Add rounded corners when having android:drawableLeft with png

Question

To make it short, this is what I would like to add a custom button that looks like this:

IMG is a .png file in my mipmap folders and SOME TEXT is just a string value. What the dashed line is added just as a separator in the image, not in the button. The issue is that the rounded edges don't appear where the image is added. It looks like this:

My questions are the following:

1. Can this be achieved?
2. Is there a way to override the <solid /> attribute in <shape />? I will have to create 10 of these buttons each with different colors and if I add android:color with a different value, the color does not change
3. When adding the image, it makes me choose only one (e.g. the mdpi one). If this will be displayed on larger screens, will it take a different .png image based on the size?
4. Is there a specific type of button I should use? I would like to revert the colors when the button is pressed and stay as pressed. I have a vague idea about how this can be achieved, but is there a way to do this for the .png files as well or do I need to import into the project others with the colors already inverted and just switch them?

custom_button.xml

<shape 
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:shape="rectangle">

<corners
    android:topLeftRadius="250px"
    android:bottomLeftRadius="250px"
    android:topRightRadius="50px"
    android:bottomRightRadius="50px" />
<solid
    android:color="@color/YellowPrimary"/>
</shape>

button_styles.xml

<resources>

<style name="CategoryToggle">
    <item name="android:background">@drawable/custom_button</item>
    <item name="android:textAllCaps">true</item>
</style>

<style name="CategoryToggle.First">
    <item name="android:color">@color/bluePrimary</item> // Does not override <solid>
    <item name="android:drawableLeft">@mipmap/icon_48mdpi</item>
    <item name="android:text">@string/first_cat</item>
</style>
</resources>

button_layout.xml

<android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">

<Button
    style="@style/CategoryToggle.History"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_marginTop="8dp"
    android:layout_marginEnd="8dp"
    app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent" />


</android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout>

I have no java code at the moment as I just started and trying to implement this weird button format.

This is how it looks at my end:

Answer 1

1. Absolutely. As I mentioned in the comments, either make sure your drawable has a transparent background, or create a custom button to mask the drawable.
2. You'll want to use a style attribute apply a different style to each button. By this I mean the color defined in your custom_button.xml should reference a color attribute (something like colorAccent should work in your case), instead of a static color.

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:shape="rectangle">
    <solid android:color="?attr/colorAccent"/>
</shape>

Then change this color in your button styles instead of android:color.

<style name="CategoryToggle">
    <item name="colorAccent">@color/YellowPrimary</item>
</style>

Make sure you have the support library dependency added, or colorAccent will not be available.

Use the android:theme attribute, instead of the style attribute to apply the button theme.

<Button
    android:width="wrap_content"
    android:height="wrap_content"
    android:theme="@style/CategoryToggle"/>

3. It looks like your drawables are not using resource qualifiers. You'll need to make sure each alternative resource has the exact same name as the original (i.e. your icon_48mdpi.png should instead be called icon_48dp.png for all configurations) and is placed in the corresponding drawable folder for its density. Your drawable resources should look like the following (in the Project view structure, not the Android view structure).

res/
|-- drawable/
|   +-- custom_button.xml
|-- drawable-hdpi/
|   +-- icon_48dp.png
|-- drawable-mdpi/
|   +-- icon_48dp.png
|-- drawable-xhdpi/
|   +-- icon_48dp.png
|-- drawable-xxhdpi/
|   +-- icon_48dp.png
|-- drawable-xxxhpdi/
|   +-- icon_48dp.png
~

4. To change the color of a drawable based on state, you will need to abstract your color one step further and create a color state list.

res/color/button_color_selector.xml

<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:color="@color/pressed_color" android:state_pressed="true"/>
    <item android:color="@color/focused_color" android:state_focused="true"/>
    <item android:color="@color/state_hovered" android:state_hovered="true"/>
    <item android:color="?attr/colorAccent"/>
</selector>

Then you can use this color resource in your shape drawable instead of colorAccent.

