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

The currently accepted answer doesn't work. It creates thin vertical borders on the left and right sides of the view as a result of anti-aliasing.

This version works perfectly. It also allows you to set the border widths independently, and you can also add borders on the left / right sides if you want. The only drawback is that it does NOT support transparency.

Create an xml drawable named /res/drawable/top_bottom_borders.xml with the code below and assign it as a TextView's background property.

Tested on Android KitKat through Marshmallow