Removing the extra padding in a GridView in android

Question

I want to remove the extra padding that appears in a grid view. I have images of the size 128*128 which will be occupying cells in the grid. But somehow there is an extra space that gets added to the contents of the grid.

After some research, I was able to determine that I have to override the listSelector property of the grid view. Now here's my question - I know I have to specify something like an xml drawable here, but what to specify in that?? I tried using a shape drawable with padding and stroke set to 0dp to no avail.

The question is asked and answered here, but they haven't given what the drawable must contain.

Can some one help me with this. Thanks!

EDIT: Ok - here's a copy of the UI that I have. And the XML layout for the same is as follows:

<GridView android:id="@+id/GV_A2ZMenu" android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:numColumns="4"
            android:layout_gravity="top" android:stretchMode="columnWidth"
    android:gravity="center" android:listSelector="@null" />

And I am using a BaseAdapter class to populate the gridView. Here's its code:

public class AtoZMenu extends BaseAdapter {

private static Context AppC;

private Integer[] MenuImg = { R.drawable.alphabet_a, R.drawable.alphabet_b,
        R.drawable.alphabet_c, R.drawable.alphabet_d,
        R.drawable.alphabet_e, R.drawable.alphabet_f,
        R.drawable.alphabet_g, R.drawable.alphabet_h,
        R.drawable.alphabet_i, R.drawable.alphabet_j,
        R.drawable.alphabet_k, R.drawable.alphabet_l,
        R.drawable.alphabet_m, R.drawable.alphabet_n,
        R.drawable.alphabet_o, R.drawable.alphabet_p,
        R.drawable.alphabet_q, R.drawable.alphabet_r,
        R.drawable.alphabet_s, R.drawable.alphabet_t,
        R.drawable.alphabet_u, R.drawable.alphabet_v,
        R.drawable.alphabet_w, R.drawable.alphabet_x,
        R.drawable.alphabet_y, R.drawable.alphabet_z };

public AtoZMenu(Context C) {
    AppC = C;
}

public int getCount() {
    return MenuImg.length;
}

public Object getItem(int position) {
    return null;
}

public long getItemId(int position) {
    return 0;
}

public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
    ImageView IV;
    float density = AppC.getResources().getDisplayMetrics().density;

    if (convertView == null) {
        IV = new ImageView(AppC);
        IV.setMaxHeight((int) (1));
    } else {
        IV = (ImageView) convertView;
    }
    IV.setImageResource(MenuImg[position]);
    return IV;
}
 }

Can you spot the mistake?

Note: In the end I ended up implementing a similar screen in a table layout which renders much better grids.

Answer 1

Yep, I've had the same problem. You want to set the listSelector to @null:

<!-- Setting the listSelector to null removes the 5px border -->
<GridView
    android:id="@+id/view"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:listSelector="@null" />

Also, try the following:

myGridView.setStretchMode(GridView.STRETCH_COLUMN_WIDTH);

I see you can do this in the XML, but I didn't when I had this same problem; not sure why.

I also hard-coded the key height:

float density = getContext().getResources().getDisplayMetrics().density;
mKeyHeight = (int) (56 * density);
....
@Override
public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
    ImageButton b = (ImageButton) convertView;
    if (b == null) {
        b = new ImageButton(getContext());
        b.setMinimumHeight(mKeyHeight);
        b.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.btn_keyboard_key);
        b.setOnClickListener(this);
    }
}

Sorry about not giving a precise answer, so let me know if you still need help after that.

Answer 2

The correct answer is to set android:listSelector to @android:color/transparent, as user mvds said here.

Answer 3

I used a variation of Shawn's solution.. it looks nice on the Emulator.

1) Decide on the # of columns, I chose 4

2) Set the Column Width

float xdpi = this.getResources().getDisplayMetrics().xdpi;
int mKeyHeight = (int) ( xdpi/4 );

GridView gridView = (GridView) findViewById(R.id.gridview); 
gridView.setColumnWidth( mKeyHeight );// same Height & Width

3) Setup the image in your adapter's getView method

imageView = new ImageView( mContext );
// (xdpi-4) is for internal padding
imageView.setLayoutParams(new GridView.LayoutParams( (int) (xdpi-4)/2, (int) (xdpi-4)/2));
imageView.setScaleType( ImageView.ScaleType.CENTER_CROP );
imageView.setPadding(1, 1, 1, 1);

4) Layout

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <GridView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" 
    android:id="@+id/gridview"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:numColumns="4"
    android:verticalSpacing="0dp"
    android:horizontalSpacing="0dp"
    android:gravity="center"
    android:listSelector="@null"
/>
<!-- 
    android:columnWidth="90dp"  Specified in code 
    android:stretchMode="columnWidth" no noticable change
-->

That's it.

Answer 4

Even I had the same problem. Try this:

image.setLayoutParams(new GridView.LayoutParams(imageWidth , imageHeight)); imageView.setScaleType(ImageView.ScaleType.FIT_XY);.

Add padding accordingly for the images.It worked for me.