C# Xamarin Label Padding for iOS app

Question

I know this question has been asked a lot but I've tried the various solutions and can't seem to find one that works. I have a label on my storyboard titled Messages. On button click, different text appears in the label. I need to pad just this label.

I've looked at: Adding space/padding to a UILabel , UILabel text margin , and Resizing a UILabel to accommodate insets .

Also not sure where in my ViewController.cs to put the code. I put it under public partial class ViewController : UIViewController but get errors.

Edit 2:

Okay, at first I did a UITextView but couldn't get vertical align to work so went back to label. This is what I have:

public partial class ViewController : UIViewController
{

    public partial class PaddedUILabel : UILabel
    {
        private UIEdgeInsets EdgeInsets { get; set; }

        public PaddedUILabel()
        {
            EdgeInsets = new UIEdgeInsets(0, 10, 0, 10);
        }
        public override void DrawText(CoreGraphics.CGRect rect)
        {
            base.DrawText(EdgeInsets.InsetRect(rect));
        }
    }

public override void ViewDidLoad()
    {

        base.ViewDidLoad();

        Message.Layer.BorderWidth = 1;
        Message.BackgroundColor = UIColor.FromWhiteAlpha(1, 0.88f);
        PaddedUILabel _paddedUILabel = Message as PaddedUILabel;

I'm still not getting any padding.

Answer 1

You can either use a UITextView and provide the insets directly (as mentioned in this link ) which you can do either in ViewDidLoad or ViewWillAppear, or you can subclass your UILabel and override the DrawText method .

The DrawText method helps manipulate the rectangle in which the text within a label is drawn. I'd suggest you pay around with some values to get started with it.

Something like:

public partial class PaddedUILabel : UILabel
{
     //Override draw text here

}

If you are using Xamarin iOS Native, give your label(for example: myLabel) the custom class from story board and retrieve the label as:

PaddedUILabel _paddedUILabel = this.myLabel as PaddedUILabel;

I'm sorry I would have given you the whole code but as of now, don't have access to a Mac environment. Let me know if you need anything else.

For vertical align in TextView follow link .

Cheers

Answer 2

i tried many solutions as discussed here but the actual out coming not what i wanted so i made it like that :

 if (this.Padding != default(Thickness))
                {
                    Device.BeginInvokeOnMainThread(() =>
                      {

                          if (Parent is Grid)
                          {
                              var parentAsGrid = Parent as Grid;
                              var index = parentAsGrid.Children.IndexOf(this);
                              parentAsGrid.Children.Remove(this);
                              Grid marginGrid = new Grid() { BackgroundColor = this.BackgroundColor,  HorizontalOptions = this.HorizontalOptions, VerticalOptions = this.VerticalOptions };


                              var lbl = new Label() { Text = this.Text, TextColor = this.TextColor, BackgroundColor = this.BackgroundColor, HorizontalOptions = this.HorizontalOptions, VerticalOptions = this.VerticalOptions, FontSize = this.FontSize };
                              lbl.Margin = this.Padding;
                              if (!parentAsGrid.Children.Contains(this))
                              {
                                  marginGrid.Children.Add(lbl);
                                  parentAsGrid.Children.Insert(index, marginGrid);
                              }

                          }
                          if (Parent is StackLayout)
                          {
                              var parentAsGrid = Parent as StackLayout;
                              var index = parentAsGrid.Children.IndexOf(this);
                              parentAsGrid.Children.Remove(this);
                              Grid marginGrid = new Grid() { BackgroundColor = this.BackgroundColor,   HorizontalOptions = this.HorizontalOptions, VerticalOptions = this.VerticalOptions };


                              var lbl = new Label() { Text = this.Text, TextColor = this.TextColor, BackgroundColor = this.BackgroundColor, HorizontalOptions = this.HorizontalOptions, VerticalOptions = this.VerticalOptions, FontSize = this.FontSize };
                              lbl.Margin = this.Padding;
                              if (!parentAsGrid.Children.Contains(this))
                              {
                                  marginGrid.Children.Add(lbl);
                                  parentAsGrid.Children.Insert(index, marginGrid);
                              }

                          }



                      });