Creating Android UI Programmatically

Let us start with a LinearLayout. How would we declare it in an XML?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    >
<TextView 
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="@string/hello"
    />
</LinearLayout>

This just contains a TextView embedded in a LinearLayout. A very trivial example. But serves the purpose intended. Let me show how almost every single element here corresponds to a class or a method call in the class.  So the equivalent code in the onCreate(…)  method of an activity would be like this:

         super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
      
        lLayout = new LinearLayout(this);
        lLayout.setOrientation(LinearLayout.VERTICAL);
        //-1(LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT) is fill_parent or match_parent since API level 8
        //-2(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT) is wrap_content
        lLayout.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(
LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT));
        tView = new TextView(this);
        tView.setText("Hello, This is a view created programmatically! " +
                  "You CANNOT change me that easily :-)");
        tView.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(
LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
        lLayout.addView(tView);
        setContentView(lLayout);