How to add an absolute element in a NativeScript page - layout

Question

I want to be able to just place a View component (plugin) into the page through code and have it appear at some X\Y on the page... but I'm a bit stumped.
Any attempt to add via page.content kinda adds it to the layout\render pass so it occupies space.
So this would get injected into "any" page at "any" time, I have no control over the markup this would be used in (know what I mean?) There is no XML for it and unfortunately the answer can't just be wrap everything in an AbsoluteLayout because one can't mandate that on users apps\layouts.
Thoughts, even possible?

Answer 1

Basically the simplest way to do this is to dynamically and be fully cross platform compatible is to create a AbsoluteLayout item in your JavaScript code, and dynamically insert your item and the AL into the page container.
Code would be something like this:
var AbsoluteLayout = require('ui/layouts/absolute-layout').AbsoluteLayout;
var myAL = new AbsoluteLayout();
var myItem = new myPluginItem();
// Set you left, right, top, bottom coords.
myItem.top = x;
// Add our item to the AbsoluteItem
myAL.addChild(myItem);
var frame = require('ui/frame');
var page = frame.topmost().currentPage;
var LayoutBase = require('ui/layouts/layout-base').LayoutBase;
page._eachChildView(function(view) {
if (view instanceof LayoutBase) {
view.addChild(myAL);
return false;
}
return true;
});
However, if you don't want to do this the really simple way; the only other way is to actually go a bit lower level. You can natively access the iOS view controller (page._ios.view) and the android view (page._nativeView), and then manually add it to the view by using things like addView (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/ViewManager.html) or addSubview (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIView_Class/).

Answer 2

I would like to add you can set the Top and Left properties in TypeScript by importing AbsoluteLayout like so
import {AbsoluteLayout} from 'ui/layouts/absolute-layout';
and then using the exposed functions setLeft or setTop
AbsoluteLayout.setLeft(YourItem, LeftValue);
or
AbsoluteLayout.setTop(YourItem, TopValue);