Is there an easy way to add a border to the top and bottom of an Android View?

Question

I have a TextView and I\'d like to add a black border along its top and bottom borders. I tried adding android:drawableTop and android:drawableBottom

Answer 1

To add a 1dp white border at the bottom only and to have a transparent background you can use the following which is simpler than most answers here.

For the TextView or other view add:

android:background="@drawable/borderbottom"

And in the drawable directory add the following XML, called borderbottom.xml

If you want a border at the top, change the android:top="-2dp" to android:bottom="-2dp"

The colour does not need to be white and the background does not need to be transparent either.

The solid element may not be required. This will depend on your design (thanks V. Kalyuzhnyu).

Basically, this XML will create a border using the rectangle shape, but then pushes the top, right and left sides beyond the render area for the shape. This leaves just the bottom border visible.