I want to make a TextView height "match_parent" whose parent height is "wrap_content" in XML (Android Studio) - android-layout

Question

Inside the layout for my activity i have two TextView inside a RelativeLayout.
The one with id "descriptionfromDB" takes the text from a database while the other one will only show the text Description.
What I want is that the second one matches the height of the parent when the text of the one that gets modified become longer.
I tried to do it with android:layout_height="match_parent" for the first TextView (since parent height grows when the other TextView's text become longer) but with no results.
Here's an example of how it looks at the moment:
<RelativeLayout
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/description"
android:layout_width="100dp"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:textSize="18dp"
android:text="Description"
android:background="#drawable/text"
android:textColor="#color/blue_fontcolor"
android:padding="1dp"
android:textStyle="bold"
/>
<TextView
android:id="#+id/descriptionfromDB"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:textSize="16dp"
android:layout_toRightOf="#+id/description"
android:text=""
android:background="#drawable/text"
android:textColor="#color/blue_fontcolor"
android:padding="3dp"
/>
</RelativeLayout>

Answer 1

You can achieve the behavior you want using horizontal LinearLayout :
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/description"
android:layout_width="100dp"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:text="Description"
android:textSize="18sp" />
<TextView
android:id="#+id/descriptionfromDB"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:textSize="16sp" />
</LinearLayout>
Using weight would be a better idea since there are many different screen sizes. Below attributes determine that the first TextView should take 30% of the parent width and second one 70% which is the remaining width.
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/description"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_weight="0.3"
android:text="Description"
android:textSize="18sp" />
<TextView
android:id="#+id/descriptionfromDB"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_weight="0.7"
android:textSize="16sp" />
</LinearLayout>
If you are going to add more views and nest this LinearLayout into another ViewGroup, since your layout will no longer be flat and also horizontal LinearLayout has double layout taxation, I recommend ConstraintLayout. Same behavior using ConstraintLayout :
<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/description"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:text="Description"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent" />
<TextView
android:id="#+id/descriptionfromDB"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintStart_toEndOf="#id/description"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent" />
</androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>