A ConstraintLayout is a android.view.ViewGroup which allows you
to position and size widgets in a flexible way.

Note:ConstraintLayout is available as a support library that you can use
on Android systems starting with API level 9 (Gingerbread).
As such, we are planning on enriching its API and capabilities over time.
This documentation will reflect those changes.

Developer Guide

Relative positioning

Relative positioning is one of the basic building blocks of creating layouts in ConstraintLayout.
Those constraints allow you to position a given widget relative to another one. You can constrain
a widget on the horizontal and vertical axis:

Horizontal Axis: left, right, start and end sides

Vertical Axis: top, bottom sides and text baseline

The general concept is to constrain a given side of a widget to another side of any other widget.

For example, in order to position button B to the right of button A (Fig. 1):

This tells the system that we want the left side of button B to be constrained to the right side of button A.
Such a position constraint means that the system will try to have both sides share the same location.

Fig. 2 - Relative Positioning Constraints

Here is the list of available constraints (Fig. 2):

layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf

layout_constraintLeft_toRightOf

layout_constraintRight_toLeftOf

layout_constraintRight_toRightOf

layout_constraintTop_toTopOf

layout_constraintTop_toBottomOf

layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf

layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf

layout_constraintBaseline_toBaselineOf

layout_constraintStart_toEndOf

layout_constraintStart_toStartOf

layout_constraintEnd_toStartOf

layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf

They all take a reference id to another widget, or the parent (which will reference the parent container, i.e. the ConstraintLayout):

Margins

Fig. 3 - Relative Positioning Margins

If side margins are set, they will be applied to the corresponding constraints (if they exist) (Fig. 3), enforcing
the margin as a space between the target and the source side. The usual layout margin attributes can be used to this effect:

android:layout_marginStart

android:layout_marginEnd

android:layout_marginLeft

android:layout_marginTop

android:layout_marginRight

android:layout_marginBottom

Note that a margin can only be positive or equals to zero, and takes a Dimension.

Margins when connected to a GONE widget

When a position constraint target's visibility is View.GONE, you can also indicate a different
margin value to be used using the following attributes:

layout_goneMarginStart

layout_goneMarginEnd

layout_goneMarginLeft

layout_goneMarginTop

layout_goneMarginRight

layout_goneMarginBottom

Centering positioning and bias

A useful aspect of ConstraintLayout is in how it deals with "impossible" constrains. For example, if
we have something like:

Unless the ConstraintLayout happens to have the exact same size as the Button, both constraints
cannot be satisfied at the same time (both sides cannot be where we want them to be).

Fig. 4 - Centering Positioning

What happens in this case is that the constraints act like opposite forces
pulling the widget apart equally (Fig. 4); such that the widget will end up being centered in the parent container.
This will apply similarly for vertical constraints.

Bias

The default when encountering such opposite constraints is to center the widget; but you can tweak
the positioning to favor one side over another using the bias attributes:

layout_constraintHorizontal_bias

layout_constraintVertical_bias

Fig. 5 - Centering Positioning with Bias

For example the following will make the left side with a 30% bias instead of the default 50%, such that the left side will be
shorter, with the widget leaning more toward the left side (Fig. 5):

Visibility behavior

ConstraintLayout has a specific handling of widgets being marked as View.GONE.

GONE widgets, as usual, are not going to be displayed and are not part of the layout itself (i.e. their actual dimensions
will not be changed if marked as GONE).

But in terms of the layout computations, GONE widgets are still part of it, with an important distinction:

For the layout pass, their dimension will be considered as zero (basically, they will be resolved to a point)

If they have constraints to other widgets they will still be respected, but any margins will be as if equals to zero

Fig. 7 - Visibility Behavior

This specific behavior allows to build layouts where you can temporarily mark widgets as being GONE,
without breaking the layout (Fig. 7), which can be particularly useful when doing simple layout animations.

Note: The margin used will be the margin that B had defined when connecting to A (see Fig. 7 for an example).
In some cases, this might not be the margin you want (e.g. A had a 100dp margin to the side of its container,
B only a 16dp to A, marking
A as gone, B will have a margin of 16dp to the container).
For this reason, you can specify an alternate
margin value to be used when the connection is to a widget being marked as gone (see the section above about the gone margin attributes).

Dimensions constraints

Minimum dimensions on ConstraintLayout

You can define minimum and maximum sizes for the ConstraintLayout itself:

android:minWidth set the minimum width for the layout

android:minHeight set the minimum height for the layout

android:maxWidth set the maximum width for the layout

android:maxHeight set the maximum height for the layout

Those minimum and maximum dimensions will be used by ConstraintLayout when its dimensions are set to WRAP_CONTENT.

Widgets dimension constraints

The dimension of the widgets can be specified by setting the android:layout_width and
android:layout_height attributes in 3 different ways:

Using a specific dimension (either a literal value such as 123dp or a Dimension reference)

Using WRAP_CONTENT, which will ask the widget to compute its own size

Using 0dp, which is the equivalent of "MATCH_CONSTRAINT"

Fig. 8 - Dimension Constraints

The first two works in a similar fashion as other layouts. The last one will resize the widget in such a way as
matching the constraints that are set (see Fig. 8, (a) is wrap_content, (b) is 0dp). If margins are set, they will be taken in account
in the computation (Fig. 8, (c) with 0dp).

