Converting android View to Bitmap

Android View to Bitmap

Today we will learn how to convert the android view or XML to a bitmap. During android development sometimes we need to convert the view or xml to bitmap for different purposes. One use case could be to share the the bitmap using sharing intent provided by google. You can find the tutorial here how can you share the bitmap without saving it to external memory. Now let's get started with the tutorial to convert the xml to bitmap.

Implementation

Actually it is very easy to convert the xml to a bitmap. You can use the drawing class provided by the google android. 

	public Bitmap createBitmapFromView(View v) {
	v.setLayoutParams(new RelativeLayout.LayoutParams(RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,
	RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
	v.measure(View.MeasureSpec.makeMeasureSpec(0, View.MeasureSpec.UNSPECIFIED),
	View.MeasureSpec.makeMeasureSpec(0, View.MeasureSpec.UNSPECIFIED));
	v.layout(0, 0, v.getMeasuredWidth(), v.getMeasuredHeight());
	Bitmap bitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(v.getMeasuredWidth(),
	v.getMeasuredHeight(),
	Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
	Canvas c = new Canvas(bitmap);
	v.layout(v.getLeft(), v.getTop(), v.getRight(), v.getBottom());
	v.draw(c);
	return bitmap;
	}

view raw viewToBitmap.java hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The hack here is that as our view/xml is not visible, so it is most likely not inflated. What we have done is called the layout() and measure() methods of the view ourself which are actually called by the system when a view is set on the activity to set the width and height of the layout.

Calling This Method

We can call this method by passing our view in this method. But first we need to inflate that xml.

	LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) this.getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
	View inflatedFrame = inflater.inflate(R.layout.my_view, null);
	Bitmap bitmap = loadBitmapFromView(inflatedFrame.findViewById(R.id.id_of_parent_layout));

view raw inflateXML.java hosted with ❤ by GitHub

What we have done here is that inflating our xml are then passing it our method to create the bitmap from here. Pretty simple, right! That's it. You have successfully created the bitmap from xml. Happy Coding!! In case of query please comment below or contact me at farooqahmadkhan003@gmail.com.