Multi-colored border EditText

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to make a custom EditText that has black borders along it's right and left sides, a green border on top, and a blue border on the bottom. See below:

I'm fairly new to Android development and I've spent quite a lot of time reading their documentation but haven't had any luck finding anything on this kind of customization. I know in CSS you can just use the border-right, border-left, etc... properties but not sure if it's that straightforward in Android development. I'm looking for the solution that is the most compatible, preferably from version 2.3 (Gingerbread).

Answer 1

You'll have to make a custom image to use as the background. It's relatively straight forward, you'll want to use a 9-patch as described in the 2D graphics guide.

Once you have that, you'll put it in your res/drawable folder of your project, and then use it with the EditText in XML as

<EditText
    android:background="@drawable/my_custom_background"
    ...
/>

Answer 2

create a LayerList with a square colored in the wanted gradient, and above it a white square with some borders. then use this drawable as your TextView background.

Answer 3

You can create a Multi-colored border EditText using 9-patch or in xml <layer-list> here i am creating Multi-colored border EditText programmatically.

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
 private TextView mTextView;

 @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

      customTextViewWithBorder();

}

private void customTextViewWithBorder(){
mTextView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.tv);
         // Initialize some new ColorDrawable objects
                        ColorDrawable leftBorder = new ColorDrawable(Color.RED);
                        ColorDrawable topBorder = new ColorDrawable(Color.GREEN);
                        ColorDrawable rightBorder = new ColorDrawable(Color.BLUE);
                        ColorDrawable bottomBorder = new ColorDrawable(Color.YELLOW);
                        ColorDrawable background = new ColorDrawable(Color.WHITE);

                        // Initialize an array of Drawable objects
                        Drawable[] layers = new Drawable[]{
                                leftBorder, // Red color
                                topBorder, // Green color
                                rightBorder, // Blue color
                                bottomBorder, // Yellow color
                                background // White background
                        };
     // Initialize a new LayerDrawable
    LayerDrawable layerDrawable = new LayerDrawable(layers);
    // Red layer padding, draw left border
                    layerDrawable.setLayerInset(0,0,0,15,0);

                    // Green layer padding, draw top border
                    layerDrawable.setLayerInset(1,15,0,0,15);

                    // Blue layer padding, draw right border
                    layerDrawable.setLayerInset(2,15,15,0,0);

                    // Yellow layer padding, draw bottom border
                    layerDrawable.setLayerInset(3,15,15,15,0);

                    // White layer, draw the background
                    layerDrawable.setLayerInset(4,15,15,15,15);
     mTextView.setBackground(layerDrawable);

                    // Set the TextView padding
                    mTextView.setPadding(25,25,25,25);

}

Source android--code