React Native - two items: one on the left, one in the center

Question

I have been struggling to align two items in the following positions: the first one should be on the left side of the row and the second element needs to be in the center of the row.

The following code below does not fully center my second element:

<View style={{flexDirection: 'row', justifyContent: 'space-between'}}>

            <View style={{ paddingLeft: 10 }}>
                <Text style={{ fontSize: 20, color: 'red', fontWeight: '200' }}>LEFT_ELEM</Text>
            </View>
            <View style={{paddingRight: 10 }}>
            <Text>
                CENTER
            </Text>
            </View>
            {/* Empty view so that space-between works? */}
            <View
                style={{paddingRight: 10 }}>
            </View>
 </View>

This was the closest I could get to the result I wanted. However, it does not do the trick. Could anyone know the best way to implement this successfully?

Answer 1

You need to add flex: 1 to parent View and children Views (all children will have flex: 1 if you want them all to be of equal size, otherwise define width/flex for each child View individually).

Try this:

      <View style={{ flex: 1, flexDirection: 'row', justifyContent: 'space-between' }}>
        <View style={{ flex: 1, paddingLeft: 10 }}>
          <Text style={{ fontSize: 20, color: 'red', fontWeight: '200' }}>LEFT_ELEM</Text>
        </View>
        <View style={{ flex: 1, paddingRight: 10 }}>
          <Text style={{ textAlign:'center' }}>CENTER</Text>
        </View>
        <View
          style={{ flex: 1, paddingRight: 10 }}>
        </View>
      </View>

Added style={{ textAlign:'center' }} to Text in center View child to give you an idea of its centered position. You can modify/remove it.

Answer 2

When I learned Android, I was told not to use too many 'layers' of components. In that philosophy, I decided to use 'absolute' property to the left element to achieve a simpler result. In this scheme, the 'left' item is almost stick to the left wall.

<View
    style={{
        height: 50,
        flexDirection: 'row', // a must
        alignItems: 'center', // to make items center vertically.
        justifyContent: 'center' // to make the second item center horizontally.
    }}
>
    <MaterialIcons
        style={[styles.titleIcon, { position: 'absolute', left: 0 }]} // on left, still center vertically.
        name='arrow-back'
        onPress={() => {
            navigation.goBack();
        }}
    />
    <Text style={styles.titleText}>{result.name}</Text> // on center automatically
</View>