Where'd padding go, when setting background Drawable?

Question

I have this issue on my EditText and Button views, where I have a nice padding for them to space away from the text, but when I change the backgrou

Answer 1

I use this pretty easy workaround I define a accentColor in my style.xml like below

<item name="colorAccent">#0288D1</item>

and then I use the either of following styles in my Button tags

style="@style/Base.Widget.AppCompat.Button.Colored"
style="@style/Base.Widget.AppCompat.Button.Small"

for Example :

<Button
    android:id="@+id/btnLink"
    style="@style/Base.Widget.AppCompat.Button.Colored"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_below="@id/tvDescription"
    android:textColor="@color/textColorPrimary"
    android:text="Visit Website" />

<Button
    android:id="@+id/btnSave"
    style="@style/Base.Widget.AppCompat.Button.Small"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_below="@id/tvDescription"
    android:layout_toRightOf="@id/btnLink"
    android:textColor="@color/textColorPrimaryInverse"
    android:text="Save" />

Answer 2

Haven't tested this super thoroughly, but this method might be of use:

    /**
 * Sets the background for a view while preserving its current padding. If the background drawable
 * has its own padding, that padding will be added to the current padding.
 * 
 * @param view View to receive the new background.
 * @param backgroundDrawable Drawable to set as new background.
 */
public static void setBackgroundAndKeepPadding(View view, Drawable backgroundDrawable) {
    Rect drawablePadding = new Rect();
    backgroundDrawable.getPadding(drawablePadding);
    int top = view.getPaddingTop() + drawablePadding.top;
    int left = view.getPaddingLeft() + drawablePadding.left;
    int right = view.getPaddingRight() + drawablePadding.right;
    int bottom = view.getPaddingBottom() + drawablePadding.bottom;

    view.setBackgroundDrawable(backgroundDrawable);
    view.setPadding(left, top, right, bottom);
}

Use this instead of view.setBackgroundDrawable(Drawable).

Answer 3

For common searcher,

just add setPadding after setBackgroudDrawable. When you change your drawable, you have to call setPadding again.

Like:

view.setBackgroundDrawable(backgroundDrawable);
view.setPadding(x, x, x, x);

The cleanest way is define your paddings inside a xml-drawable which points to the drawable-image-file

Greatings

Answer 4

Just to explain what's happening :

It's actually a feature. Layout drawables you might use as backgrounds can define a padding this way :

<layer-list
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:paddingRight="8dp"
    >
    ...
</layer-list>

This padding will be set along with the new drawable background. When there's no padding, the default value is 0.

More info from an email written by Romain Guy: https://www.mail-archive.com/android-developers@googlegroups.com/msg09595.html