What does LayoutInflater in Android do?

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android-inflate layout-inflater android
15 Answers

This class is used to instantiate layout XML file into its corresponding View objects. It is never be used directly -- use getLayoutInflater() or getSystemService(String) to retrieve a standard LayoutInflater instance that is already hooked up to the current context and correctly configured for the device you are running on. For example:

LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater)context.getSystemService
      (Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);

Reference: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/LayoutInflater.html

user_12466070

LayoutInflater is a class used to instantiate layout XML file into its corresponding view objects which can be used in Java programs. In simple terms, there are two ways to create UI in android. One is a static way and another is dynamic or programmatically. Suppose we have a simple layout main.xml having one textview and one edittext as follows.

<?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:id="@+id/layout1"
    >
<TextView
        android:id="@+id/namelabel"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Enter your name"
        android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge" >
    </TextView>
    <EditText
        android:id="@+id/name"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
        android:layout_marginTop="14dp"
        android:ems="10">
    </EditText>
</LinearLayout>

We can display this layout in static way by

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  setContentView(R.layout.main);

A dynamic way of creating a view means the view is not mentioned in our main.xml but we want to show with this in run time. For example, we have another XML in layout folder as footer.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/TextView1"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:gravity="center_horizontal"
    android:text="Add your record"
    android:textSize="24sp" >
 </TextView>

We want to show this textbox in run time within our main UI. So here we will inflate text.xml. See how:

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  setContentView(R.layout.main);
  final LayoutInflater  inflater = (LayoutInflater)getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
  TextView t = (TextView)inflater.inflate(R.layout.footer,null);

  lLayout = (LinearLayout)findViewById(R.id.layout1);
  lLayout.addView(t);

Here I have used getSystemService (String) to retrieve a LayoutInflater instance. I can use getLayoutInflator() too to inflate instead of using getSystemService (String) like below:

LayoutInflator inflater = getLayoutInflater();
TextView t = (TextView) inflater.inflate(R.layout.footer, null);
lLayout.addView(t);
user_9921240

Inflater actually some sort of convert to data, views, instances, to visible UI representation.. ..thus it make use of data feed into from maybe adapters, etc. programmatically. then integrating it with an xml you defined, that tells it how the data should be represented in UI

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