angle attribute in android gradient

Question

I am going through test example. Where for some Image background they are using gradient, the code goes like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>


  <shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <gradient
        android:startColor="#ff0000"
        android:centerColor="#00ff00"
        android:endColor="#0000ff"
        android:angle="180"/>
    <corners android:radius="5dp" />
   </shape>

In the above xml I didn't get angle attribute. but when I change the value of angle slightly the pattern slants. Can anyone explain me how exactly it works?

Answer 1

Gradient basically represents the variation in space(in a direction) of any quantity. With color it represents the variation of color intensity in a direction represented by angle. Here are some diagrams to represent this concept:

Here the figure shows the color variation in horizontal direction (angle is set 0).
XML code:

    <shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <gradient
        android:startColor="#000000"
        android:angle="0"/>
   </shape>

Here the figure shows the color variation in vertical direction (angle is set 90).
XML code:

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<gradient
    android:startColor="#000000"
    android:angle="90"/>
 </shape>

You can also use different color as start, center and end colors. The code you attached contains all these elements.

Answer 2

Specifies a gradient color for the shape. attributes:

android:angle Integer. The angle for the gradient, in degrees. 0 is left to right, 90 is bottom to top. It must be a multiple of 45. Default is 0.

It seems that the description in the documentation contradict to karn's answer??

You can find more details in the documentation

Answer 3

you might wanna create diagonal gradient from code. It's much easier and you have a lot of options open from there. This snippet helped me

public void SetGradient(View view) {
        GradientDrawable gd = new GradientDrawable(
                GradientDrawable.Orientation.TL_BR,
                new int[]{0xFF141a24, 0xFF293f49, 0xFF72554c});
        view.setBackground(gd);
    }

available directions from GradientDrawable class

/*public enum Orientation {
        *//** draw the gradient from the top to the bottom *//*
        TOP_BOTTOM,
        *//** draw the gradient from the top-right to the bottom-left *//*
        TR_BL,
        *//** draw the gradient from the right to the left *//*
        RIGHT_LEFT,
        *//** draw the gradient from the bottom-right to the top-left *//*
        BR_TL,
        *//** draw the gradient from the bottom to the top *//*
        BOTTOM_TOP,
        *//** draw the gradient from the bottom-left to the top-right *//*
        BL_TR,
        *//** draw the gradient from the left to the right *//*
        LEFT_RIGHT,
        *//** draw the gradient from the top-left to the bottom-right *//*
        TL_BR,
    }*/

and you call the method from onCreate or onCreateView in fragment and pass parent view(in my case).

 @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
                             Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.dialog_view_parent, container);           
        ...

        SetGradient(view);

        return view;
    }