How to set default text in TextView to see it in the layout preview while binding?

Question

So I would like to see my layout preview with the fields filled with something like default placeholders but if I use bindings the settext attribute is already used and the fields are showing empty since there is no info from the models yet.

<TextView
                android:id="@+id/tv_user_name"
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_gravity="center"
                android:layout_margin="5dp"
                android:gravity="center"
                **android:text="@{showBlueportSpotViewModel.name}"**
                android:textAllCaps="true"
                android:textSize="20sp"
                android:textStyle="bold"/>

I tried this:

android:text="@{showBlueportSpotViewModel.name ?? @string/blueport_placeholder_name}"

but I still see the view empty.

Do you guys any workaround? I guess once a workaround is found, it can be used to ImageView and src for example and etc..

Thank you!

Answer 1

You can use the tools attribute to define properties that will appear in the layout preview but will not appear when you run the app.

Add the following to your root view:

xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"

Then use the tools attribute to define text that will only appear in the layout preview:

tools:text="placeholder text"

The tools attribute is very useful when mocking up views in the editor. All of the tools attributes are stripped when the app is packaged. More information here: http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/tools-attributes