Android TextView with Examples

In android, TextView is a user interface control which is used to set and display the text to the user based on our requirements. The TextView control will act as like label control and it won’t allow users to edit the text.

In android, we can create a TextView control in two ways either in XML layout file or create it in Activity file programmatically.

Create a TextView in Layout File

Following is the sample way to define TextView control in XML layout file in android application.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:orientation="vertical">
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView1"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_marginBottom="10dp"
        android:text="Welcome to Tutlane"
        android:textColor="#86AD33"
        android:textSize="20dp"
        android:textStyle="bold" />
</LinearLayout>

If you observe above code snippet, here we defined a TextView control in xml layout file to display the text in android application.

Create a TextView in Activity File

In android, we can create a TextView control programmatically in activity file based on our requirements. 

Following is the example of creating a TextView control dynamically in activity file.

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        LinearLayout linearLayout =  (LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.linearlayout);
        TextView textView = new TextView(this);
        textView.setText("Welcome to Tutlane");
        linearLayout.addView(textView);
    }
}

Set the Text of Android TextView

In android, we can set the text of TextView control either while declaring it in Layout file or by using setText() method in Activity file.

Following is the example to set the text of TextView control while declaring it in XML Layout file.

<TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView1"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Welcome to Tutlane" />

If you observe above example we used android:text property to the set required text for TextView control in XML Layout file.

Following is another way to set the text of textview control programmatically in activity file using setText() method.

TextView tv = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textView1);
tv.setText("Welcome to Tutlane");

If you observe above code snippet, we are getting the TextView control which we defined in XML layout file using id property and setting the text using setText() method.

Android TextView Attributes

Following are the some of commonly used attributes related to TextView control in android applications.

Attribute	Description
android: id	It is used to uniquely identify the control
android:autoLink	It will automatically found and convert urls and email addresses as a clickable links.
android: ems	It is used to make the textview be exactly this many ems wide.
android:hint	It is used to display the hint text when text is empty
android:width	It makes the TextView be exactly this many pixels wide.
android:height	It makes the TextView be exactly this many pixels tall.
android:text	It is used to display the text.
android:textColor	It is used to change the color of text.
android:gravity	It is used to specify how to align the text by the view's x and y axis.
android:maxWidth	It is used to make the TextView be at most this many pixels wide.
android:minWidth	It is used to make the TextView be at least this many pixels wide.
android:textSize	It is used to specify the size of text.
android:textStyle	It is used to change the style (bold, italic, bolditalic) of text.
android:textAllCaps	It is used to present the text in all CAPS
android:typeface	It is used to specify the Typeface (normal, sans, serif, monospace) for the text.
android:textColor	It is used to change the color of text.
android:textColorHighlight	It is used to change the color of text selection highlight.
android:textColorLink	It is used to change the text color of links.
android:inputType	It is used to specify the type of text being placed in a text fields.
android:fontFamily	It is used to specify the fontFamily for the text.
android:editable	If we set, it specifies that this TextView has an input method.

Android TextView Example

Following is the example of using TextView control in android application.

Create a new android application using android studio and give names as TextViewExample. In case if you are not aware of creating an app in android studio check this article Android Hello World App.

Now open an activity_main.xml file from \res\layout path and write the code like as shown below

activity_main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:layout_marginTop="10dp"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:padding="10dp">
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView1"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_marginBottom="10dp"
        android:text="Welcome to Tutlane"
        android:textColor="#86AD33"
        android:textSize="20dp"
        android:textStyle="bold" />
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView2"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_marginBottom="15dp"
        android:textAllCaps="true" />
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView3"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Welcome to Tutlane"
        android:textStyle="bold"
        android:textColor="#fff"
        android:background="#7F3AB5"
        android:layout_marginBottom="15dp"/>
    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView4"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:autoLink="email|web"
        android:text="For more details visit http://tutlane.com and send mail to support@tutlane.com" />
</LinearLayout>

Once we are done with creation of layout with required controls, we need to load the XML layout resource from our activity onCreate() callback method, for that open main activity file MainActivity.java from \java\com.tutlane.textviewexample path and write the code like as shown below.

MainActivity.java

package com.tutlane.textviewexample;import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;import android.os.Bundle;import android.widget.TextView;
public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        TextView tv = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textView2);
        tv.setText("Welcome to Tutlane");
    }
}

If you observe above code we are calling our layout using setContentView method in the form of R.layout.layout_file_name. Here our xml file name is activity_main.xml so we used file name activity_main and we are setting text to one of our TextView control (textView2) in our activity file.

Generally, during the launch of our activity, onCreate() callback method will be called by android framework to get the required layout for an activity.

Output of Android TextView Example

When we run above example using android virtual device (AVD) we will get a result like as shown below.

This is how we can use TextView control in android applications to set and display the text based on our requirements.