Android get width returns 0

Question

I creating all of the elements in my android project dynamically. I am trying to get the width and height of the button so that I can rotate the button around. Just trying to learn how to work with the android language. However, it is returning 0. I did some research and I keep seeing that it needs to be done somewhere other than in the oncreate method. If someone could give me an example of how to do it that would be great. Here is my current code:

package com.animation;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.animation.Animation;
import android.view.animation.LinearInterpolator;
import android.view.animation.RotateAnimation;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.widget.LinearLayout;

public class AnimateScreen extends Activity {


 /** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    LinearLayout ll = new LinearLayout(this);

    LinearLayout.LayoutParams layoutParams = new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
    layoutParams.setMargins(30, 20, 30, 0);

    Button bt = new Button(this);
    bt.setText(String.valueOf(bt.getWidth()));

    RotateAnimation ra = new RotateAnimation(0,360,bt.getWidth() / 2,bt.getHeight() / 2);
    ra.setDuration(3000L);
    ra.setRepeatMode(Animation.RESTART);
    ra.setRepeatCount(Animation.INFINITE);
    ra.setInterpolator(new LinearInterpolator());

    bt.startAnimation(ra);

    ll.addView(bt,layoutParams);

    setContentView(ll);
}
}

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

You are calling getWidth() too early. The UI has not been sized and laid out on the screen yet.

I doubt you want to be doing what you are doing, anyway -- widgets being animated do not change their clickable areas, and so the button will still respond to clicks in the original orientation regardless of how it has rotated.

That being said, you can use a dimension resource to define the button size, then reference that dimension resource from your layout file and your source code, to avoid this problem.

Answer 2

Can you tell me how you did this?