How to add shadow to TextView on selection/focus

Question

My question is how to add a shadow to text when TextView is selected or View that TextView is in gets selected. For example I have a CheckedTextView which changes background

Answer 1

This is a current limitation of the Android SDK. I extended TextView for it to work, you can use it freely:

CustomTextView.java:

import android.widget.TextView;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.content.res.TypedArray;
import android.content.Context;

import com.client.R;


public class CustomTextView extends TextView
{

    private static String TAG = "CustomTextView";

    private ColorStateList mShadowColors;
    private float mShadowDx;
    private float mShadowDy;
    private float mShadowRadius;


    public CustomTextView(Context context)
    {
        super(context);
    }


    public CustomTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs)
    {
        super(context, attrs);
        init(context, attrs);
    }


    public CustomTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle)
    {
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
        init(context, attrs);
    }


    /**
     * Initialization process
     * 
     * @param context
     * @param attrs
     * @param defStyle
     */
    private void init(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle)
    {
        TypedArray a = context.obtainStyledAttributes(attrs, R.styleable.CustomTextView, defStyle, 0);

        final int attributeCount = a.getIndexCount();
        for (int i = 0; i < attributeCount; i++) {
            int curAttr = a.getIndex(i);

            switch (curAttr) {                  
                case R.styleable.CustomTextView_shadowColors:
                    mShadowColors = a.getColorStateList(curAttr);
                    break;

                case R.styleable.CustomTextView_android_shadowDx:
                    mShadowDx = a.getFloat(curAttr, 0);
                    break;

                case R.styleable.CustomTextView_android_shadowDy:
                    mShadowDy = a.getFloat(curAttr, 0);
                    break;

                case R.styleable.CustomTextView_android_shadowRadius:
                    mShadowRadius = a.getFloat(curAttr, 0);
                    break;  

                default:
                break;
        }
    }

        a.recycle();

        updateShadowColor();
    }

    private void updateShadowColor()
    {
        if (mShadowColors != null) {
            setShadowLayer(mShadowRadius, mShadowDx, mShadowDy, mShadowColors.getColorForState(getDrawableState(), 0));
            invalidate();
        }
    }

    @Override
    protected void drawableStateChanged()
    {
        super.drawableStateChanged();
        updateShadowColor();
    }
}

You also need to add this to your attr.xml (or create one): attr.xml:

So finally you'll be able to use it in your xmls, like this:

Where @color/btn_green_shadow_color points to a selector such a this:

If you are not familiar with how to use custom attributes (with the custom xml namespace I used), please refer to this good StackOverFlow question.