view_shaper

A library to help create shaped views and layouts in Android

If you can write a Path representing the shape that you need, you can use ViewShaper to clip any View following the path and draw a shadow.

This is a nice solution when the desired shape is more complex than a circle or a square and you cannot create a XML Shape to use as background of your View.

Implementation:

Create a Custom View extending ViewShaper. ViewShaper has a method abstract fun getShaper(): Shaper? which you must override to return a Shaper.

Shaper is an Inerface:

interface Shaper {
    fun getPath(width: Int, height: Int): Path
}

So a simple implementation of a custom view overriding a ViewShaper could look like this:

class WeirdViewShaper @JvmOverloads constructor(
        context: Context, attrs: AttributeSet? = null, defStyleAttr: Int = 0
) : ViewShaper(context, attrs, defStyleAttr) {

    override fun getShaper(): Shaper? {
        return object : Shaper{
            override fun getPath(width: Int, height: Int): Path {
                val centerX = width/2f
                val centerYTop = height/3f
                val centerYBottom = height - height/3f
                val right = width.toFloat()
                val bottom = height.toFloat()
                return Path().apply {
                    moveTo(0f, 0f)
                    lineTo(centerX, centerYTop)
                    lineTo(right, 0f)
                    lineTo(right, bottom)
                    lineTo(centerX, centerYBottom)
                    lineTo(0f, bottom)
                    close()
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

You now have a layout that will accept a single child (much like a ScrollView). This Single child can be a View or a ViewGroup. And you can obviously have a ViewShaper inside a ViewShaper since a ViewShaper is just a ViewGroup.

        <android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout
            android:layout_height="match_parent"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            >

            <ImageView
                android:layout_width="0dp"
                android:layout_height="0dp"
                app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
                app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
                app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
                app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
                android:background="@color/colorAccent" />

            <com.example.denais.testapplication.viewshaper.WeirdViewShaper
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
                app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
                app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
                app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
                app:padding="3dp">

                <TextView
                    android:id="@+id/bt_shadow"
                    android:text="Another shape just for the fun"
                    android:layout_height="50dp"
                    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                    android:background="@color/colorPrimary"
                    android:gravity="center"
                    android:textColor="@color/black"
                    android:padding="10dp"/>
            </com.example.denais.testapplication.viewshaper.WeirdViewShaper>

        </android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout>

Install:

This library is available using jitpack.

Step 1. Add the JitPack repository to your build file.

Add it in your root build.gradle at the end of repositories:

allprojects {
	repositories {
		...
		maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
	}
}

Step 2. Add the dependency

dependencies {
        implementation 'com.github.fievx:view_shaper:v1.0.0'
}

Note

The idea for this library came when I hade to create a custom view shaped as a movie ticket. I realised that the usual methods were not sufficient for my needs.

You can find my research and thought process in a blog post I wrote when working on this custom view and library. https://medium.com/@denais.jeremy/shaping-views-in-android-cheat-sheet-fd4687f5da5a