Allign one string on the left and second one on the right side of textView

Question

So I'm facing little problem with proper allign strings in my TextView. I have 2 strings (left and right) and TextView that has match_parent width. The point is that every solution I find doesn't worked (or doesn't work as I want).

So some code:

        String LeftText = "Left";
        String RightText = "Right";
        SpannableString finalString = new SpannableString(LeftText+ " " + RightText);
        finalString.setSpan(new AlignmentSpan.Standard(Layout.Alignment.ALIGN_OPPOSITE), LeftText.length() , LeftText.length() +RightText.length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

        textView.setText(finalString);

I find similar code that works here: solution that works partly but there is new line sing "\n". I noticed that If I replace " " with "\n" "right" String is on the right side of TextView but little lower (becasue of the new line sing) but I want this whole text to be in the same line. Can I do something about this?

Answer 1

If you want to achieve this in a single TextView without splitting it into two, you can try something like this:

String leftText = "Left";
String rightText = "Right";
SpannableString finalString = new SpannableString(leftText+ " " + rightText);

Drawable drawable = new ColorDrawable(Color.TRANSPARENT);

textView.getViewTreeObserver().addOnPreDrawListener(new ViewTreeObserver.OnPreDrawListener() {
    @Override
    public boolean onPreDraw() {
        textView.getViewTreeObserver().removeOnPreDrawListener(this);

        float textViewContentWidth = textView.getWidth() - textView.getPaddingStart() - textView.getCompoundPaddingEnd();
        float leftTextWidth = textView.getPaint().measureText(leftText);
        float rightTextWidth = textView.getPaint().measureText(rightText);

        drawable.setBounds(0, 0, (int)(textViewContentWidth - rightTextWidth - leftTextWidth), 1);

        finalString.setSpan(new ImageSpan(drawable, ImageSpan.ALIGN_BASELINE), leftText.length(), leftText.length() + 1, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

        textView.setText(finalString);
        return true;
    }
});

The idea is as follows (assuming that the left and right texts do not overlap):

1. Concatenate strings with a space, as in the original question.
2. Measure the distance between the left and right texts and create a transparent drawable of this width.
3. Use ImageSpan to replace the space from step 1.

Answer 2

The most reliable solution is to have two TextViews aligned in a single horizontal LinearLayout or a RelativeLayout.

Better yet, use ConstraintLayout as the root layout of your screen to avoid nested layouts.