Quick Android Development Tip: Reusing Layouts With Includes

My last few Android development posts have been kind of long (took long to write anyway), so here's a short one...

When you develop websites, you often end up with a lot of pages that all share a certain block of layout or content. You would typically handle this by making a single separate file for that global content and pulling it into the other pages via some sort of include mechanism (virtual include, <cfinclude>, etc.).

Well, you can do the same thing in Android: you can create a separate layout XML file (say, for a header or a menu bar) and then include it in your other layout files, like so:

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
	android:orientation="vertical"
	android:layout_width="fill_parent"
	android:layout_height="fill_parent"
	android:background="@color/pageColor">
	<include android:id="@+id/header" layout="@layout/main_header" />
	<ListView android:id="@+id/android:list"
	android:layout_width="wrap_content"
	android:layout_height="wrap_content"
	android:background="@color/pageColor" />
	<TextView android:id="@+id/android:empty"
	android:layout_width="fill_parent"
	android:layout_height="fill_parent"
	android:background="@color/pageColor"
	android:textColor="@color/listItemColor"
	android:text="No Events Found"/>
	</LinearLayout>

view raw layoutWithImport.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub