Develop Reference

Change ImageView to TextView in GridView based on user input

I am developing an android app as an educational project. I have created a GridView object, which uses a custom GridAdapter. The grid, as default, loads a set of placeholder images. I want the user to be able to replace those placeholder images with either their own image, some text, or a link to a youtube video.
I can't find any info on whether this is feasible. I specify an Imageview in my XML file, so I don't know how I could change this at run time? I wondered if I should create a TextView object in the XML, and layer them, and then create a method that brings one to the front? Any advice at all would be very much appreciated. It would be great to know if it's doable or not.....
<ImageView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:id="#+id/imageView"
android:layout_centerInParent="true"
/>

My suggestion is define TextView etc. in xml with gone visibility. When user has some actions get visible them and set visibility gone of ImageView.

Set the visibilities of the container based on user input... What ever user chooses make tat container visible and other two as Gone... This would work

How do I convert a bunch of linear layouts to one relative layout

I have been trying to learn how to use relative layouts in Android Studios. I have only made layouts with a bunch of linear layouts inside of them and all of the tutorials I have seen display how to put a text view in the top right corner, center, bottom left etc...but I want to know how I can place things in any location to convert a bunch of linear layouts to one relative layout(example: Place something 1/3 down the parent view) and things like that but I have had no luck finding information on that. Thanks to anyone who helps in advanced!

If you want to use Relativelayout and Linearlayout futures you can use PercentRelativelayout like this
<android.support.percent.PercentRelativeLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
<ImageView
app:layout_widthPercent="50%"
app:layout_heightPercent="50%"
app:layout_marginTopPercent="25%"
app:layout_marginLeftPercent="25%"/>
</android.support.percent.PercentFrameLayout>
you need dependency of it
compile 'com.android.support:percent:24.1.1'

The thing which you want to achieve is more possible from LinearLayout, as it supports "weight" property.
RelativeLayout on the other side, as the name suggests lets you to place your views in relation to other views or parent.

Android Vertical Switch Widget

Using android, I'd like to get a vertical switch widget implementation in place. As far as I can tell, it looks like switches only have a horizontal orientation. I'd like to have something like the following:
After looking through the threads here and searching google, I have yet to find something that can give me this. Everything I search for gives me the horizontal implementation only.
so I can generate your typical horizontal switch
<Switch
android:id="#+id/switch_button"
android:layout_width="130dp"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignLeft="#+id/label"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:switchMinWidth="130dp"
android:thumb="#drawable/switch_selector"
android:track="#drawable/track_selector" >
</Switch>
but there doesn't seem to be a good way to set the orientation. I know that the question is a bit high level. Is there some attribute that is immediately available that will allow me to have a vertical switch? Or will I have to create a custom switch and possibly modify the onDraw method so that it is flipped vertically? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Try android:rotation="90" like this:
<Switch
android:id="#+id/switch_button"
android:layout_width="130dp"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignLeft="#+id/label"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:switchMinWidth="130dp"
android:thumb="#drawable/switch_selector"
android:track="#drawable/track_selector"
android:rotation="90">
</Switch>

There is no quick attribute for vertical orientation.. Sorry :)
First you can look at the code of the switch and see if you can copy and manipulate it.
Second you can just implement your on. Have a layout with a button inside it. use onTouchListener to slide it from side to side. No need to use "onDraw".

Try toggle button witch graphics and use pictures like this You included in Your post. Here is example of such toggle buttons: Toggle button using two image on different state

How to create a Layout were I can place anything where I want?

I'm designing an app with many images, buttons and textViews strewn across the screen. At the moment I am using the relative layout as it seemed the most flexible of the lot. However were I place my elements and their size is still restricted to being aligned with other elements. Even worse if an element changes size any elements aligned to it will also change size.
There must be a simple solution to this! Apple's nib files perform this so easily with an effortless drag and drop to any location; yet android appears to be stuck with restrictive table/linear/relative/grid layouts.
If possible can the solution be performed via eclipse. If not please guide me to the relevant documentation to learn to create my own layouts via xml, create a huge grid layout or whatever horrors await me :)
Thanks

I think what you want is something like an absolute layout tho these were deprecated a while ago, Im pretty sure you can still do this via a Relative layout, you don't necessarily need to align the via with another view, I guess you could just do something like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/imageView1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_marginLeft="70dp"
android:layout_marginTop="82dp"
android:src="#drawable/ic_launcher" />
<ImageView
android:id="#+id/imageView2"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:layout_marginBottom="172dp"
android:layout_marginRight="84dp"
android:src="#drawable/ic_launcher" />
</RelativeLayout>
all I'm doing here is aligning it with the side of the parent and having a margin between it

You can do what you ask with a Frame Layout and setting the position of each object. But do so at your own risk. The reason Apple nib files let you arbitrarily place objects is taht the aspect ratio of all their devices is the same. So your layouts just scale up and down evenly.
Android is a more diverse ecosystem, and you should try to embrace layouts that adapt to different screen sizes and orientations.

Take a look at Android custom layout and Android - How to draw a letter at a specific point?
Are you planning to only use the app on a single android device model? If yes, check AbsoluteLayout's Alternatives. (FrameLayout or RelativeLayout)
It's not a good idea to put "Anything Anywhere you want" since Android devices have a lot of different screen sizes and properties. The only option would be to define your own custom layout.
I actually really like the way Android tries to make your layout compatible with as much devices as it can using alignment and structured layout views.
The reason it's simple for Apple is that you're only targeting iPhone, which has a fixed screen properties accross all devices.
Hope it helps. Good luck.

GridView: How can I get rid of extra space from my GirdView object?

I'm writing an application for Android phones for Human vs. Human chess play over the internet. I was looking at some tutorials, to learn how to develop Android applications and found a very nice example of making galleries (it was a GridView usage example for making a gallery about dogs) and the idea came to draw the chess table using a GridView, because the example project also handled the point & click event and I intended to use the same event in the same way, but for a different purpose. The game works well (currently it's a hotseat version), however, I'm really frustrated by the fact that whenever I rotate the screen of the phone, my GridView gets hysterical and puts some empty space in my chess table between the columns. I realized that the cause of this is that the GridView's width is the same as its parent's and the GridView tries to fill its parent in with, but there should (and probably is) be a simple solution to get rid of this problem. However, after a full day of researching, I haven't found any clue to help me to make a perfect drawing about my chess table without a negative side effect in functionality.
The chess table looks fine if the phone is in Portrait mode, but in Landscape mode it's far from nice.
This is how I can decide whether we are in Portrait or Landscape mode:
((((MainActivity)mContext).getWindow().getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getWidth()) < ((MainActivity)mContext).getWindow().getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getHeight())
In the main.xml file the GridView is defined in the following way:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
>
<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="8"
android:verticalSpacing="0dp"
android:horizontalSpacing="0dp"
android:stretchMode="columnWidth"
android:gravity="center"
>
</GridView>
...
</LinearLayout>
I appreciate any help with the problem and thank you for reading this.
Portrait: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?f388b3ec64.png
Landscape: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?ee790603a2.png

A GridView probably isn't what you want here. GridView, like ListView, is for efficiently presenting scrolling, unbounded data sets. A chess board is neither. Populating a TableLayout programmatically is probably what you want instead.
The reason your GridLayout doesn't seem to be honoring android:layout_width="wrap_content" is that since GridView is meant for displaying unbounded data where each item can have a different size, it doesn't trust that items have a uniform width that can be reasonably measured. (If an adapter has 10,000 items, should GridView measure all of them to determine the correct column width?)
If you're going to try to keep using GridView for this anyway (which you shouldn't), try setting an explicit value for android:layout_width rather than wrap_content. This will stop the GridView from expanding to fill the available space. You can also use alternate layouts for different screen orientations using the resource system as described here. Alternatively you can disable landscape mode using android:screenOrientation="portrait" on the activity tag in your manifest. ;)

The problem is simply solvable using the setPadding method of your GridView object.