Including views using merge tag and ViewStub

Question

I wanted to extend my TableLayout with some additional rows through ViewStab element. This is my Activity's layout:

<TableLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:id="@+id/root_table_layout">

    <TableRow>
        <TextView
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Row 1"/>
    </TableRow>

    <TableRow>
        <TextView
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Row 2"/>
    </TableRow>

    <ViewStub
        android:id="@+id/view_stub_1"
        android:layout="@layout/merge_table_1"/>

    <ViewStub
        android:id="@+id/view_stub_2"
        android:layout="@layout/merge_table_2"/>

</TableLayout>

Either view_stub_1 or view_stub_2 is inflated on Activity onCreate (it depends on app's condition).

ViewStub was supposed to inflate a layout defined with <merge> tag as the root element. Like this:

<merge xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

    <TableRow>
        <TextView
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Row 5"/>
    </TableRow>

    <TableRow>
        <TextView
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Row 6"/>
    </TableRow>

</merge>

But when the Activity was about to start, I got this exception:

merge can be used only with a valid ViewGroup root and attachToRoot=true - worked with getLayoutInflater

Answer 1

It seems like <merge> tag is not supported by ViewStub element right now:

The only drawback of ViewStub is that it currently does not support the tag.

Romain Guy's post on layout tricks

In the end I used Activity's LayoutInflater to include additional rows into the TableLayout:

ViewGroup rootTableLayout = (ViewGroup) findViewById(R.id.root_table_layout);
getLayoutInflater().inflate(R.layout.merge_table_1, rootTableLayout, true);

Since I only wanted to attach a few TableRows at the and of the ViewGroup, this solution works. For more complicated scenario (dynamically include TableRows in the middle of a TableLayout), I still don't know what would be a proper way to do it.