setTop alternative for api under 11

Question

I've been searching for an alternative for the android.widget.ImageView.setTop# method in android which would work for api's under 11 or Honeycomb. Is such an alternative even available?

Answer 1

For anything below Honeycomb (API Level 11) you'll have to use setLayoutParams(...). you can dynamically set the position of view in Android. for example if you have an ImageView in LinearLayout of your xml file.So you can set its position through LayoutParams.But make sure to take LayoutParams according to the layout taken in your xml file.There are different LayoutParams according to the layout taken.

Here is the code to set:

 FrameLayout.LayoutParams layoutParams=new FrameLayout.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
    layoutParams.setMargins(int left, int top, int right, int bottom);
    imageView.setLayoutParams(layoutParams);

Answer 2

From android documentations: doc

Sets the top position of this view relative to its parent. This method is meant to be called by the layout system and should not generally be called otherwise, because the property may be changed at any time by the layout.

This method shouldn't be called directly, mainly because different ViewGroups have different approach to layout which makes this method not consistent (framelayout).

as @nitesh goel suggested, use Margin or padding to set the spacing between a child view and its original position in the ViewGroup. doc

Size, padding and margins The size of a view is expressed with a width and a height. A view actually possess two >pairs of width and height values.

The first pair is known as measured width and measured height. These dimensions define how big a view wants to be within its parent (see Layout for more details.) The measured dimensions can be obtained by calling getMeasuredWidth() and getMeasuredHeight().

The second pair is simply known as width and height, or sometimes drawing width and drawing height. These dimensions define the actual size of the view on screen, at drawing time and after layout. These values may, but do not have to, be different from the measured width and height. The width and height can be obtained by calling getWidth() and getHeight().

To measure its dimensions, a view takes into account its padding. The padding is expressed in pixels for the left, top, right and bottom parts of the view. Padding can be used to offset the content of the view by a specific amount of pixels. For instance, a left padding of 2 will push the view's content by 2 pixels to the right of the left edge. Padding can be set using the setPadding(int, int, int, int) or setPaddingRelative(int, int, int, int) method and queried by calling getPaddingLeft(), getPaddingTop(), getPaddingRight(), getPaddingBottom(), getPaddingStart(), getPaddingEnd().

Even though a view can define a padding, it does not provide any support for margins. However, view groups provide such a support. Refer to ViewGroup and ViewGroup.MarginLayoutParams for further information.