadow

Question

I searched around, and I could not find a proper way to do this. I want to have the following shadow effects on my views:

To be honest, I do not know if this second one is done by applying shadow effect. Any ideas?

Answer 1

I know this question has already been answered but I want you to know that I found a drawable on Android Studio that is very similar to the pics you have in the question: Take a look at this:

android:background="@drawable/abc_menu_dropdown_panel_holo_light"

It looks like this:

Hope it will be helpful

Edit

The option above is for the older versions of Android Studio so you may not find it. For newer versions:

android:background="@android:drawable/dialog_holo_light_frame"

Moreover, if you want to have your own custom shape, I suggest to use a drawing software like Photoshop and draw it.

Don't forget to save it as .9.png file (example: my_background.9.png)

Read the documentation: Draw 9-patch

Edit 2

An even better and less hard working solution is to use a CardView and set app:cardPreventCornerOverlap="false" to prevent views to overlap the borders:

<android.support.v7.widget.CardView
    android:id="@+id/card_view"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    app:cardCornerRadius="2dp"
    app:cardElevation="2dp"
    app:cardPreventCornerOverlap="false"
    app:contentPadding="0dp">

    <!-- your layout stuff here -->

</android.support.v7.widget.CardView>

Also make sure to have included the latest version in the build.gradle, current is

compile 'com.android.support:cardview-v7:26.0.0'

Answer 2

I'm using Android Studio 0.8.6 and I couldn't find:

android:background="@drawable/abc_menu_dropdown_panel_holo_light"

so I found this instead:

android:background="@android:drawable/dialog_holo_light_frame"

and it looks like this: