Creating a CardView programmatically does not apply style correctly

Question

I'm trying to create a CardView from code. However, it does not seem to apply the style correctly. Here are the styles:

<style name="CardViewStyle" parent="CardView">
    <item name="android:layout_width">match_parent</item>
    <item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
    <item name="android:layout_margin">8dp</item>
</style>

<style name="Widget.CardContent" parent="android:Widget">
    <item name="android:layout_width">match_parent</item>
    <item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
    <item name="android:paddingLeft">16dp</item>
    <item name="android:paddingRight">16dp</item>
    <item name="android:paddingTop">24dp</item>
    <item name="android:paddingBottom">24dp</item>
    <item name="android:orientation">vertical</item>
</style>

In XML, it would look like this:

<android.support.v7.widget.CardView
style="@style/CardViewStyle">
    <LinearLayout
        style="@style/Widget.CardContent">
        <TextView
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Title"
            android:textAppearance="@style/TextAppearance.AppCompat.Title" />
        <TextView
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Caption"/>
    </LinearLayout>
</android.support.v7.widget.CardView>

Now I'm trying to do the exact same in Java:

CardView card = new CardView(new ContextThemeWrapper(MyActivity.this, R.style.CardViewStyle), null, 0);
LinearLayout cardInner = new LinearLayout(new ContextThemeWrapper(MyActivity.this, R.style.Widget_CardContent));

TextView tv_title = new TextView(this);
tv_title.setLayoutParams(new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(
       LinearLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT, LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT
));
tv_title.setTextAppearance(this, R.style.TextAppearance_AppCompat_Title);
tv_title.setText("Name");

TextView tv_caption = new TextView(this);
tv_caption.setLayoutParams(new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(
        LinearLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT, LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT
));
tv_caption.setText("Sus");

cardInner.addView(tv_title);
cardInner.addView(tv_caption);

Here are the results. In this image, the first CardView is created by XML. The second CardView is created programmatically. It seems that the second one does not apply parent="CardView" only, as the other properties (layout_width, layout_height, layout_margin) are correctly applied.

Answer 1

For some reason, setting the margin makes the whole thing work again.

LinearLayout.LayoutParams params = new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(
        LinearLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
        LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT
);
int margin = dpToPixel(8);
params.setMargins(margin, margin, margin, margin);
card.setLayoutParams(params);

Answer 2

I had a similar issue and this helped me: CardView has lost margin when inflating

I was passing null as the CardView's parent to View.inflate(), which meant that the xml layout_marginLeft etc parameters were being ignored.