Important: MATCH_PARENT is not recommended for widgets contained in a ConstraintLayout. Similar behavior can
be defined by using MATCH_CONSTRAINT with the corresponding left/right or top/bottom constraints being set to "parent".

WRAP_CONTENT : enforcing constraints (Added in 1.1)

If a dimension is set to WRAP_CONTENT, in versions before 1.1 they will be treated as a literal dimension -- meaning, constraints will
not limit the resulting dimension. While in general this is enough (and faster), in some situations, you might want to use WRAP_CONTENT,
yet keep enforcing constraints to limit the resulting dimension. In that case, you can add one of the corresponding attribute:

app:layout_constrainedWidth=”true|false”

app:layout_constrainedHeight=”true|false”

MATCH_CONSTRAINT dimensions (Added in 1.1)

When a dimension is set to MATCH_CONSTRAINT, the default behavior is to have the resulting size take all the available space.
Several additional modifiers are available:

layout_constraintWidth_min and layout_constraintHeight_min : will set the minimum size for this dimension

layout_constraintWidth_max and layout_constraintHeight_max : will set the maximum size for this dimension

layout_constraintWidth_percent and layout_constraintHeight_percent : will set the size of this dimension as a percentage of the parent

Min and Max

The value indicated for min and max can be either a dimension in Dp, or "wrap", which will use the same value as what WRAP_CONTENT would do.

Percent dimension

To use percent, you need to set the following:

The dimension should be set to MATCH_CONSTRAINT (0dp)

The default should be set to percent app:layout_constraintWidth_default="percent"
or app:layout_constraintHeight_default="percent"

Then set the layout_constraintWidth_percent
or layout_constraintHeight_percent attributes to a value between 0 and 1

Ratio

You can also define one dimension of a widget as a ratio of the other one. In order to do that, you
need to have at least one constrained dimension be set to 0dp (i.e., MATCH_CONSTRAINT), and set the
attribute layout_constraintDimensionRatio to a given ratio.
For example:

You can also use ratio if both dimensions are set to MATCH_CONSTRAINT (0dp). In this case the system sets the
largest dimensions that satisfies all constraints and maintains the aspect ratio specified. To constrain one specific side
based on the dimensions of another, you can pre append W," or H, to constrain the width or height
respectively.
For example,
If one dimension is constrained by two targets (e.g. width is 0dp and centered on parent) you can indicate which
side should be constrained, by adding the letter W (for constraining the width) or H
(for constraining the height) in front of the ratio, separated
by a comma:

will set the height of the button following a 16:9 ratio, while the width of the button will match the constraints
to parent.

Chains

Chains provide group-like behavior in a single axis (horizontally or vertically). The other axis can be constrained independently.

Creating a chain

A set of widgets are considered a chain if they are linked together via a bi-directional connection (see Fig. 9, showing a minimal chain, with two widgets).

Fig. 9 - Chain

Chain heads

Chains are controlled by attributes set on the first element of the chain (the "head" of the chain):

Fig. 10 - Chain Head

The head is the left-most widget for horizontal chains, and the top-most widget for vertical chains.

Margins in chains

If margins are specified on connections, they will be taken in account. In the case of spread chains, margins will be deducted from the allocated space.

Chain Style

When setting the attribute layout_constraintHorizontal_chainStyle or layout_constraintVertical_chainStyle on the first element of a chain,
the behavior of the chain will change according to the specified style (default is CHAIN_SPREAD).

CHAIN_SPREAD -- the elements will be spread out (default style)

Weighted chain -- in CHAIN_SPREAD mode, if some widgets are set to MATCH_CONSTRAINT, they will split the available space

CHAIN_SPREAD_INSIDE -- similar, but the endpoints of the chain will not be spread out

CHAIN_PACKED -- the elements of the chain will be packed together. The horizontal or vertical
bias attribute of the child will then affect the positioning of the packed elements

Fig. 11 - Chains Styles

Weighted chains

The default behavior of a chain is to spread the elements equally in the available space. If one or more elements are using MATCH_CONSTRAINT, they
will use the available empty space (equally divided among themselves). The attribute layout_constraintHorizontal_weight and layout_constraintVertical_weight
will control how the space will be distributed among the elements using MATCH_CONSTRAINT. For exemple, on a chain containing two elements using MATCH_CONSTRAINT,
with the first element using a weight of 2 and the second a weight of 1, the space occupied by the first element will be twice that of the second element.

Margins and chains (in 1.1)

When using margins on elements in a chain, the margins are additive.

For example, on a horizontal chain, if one element defines a right margin of 10dp and the next element
defines a left margin of 5dp, the resulting margin between those two elements is 15dp.

An item plus its margins are considered together when calculating leftover space used by chains
to position items. The leftover space does not contain the margins.

Virtual Helper objects

In addition to the intrinsic capabilities detailed previously, you can also use special helper objects
in ConstraintLayout to help you with your layout. Currently, the Guideline object allows you to create
Horizontal and Vertical guidelines which are positioned relative to the ConstraintLayout container. Widgets can
then be positioned by constraining them to such guidelines. In 1.1, Barrier and Group were added too.

Optimizer (in 1.1)

In 1.1 we exposed the constraints optimizer. You can decide which optimizations are applied by adding the tag app:layout_optimizationLevel to the ConstraintLayout element.