Android Tutorial - Android Dimension Resources

Pixels, inches, and points are all examples of dimensions that can play a part in XML layouts or Java code.

Example

The following code shows you can use dimension resources in XML.

<resources>
    <dimen name="mysize_in_pixels">1px</dimen>
    <dimen name="mysize_in_dp">5dp</dimen>
    <dimen name="medium_size">100sp</dimen>
</resources>

You can specify the dimensions in any of the following units:

px: Pixels
in: Inches
mm: Millimeters
pt: Points
dp: Density-independent pixels based on a 160dpi screen
sp: Scale-independent pixels

The following code shows how to access the defined Dimension Resources.

float dimen = activity.getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.mysize_in_pixels);

mysize_in_pixels is defined in the resource file above.

Use Dimension Resources in XML

The following code has the definition for Dimension Resources in XML.

<resources>
    <dimen name="mysize_in_pixels">1px</dimen>
    <dimen name="mysize_in_dp">5dp</dimen>
    <dimen name="medium_size">100sp</dimen>
</resources>

The following xml layout resource references the dimensions defined above.

<TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent"
          android:layout_height="wrap_content"
          android:textSize="@dimen/medium_size"/>