How to bring view in front of everything?

Question

You can call bringToFront() on the view you want to get in the front

This is an example:

    yourView.bringToFront();

With this code in xml

 android:translationZ="90dp"

I've been looking through stack overflow to find a good answer and when i couldn't find one i went looking through the docs.

no one seems to have stumbled on this simple answer yet:

ViewCompat.setTranslationZ(view, translationZ);

default translation z is 0.0

An even simpler solution is to edit the XML of the activity. Use

android:translationZ=""

bringToFront() is the right way, but, NOTE that you must call bringToFront() and invalidate() method on highest-level view (under your root view), for e.g.:

Your view's hierarchy is:

-RelativeLayout
|--LinearLayout1
|------Button1
|------Button2
|------Button3
|--ImageView
|--LinearLayout2
|------Button4
|------Button5
|------Button6

So, when you animate back your buttons (1->6), your buttons will under (below) the ImageView. To bring it over (above) the ImageView you must call bringToFront() and invalidate() method on your LinearLayouts. Then it will work :) **NOTE: Remember to set android:clipChildren="false" for your root layout or animate-view's gradparent_layout. Let's take a look at my real code:

.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:hw="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    android:id="@+id/layout_parent"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:background="@color/common_theme_color"
    android:orientation="vertical" >

    <com.binh.helloworld.customviews.HWActionBar
        android:id="@+id/action_bar"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="@dimen/dimen_actionbar_height"
        android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
        hw:titleText="@string/app_name" >
    </com.binh.helloworld.customviews.HWActionBar>

    <RelativeLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:layout_below="@id/action_bar"
        android:clipChildren="false" >

        <LinearLayout
            android:id="@+id/layout_top"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
            android:gravity="center_horizontal"
            android:orientation="horizontal" >
        </LinearLayout>

        <ImageView
            android:id="@+id/imgv_main"
            android:layout_width="@dimen/common_imgv_height"
            android:layout_height="@dimen/common_imgv_height"
            android:layout_centerInParent="true"
            android:contentDescription="@string/app_name"
            android:src="@drawable/ic_launcher" />

        <LinearLayout
            android:id="@+id/layout_bottom"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
            android:gravity="center_horizontal"
            android:orientation="horizontal" >
        </LinearLayout>
    </RelativeLayout>

</RelativeLayout>

Some code in .java

private LinearLayout layoutTop, layoutBottom;
...
layoutTop = (LinearLayout) rootView.findViewById(R.id.layout_top);
layoutBottom = (LinearLayout) rootView.findViewById(R.id.layout_bottom);
...
//when animate back
//dragedView is my layoutTop's child view (i added programmatically) (like buttons in above example) 
dragedView.setVisibility(View.GONE);
layoutTop.bringToFront();
layoutTop.invalidate();
dragedView.startAnimation(animation); // TranslateAnimation
dragedView.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);

GLuck!

Try FrameLayout, it gives you the possibility to put views one above another. You can create two LinearLayouts: one with the background views, and one with foreground views, and combine them using the FrameLayout. Hope this helps.