how to edit surfaceView in layout?

Question

I have the following

<SurfaceView 
    android:id="@+id/hero3"
    android:layout_width="100dp"
    android:layout_height="100dp"
    android:scaleType="centerInside"
    android:layout_marginLeft="5.33dp"
    android:layout_toRightOf="@id/hero2"
    />

inside of my layout file. How can I edit the property of the SurfaceView? or edit/draw images in it?

Answer 1

You can't draw images in a SurfaceView from a layout file. You need to get a reference of the SurfaceView from your activity like so:

SurfaceView sv = (SurfaceView) findViewById(R.id.hero3);

Additionally, you can't modify the SurfaceView specific properties of the SurfaceView from layouts. If you check out the documentation, the only XML attributes that the SurfaceView has are the ones provided by View. You can modify the SurfaceView specific properties from code using the reference above. For example:

sv.setZOrderOnTop(true);

Drawing onto a SurfaceView is a little more complex, and you should weigh the benefits of using the SurfaceView instead of a regular View. if you decide that SurfaceView is what you need, take a look at this tutorial on using SurfaceViews