Set style for TextView programmatically

Question

I do not believe you can set the style programatically. To get around this you can create a template layout xml file with the style assigned, for example in res/layout create tvtemplate.xml as with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="This is a template"
        style="@style/my_style" />

then inflate this to instantiate your new TextView:

TextView myText = (TextView)getLayoutInflater().inflate(R.layout.tvtemplate, null);

Hope this helps.

You can create a generic style and re-use it on multiple textviews like the one below:

textView.setTextAppearance(this, R.style.MyTextStyle);

Edit: this refers to Context

You can pass a ContextThemeWrapper to the constructor like this:

TextView myText = new TextView(new ContextThemeWrapper(MyActivity.this, R.style.my_style));

You can set the style in the constructor (but styles can not be dynamically changed/set).

View(Context, AttributeSet, int) (the int is an attribute in the current theme that contains a reference to a style)

Answer from Romain Guy

reference

Parameter int defStyleAttr does not specifies the style. From the Android documentation:

defStyleAttr - An attribute in the current theme that contains a reference to a style resource that supplies default values for the view. Can be 0 to not look for defaults.

To setup the style in View constructor we have 2 possible solutions:

1. With use of ContextThemeWrapper:

   ContextThemeWrapper wrappedContext = new ContextThemeWrapper(yourContext, R.style.your_style);
   TextView textView = new TextView(wrappedContext, null, 0);
   

2. With four-argument constructor (available starting from LOLLIPOP):

   TextView textView = new TextView(yourContext, null, 0, R.style.your_style);
   

Key thing for both solutions - defStyleAttr parameter should be 0 to apply our style to the view.

Dynamically changing styles is not supported (yet). You have to set the style before the view gets created, via XML.

The accepted answer was great solution for me. The only thing to add is about inflate() method.

In accepted answer all android:layout_* parameters will not be applied.

The reason is no way to adjust it, cause null was passed as ViewGroup parent.

You can use it like this:

View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.view, parent, false);

and the parent is the ViewGroup, from where you like to adjust android:layout_*.

In this case, all relative properties will be set.

Hope it'll be useful for someone.