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Group views in ConstraintLayout to treat them as a single view

I need to apply some constraints to a group of views in ConstraintLayout. I want to group these views and continue editing while the layout designer in Android studio treats them as a single view. Is there a way to do so without actually wrapping the views with a ViewGroup (another layout)? If such a wrapper is necessary, maybe there is a wrapper layout that comes with ConstraintLayout and allows to group objects without creating heavy layouts like RelativeLayout?

like image 867
Yury Fedorov Avatar asked May 29 '16 07:05

Yury Fedorov


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What is a group of views that are linked together with bidirectional constraints?

Chains. A chain is a group of views linked together with bi-directional positional constraints. The aim of chains is to control the space between views and how the views use the space inside a layout.

What are views group?

ViewGroup is a collection of Views(TextView, EditText, ListView, etc..), somewhat like a container. A View object is a component of the user interface (UI) like a button or a text box, and it's also called a widget.

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A group in ConstraintLayout only contains references to the view ids and not nesting the views inside a group. With a group, you can set the visibility of all views in the group, by just setting the groups visibility without needing to set every view's visibility.

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A ConstraintLayout is a ViewGroup which allows you to position and size widgets in a flexible way. Note: ConstraintLayout is available as a support library that you can use on Android systems starting with API level 9 (Gingerbread).


3 Answers

ConstraintLayout Chains

Android developers recently released a new version of ConstraintLayout (1.0.2 as of today). This version contains a new major feature - Chains, which allows us to group views in ConstraintLayout.

Chains provide group-like behavior in a single axis (horizontally or vertically).

A set of widgets are considered a chain if they a linked together via a bi-directional connection

Once a chain is created, there are two possibilities:

  • Spread the elements in the available space
  • A chain can also be "packed", in that case the elements are grouped together

Currently, you need to use the following gradle dependency to use this feature (since it is an alpha):

 compile 'com.android.support.constraint:constraint-layout:1.0.0-alpha9'

Here you may find the newest version of ConstraintLayout to use in your projects.

Until Android Studio 2.3, Android Studio user interface designer did not support creating chains since you couldn't add bi-directional constraints in it. The solution was to create these constraints in manually XML, as mentioned by TranslucentCloud. From Android Studio 2.3 (currently only on canary channel), chains are supported in a UI editor as well (as GoRoS mentioned in comments).


Example

Following is an example of how to position two views together in the middle of a screen using ConstraintLayout and chains:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent">


    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_marginEnd="16dp"
        android:layout_marginStart="16dp"
        android:layout_marginTop="16dp"
        android:text="TextView"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/button"
        app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintVertical_bias="0.5"
        app:layout_constraintVertical_chainPacked="true"/>

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_marginBottom="16dp"
        android:layout_marginEnd="16dp"
        android:layout_marginStart="16dp"
        android:layout_marginTop="8dp"
        android:text="Button"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toBottomOf="@+id/textView"/>
</android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout>

Update (Jan, 2018) by @Mateus Gondim

In the recent versions, you should use app:layout_constraintVertical_chainStyle="packed" instead of app:layout_constraintVertical_chainPacked="true"


like image 154
Yury Fedorov Avatar answered Nov 05 '22 15:11

Yury Fedorov


You can use

android.support.constraint.Guideline

to group elements together.

Add a Guideline (vertical or horizontal) and then use that as an anchor for the other views. Here is a simple example of horizontally centering two grouped textviews: (showing design view in AS)

enter image description here

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ConstraintLayout 
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"

    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="56dp"
    android:background="@android:color/white"
    android:paddingLeft="16dp"
    android:paddingRight="16dp">


    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/top_text"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="0dp"
        android:background="@android:color/holo_red_light"
        android:textSize="16sp"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/guideline"
        android:text="Above"
        tools:text="Above" />

    <android.support.constraint.Guideline
        android:id="@+id/guideline"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:orientation="horizontal"
        app:layout_constraintGuide_percent="0.5" />

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/bottom_text"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="0dp"
        android:background="@android:color/holo_blue_bright"
        android:textSize="16sp"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toBottomOf="@+id/guideline"
        android:text="Below"
        tools:text="Below" />

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_gravity="center_vertical"
        android:text="Right vertically centered"
        android:textSize="24sp"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
        tools:text="Right vertically centered"/>
</ConstraintLayout>
like image 42
VonSchnauzer Avatar answered Nov 05 '22 15:11

VonSchnauzer


I just want to add some graphics to the great accepted answer. It is very straightforward:

In layout design view > select all the views that you want to group > right-click them > Chains > Create Horizontal Chain: enter image description here

It is also straightforward to center them:

Select the head view of the group > Organize > Pack Horizontally > set the start constraint of the first view and the end constraint of the last view to their parent: enter image description here

like image 29
Hong Avatar answered Nov 05 '22 16:11

Hong