Android getMeasuredHeight returns wrong values !

Question

I\'m trying to determine the real dimension in pixels of some UI elements !

Those elements are inflated from a .xml file and are initialized with dip width and height

Answer 1

Unfortunately, in Activity lifecycle methods such as Activity#onCreate(Bundle), a layout pass has not yet been performed, so you can't yet retrieve the size of views in your view hierarchy. However, you can explicitly ask Android to measure a view using View#measure(int, int).

As @adamp's answer points out, you have to provide View#measure(int, int) with MeasureSpec values, but it can be a bit daunting figuring out the correct MeasureSpec.

The following method tries to determine the correct MeasureSpec values and measures the passed in view:

public class ViewUtil {

    public static void measure(@NonNull final View view) {
        final ViewGroup.LayoutParams layoutParams = view.getLayoutParams();

        final int horizontalMode;
        final int horizontalSize;
        switch (layoutParams.width) {
            case ViewGroup.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT:
                horizontalMode = View.MeasureSpec.EXACTLY;
                if (view.getParent() instanceof LinearLayout
                        && ((LinearLayout) view.getParent()).getOrientation() == LinearLayout.VERTICAL) {
                    ViewGroup.MarginLayoutParams lp = (ViewGroup.MarginLayoutParams) view.getLayoutParams();
                    horizontalSize = ((View) view.getParent()).getMeasuredWidth() - lp.leftMargin - lp.rightMargin;
                } else {
                    horizontalSize = ((View) view.getParent()).getMeasuredWidth();
                }
                break;
            case ViewGroup.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT:
                horizontalMode = View.MeasureSpec.UNSPECIFIED;
                horizontalSize = 0;
                break;
            default:
                horizontalMode = View.MeasureSpec.EXACTLY;
                horizontalSize = layoutParams.width;
                break;
        }
        final int horizontalMeasureSpec = View.MeasureSpec
                .makeMeasureSpec(horizontalSize, horizontalMode);

        final int verticalMode;
        final int verticalSize;
        switch (layoutParams.height) {
            case ViewGroup.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT:
                verticalMode = View.MeasureSpec.EXACTLY;
                if (view.getParent() instanceof LinearLayout
                        && ((LinearLayout) view.getParent()).getOrientation() == LinearLayout.HORIZONTAL) {
                    ViewGroup.MarginLayoutParams lp = (ViewGroup.MarginLayoutParams) view.getLayoutParams();
                    verticalSize = ((View) view.getParent()).getMeasuredHeight() - lp.topMargin - lp.bottomMargin;
                } else {
                    verticalSize = ((View) view.getParent()).getMeasuredHeight();
                }
                break;
            case ViewGroup.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT:
                verticalMode = View.MeasureSpec.UNSPECIFIED;
                verticalSize = 0;
                break;
            default:
                verticalMode = View.MeasureSpec.EXACTLY;
                verticalSize = layoutParams.height;
                break;
        }
        final int verticalMeasureSpec = View.MeasureSpec.makeMeasureSpec(verticalSize, verticalMode);

        view.measure(horizontalMeasureSpec, verticalMeasureSpec);
    }

}

Then you can simply call:

ViewUtil.measure(view);
int height = view.getMeasuredHeight();
int width = view.getMeasuredWidth();

---

Alternatively, as @Amit Yadav suggested, you can use OnGlobalLayoutListener to have a listener called after the layout pass has been performed. The following is a method that handles unregistering the listener and method naming changes across versions:

public class ViewUtil {

    public static void captureGlobalLayout(@NonNull final View view,
                                           @NonNull final ViewTreeObserver.OnGlobalLayoutListener listener) {
        view.getViewTreeObserver()
                .addOnGlobalLayoutListener(new ViewTreeObserver.OnGlobalLayoutListener() {
                    @Override
                    public void onGlobalLayout() {
                        final ViewTreeObserver viewTreeObserver = view.getViewTreeObserver();
                        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.JELLY_BEAN) {
                            viewTreeObserver.removeOnGlobalLayoutListener(this);
                        } else {
                            //noinspection deprecation
                            viewTreeObserver.removeGlobalOnLayoutListener(this);
                        }
                        listener.onGlobalLayout();
                    }
                });
    }

}

Then you can:

ViewUtil.captureGlobalLayout(rootView, new ViewTreeObserver.OnGlobalLayoutListener() {
    @Override
    public void onGlobalLayout() {
        int width = view.getMeasureWidth();
        int height = view.getMeasuredHeight();
    }
});

Where rootView can be the root view of your view hierarchy and view can be any view within your hierarchy that you want to know the dimensions of.