Is there an easy way to add a border to the top and bottom of an Android View?

Question

I have a TextView and I\'d like to add a black border along its top and bottom borders. I tried adding android:drawableTop and android:drawableBottom

Answer 1

You can also wrap the view in a FrameLayout, then set the frame's background color and padding to what you want; however, the textview, by default has a 'transparent' background, so you'd need to change the textview's background color too.

Answer 2

Just to enforce @phreakhead ´s and user1051892 ´s answers, <item android:bottom|android:left|android:right|android:top> if negative, must to be greater than <stroke android:width>. If not, item´s painting will be mixed with stroke´s painting and you may think these values are not working.

Answer 3

Simply add Views at the top and bottom of the View

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent">

    <View
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="1dp"
        android:background="@color/your_color"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/textView"
        app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="@+id/textView"
        app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="@+id/textView" />

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_marginTop="32dp"
        android:gravity="center"
        android:text="Testing"
        app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent" />

    <View
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="1dp"
        android:background="@color/your_color"
        app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="@+id/textView"
        app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="@+id/textView"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toBottomOf="@+id/textView" />

</android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout>

Answer 4

Add file to res/drawable

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
        <item android:left="-2dp" android:right="-2dp">
            <shape android:shape="rectangle">
                <stroke
                    android:width="1dp"
                    android:color="#000000" />
            </shape>
        </item>
    </layer-list>

Add link on this file to background property

Answer 5

In android 2.2 you could do the following.

Create an xml drawable such as /res/drawable/textlines.xml and assign this as a TextView's background property.

<TextView
android:text="My text with lines above and below"
android:background="@drawable/textlines"
/>

/res/drawable/textlines.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
    <item>
      <shape 
        android:shape="rectangle">
            <stroke android:width="1dp" android:color="#FF000000" />
            <solid android:color="#FFDDDDDD" />

        </shape>
   </item>

   <item android:top="1dp" android:bottom="1dp"> 
      <shape 
        android:shape="rectangle">
            <stroke android:width="1dp" android:color="#FFDDDDDD" />
            <solid android:color="#00000000" />
        </shape>
   </item>

</layer-list>

The down side to this is that you have to specify an opaque background colour, as transparencies won't work. (At least i thought they did but i was mistaken). In the above example you can see that the solid colour of the first shape #FFffffdffffd is copied in the 2nd shapes stroke colour.

Answer 6

So I wanted to do something slightly different: a border on the bottom ONLY, to simulate a ListView divider. I modified Piet Delport's answer and got this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
   <item>
      <shape 
        android:shape="rectangle">
            <solid android:color="@color/background_trans_light" />    

        </shape>
   </item>

    <!-- this mess is what we have to do to get a bottom border only. -->
   <item android:top="-2dp"
         android:left="-2dp"
         android:right="-2dp"
         android:bottom="1px"> 
      <shape 
        android:shape="rectangle">    
            <stroke android:width="1dp" android:color="@color/background_trans_mid" />
            <solid android:color="@null" />
        </shape>
   </item>

</layer-list>

Note using px instead of dp to get exactly 1 pixel divider (some phone DPIs will make a 1dp line disappear).