After a little bit of hunting around I found this tutorial, and I thought I'd clean up the lessons within and show you how.
Here's the contents of my main.xml layout file,
<?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="@drawable/backrepeat"
android:gravity="center_horizontal"
>
<TextView
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="@string/hello"
/> </LinearLayout>
which is referenced in code in the standard way like this:
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
...// (rest of onCreate method continues here..)Now note this line:
android:background="@drawable/backrepeat"What's going on there?
.. Glad you asked!
Here's a quick screenshot of the contents of one of my drawable folders in my project:
What is this
backrepeat.xml?Well, here's the contents of that file here:
<bitmap
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:src="@drawable/scale1"
android:tileMode="repeat"
android:dither="true" />
Can you see what's going on?
Backrepeat.xml defines an instance of the BitmapDrawable class, and that class references our simple scale1.jpg, located in the drawable-hdpi folder.
Simply by adding the:
<bitmap
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:src="@drawable/scale1"
android:tileMode="repeat"
android:dither="true" />
line in bold, we are able to achieve results such as this:
Easy isn't it?
One thing to keep in mind is that you should have folders drawable-hdpi, drawable-mdpi & drawable-ldpi, you'll need to add this backrepeat.xml file and the relevant images to each of these to allow this functionality in high, medium and low dpi (dots per inch) screen sizes.
Enjoy.