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:shape="rectangle">
    <solid android:color="@color/button_color_selector"/>
</shape>

You can also make each of the colors in your color state list a styleable attribute by defining custom attributes and referencing those attributes in your styles. I won't go into that further for the sake of brevity though.

You can do this for drawables similarly by creating a state list drawable.

---

Lastly, you'll want to get into the habit of using dp instead of px unless you are absolutely certain you want to use px. This will prevent strange appearances at different screen densities.

Answer 2

On 4 "is there a way to (revert colors when pressed) for the .png files".. yes there are ways.

The by-the-book option is to use xml styles to specify different drawables for different button states. Consider ImageButton which has an example of this in its docs: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ImageButton.html

Another option is to apply tints or other filters to the drawable in your own code in button interaction callbacks. Compared to using different drawables, in this approach you add custom code instead of leveraging builtin resources, so you may wind up testing and debugging more on different devices, and you get full control so you can do custom animations and other elaborate things that may not fit well into Android resource tooling. Can checkout setColorFilter for starters: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ImageView.html#setColorFilter(int,%20android.graphics.PorterDuff.Mode)

Thanks for adding some code and images or your problem, helps in understanding it.

Answer 3

Big shout out to Bryan for his insight on this matter. It led me to the paths I needed to follow in order to solve this issue. I am posting this answer so that others with similar cases will know the steps. Although I have quite a number of files, this procedure did the trick perfectly.

1. I have my custom button as described in the link provided by Bryan.

For the rest I have the following:

Change the text color: button_text_color.xml

<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:color="@color/redPrimary" android:state_pressed="true"/>
    <item android:color="@color/redDark"/>
</selector>

Change the background: button_background.xml

<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:state_pressed="true">
        <shape android:shape="rectangle">
            <corners android:bottomLeftRadius="400dp" android:radius="100dp" android:topLeftRadius="400dp" />
            <solid android:color="@color/redDark" />
        </shape>
    </item>
    <item android:state_enabled="true">
        <shape android:shape="rectangle">
            <corners android:bottomLeftRadius="400dp" android:radius="100dp" android:topLeftRadius="400dp" />
            <solid android:color="@color/redPrimary" />
        </shape>
    </item>
</selector>

Change the drawable: button_drawable.xml

<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/ic_button_inverted" android:state_pressed="true" />
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/ic_button"/>
</selector>

button_style.xml

<style name="MyButtonStyle">
        <item name="android:background">@drawable/button_background</item>
        <item name="android:drawableLeft">@drawable/button_drawable</item>
    <item name="android:text">@string/button_text</item>
    <item name="android:textColor">@color/button_text_color</item>
</style>

Implementing it in main_layout.xml

<packagename.MyCustomButton xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
            android:id="@+id/myButton"
            style="@style/MyBUttonStyle"
            android:layout_marginBottom="8dp" />

Answer 4

Just use the official library.
Add the MaterialButton component using these attributes:

• app:icon to add the icon
• app:iconGravity to decide the position of the icon
• app:iconPadding to increase/decrease the space between the icon and the text
• android:paddingLeft the padding between the edge and the icon

<com.google.android.material.button.MaterialButton
    android:paddingLeft="2dp"
    app:icon="@drawable/ic_add_24px"
    app:iconGravity="start"
    app:iconPadding="4dp"
    app:shapeAppearanceOverlay="@style/ShapeAppearanceOverlay.Button.RoundedRight"
    .../>

With the app:shapeAppearanceOverlay you can customize the shape of the component.

  <style name="ShapeAppearanceOverlay.Button.RoundedRight" parent="">
    <item name="cornerFamily">rounded</item>
    <item name="cornerSizeTopRight">4dp</item>
    <item name="cornerSizeBottomRight">4dp</item>
    <item name="cornerSizeTopLeft">16dp</item>
    <item name="cornerSizeBottomLeft">16dp</item>
  </style>

You can obtain the same result using a style.