Android - TextView Control

A TextView displays text to the user and optionally allows them to edit it. A TextView is a complete text editor, however the basic class is configured to not allow editing.

TextView Attributes

Following are the important attributes related to TextView control. You can check Android official documentation for complete list of attributes and related methods which you can use to change these attributes are run time.

Example

This example will take you through simple steps to show how to create your own Android application using Linear Layout and TextView.

Following is the content of the modified main activity file src/com.example.demo/MainActivity.java. This file can include each of the fundamental lifecycle methods.

package com.example.demo;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.TextView;
import android.widget.Toast;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {
   @Override
   protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
      setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
      
      //--- text view---
      TextView txtView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.text_id);
   }
}

Following will be the content of res/layout/activity_main.xml file −

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
   android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="match_parent"
   android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
   android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
   android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
   android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
   tools:context=".MainActivity" >
   
   <TextView
      android:id="@+id/text_id"
      android:layout_width="300dp"
      android:layout_height="200dp"
      android:capitalize="characters"
      android:text="hello_world"
      android:textColor="@android:color/holo_blue_dark"
      android:textColorHighlight="@android:color/primary_text_dark"
      android:layout_centerVertical="true"
      android:layout_alignParentEnd="true"
      android:textSize="50dp"/>

</RelativeLayout>

Following will be the content of res/values/strings.xml to define two new constants −

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
   <string name="app_name">demo</string>
</resources>

Following is the default content of AndroidManifest.xml −

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   package="com.example.demo" >
   
      
   <application
      android:allowBackup="true"
      android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
      android:label="@string/app_name"
      android:supportsRtl="true"
      android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >
      
      <activity
         android:name="com.example.demo.MainActivity"
         android:label="@string/app_name" >
      
         <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
         </intent-filter>
         
      </activity>
      
   </application>
</manifest>

Let's try to run your demo application. I assume you had created your AVD while doing environment setup. To run the app from Android studio, open one of your project's activity files and click Run icon from the toolbar. Android studio installs the app on your AVD and starts it and if everything is fine with your setup and application, it will display following Emulator window −

Exercise

I will recommend to try above example with different attributes of TextView in Layout XML file as well at programming time to have different look and feel of the TextView. Try to make it editable, change to font color, font family, width, textSize etc and see the result. You can also try above example with multiple TextView controls in one activity.

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