Set child to have a percentage width of a parent

Question

There are 3 LinearLayout containers with horizontal orientation. The first two LinearLayout each have 4 TextView children. The third one has only 3. I have created and assigned style to all of the TextView children. Style fragment:

<item name="android:layout_width">0dp</item>
<item name="android:layout_weight">.25</item>

With this style first two rows are aligned nicely and each child TextView uses a quarter of parent's width. However TextView components in the third LinearLayout each use a third of parents width.

So components alignment is like this:

A1xxxx A2xxxx A3xxxx A4xxxx
B1xxxx B2xxxx B3xxxx B4xxxx
  C1xxxx  C2xxxx  C3xxxx

And not like this (as expected):

A1xxxx A2xxxx A3xxxx A4xxxx
B1xxxx B2xxxx B3xxxx B4xxxx
C1xxxx C2xxxx C3xxxx

Solution: I have tried manually changing android:layout_weight property for each child in the third row and if I set layout_weight of C1, C2 and C3 to 0.25 0.25 and 0.5 I get the desired alignment.

Question: I am doing something wrong since my initial solution to have each TextView have property <item name="android:layout_weight">.25</item> does not work as expected?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 21 '21 at 10:14

2

You are not doing anything wrong and the result that You are getting is expected.

You just need to add android:weightSum to 1 to the third LinearLayout. Because, by default the value of android:weightSum is set to the sum of children's layout_weight

answered Apr 21 '21 at 10:14

Bhargav Thanki

4,924
2
37
43

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 21 '21 at 10:04

Try this...

 <LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:orientation="vertical">
        <LinearLayout
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:orientation="horizontal">
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
        </LinearLayout>

        <LinearLayout
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:orientation="horizontal">
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
        </LinearLayout>
        <LinearLayout
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:orientation="horizontal">
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
            <TextView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                android:text="xhajxnuwxnu"/>
            <LinearLayout
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="match_parent"
                android:layout_weight="5"
                />
        </LinearLayout>
    </LinearLayout>

Adding 4th child in the third row and setting property `android:layout_weight="5"` is both hacky and not intuitive. My question is exactly about that - why intuitive solution (`.25`) does not work. I am not asking how to "do that" since with my (cleaner/less hacky) solution I have already achieved desired result. — user435421, Apr 21 '21 at 10:17

Set child to have a percentage width of a parent

2 Answers2