How to retrieve the dimensions of a view?

Question

I have a view made up of TableLayout, TableRow and TextView. I want it to look like a grid. I need to get the height and width of this grid. The methods getHeight() and getWidth() always return 0. This happens when I format the grid dynamically and also when I use an XML version.

How to retrieve the dimensions for a view?

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Here is my test program I used in Debug to check the results:

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TableLayout;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class appwig extends Activity {  
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
      setContentView(R.layout.maindemo);  //<- includes the grid called "board"
      int vh = 0;   
      int vw = 0;

      //Test-1 used the xml layout (which is displayed on the screen):
      TableLayout tl = (TableLayout) findViewById(R.id.board);  
      tl = (TableLayout) findViewById(R.id.board);
      vh = tl.getHeight();     //<- getHeight returned 0, Why?  
      vw = tl.getWidth();     //<- getWidth returned 0, Why?   

      //Test-2 used a simple dynamically generated view:        
      TextView tv = new TextView(this);
      tv.setHeight(20);
      tv.setWidth(20);
      vh = tv.getHeight();    //<- getHeight returned 0, Why?       
      vw = tv.getWidth();    //<- getWidth returned 0, Why?

    } //eof method
} //eof class

Answer 1

I believe the OP is long gone, but in case this answer is able to help future searchers, I thought I'd post a solution that I have found. I have added this code into my onCreate() method:

EDITED: 07/05/11 to include code from comments:

final TextView tv = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.image_test);
ViewTreeObserver vto = tv.getViewTreeObserver();
vto.addOnGlobalLayoutListener(new OnGlobalLayoutListener() {

    @Override
    public void onGlobalLayout() {
        LayerDrawable ld = (LayerDrawable)tv.getBackground();
        ld.setLayerInset(1, 0, tv.getHeight() / 2, 0, 0);
        ViewTreeObserver obs = tv.getViewTreeObserver();

        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.JELLY_BEAN) {
            obs.removeOnGlobalLayoutListener(this);
        } else {
            obs.removeGlobalOnLayoutListener(this);
        }
    }

});

First I get a final reference to my TextView (to access in the onGlobalLayout() method). Next, I get the ViewTreeObserver from my TextView, and add an OnGlobalLayoutListener, overriding onGLobalLayout (there does not seem to be a superclass method to invoke here...) and adding my code which requires knowing the measurements of the view into this listener. All works as expected for me, so I hope that this is able to help.