Differences between ConstraintLayout and RelativeLayout

Question

I am confused about the difference between ConstraintLayout and RelativeLayout  Could someone please tell me the exact differences between them

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Officially  ConstraintLayout is much faster     In the N release of Android  the ConstraintLayout class provides similar functionality to RelativeLayout  but at a significantly lower cost

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Relative Layout and Constraint Layout equivalent properties     1  Relative Layout    android layout centerInParent  true         1  Constraint Layout equivalent     app layout constraintBottom toBottomOf  parent  app layout constraintLeft toLeftOf  parent  app layout constraintStart toStartOf  parent  app layout constraintRight toRightOf  parent  app layout constraintEnd toEndOf  parent  app layout constraintTop toTopOf  parent       2  Relative Layout    android layout centerHorizontal  true     2  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintLeft toLeftOf  parent  app layout constraintStart toStartOf  parent  app layout constraintRight toRightOf  parent  app layout constraintEnd toEndOf  parent       3  Relative Layout    android layout centerVertical  true         3  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintBottom toBottomOf  parent  app layout constraintTop toTopOf  parent       4  Relative Layout     android layout alignParentLeft  true        4  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintLeft toLeftOf  parent       5  Relative Layout    android layout alignParentStart  true     5  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintStart toStartOf  parent       6  Relative Layout    android layout alignParentRight  true     6  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintRight toRightOf  parent       7  Relative Layout    android layout alignParentEnd  true         7  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintEnd toEndOf  parent       8  Relative Layout    android layout alignParentTop  true     8  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintTop toTopOf  parent       9  Relative Layout    android layout alignParentBottom  true      9  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintBottom toBottomOf  parent       10  Relative Layout    android layout alignStart   id view     10  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintStart toStartOf   id view       11  Relative Layout    android layout alignLeft   id view      11  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintLeft toLeftOf   id view       12  Relative Layout    android layout alignEnd   id view       12  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintEnd toEndOf   id view       13  Relative Layout    android layout alignRight   id view     13  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintRight toRightOf   id view       14  Relative Layout    android layout alignTop   id view       14  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintTop toTopOf   id view       15  Relative Layout    android layout alignBaseline   id view      15  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintBaseline toBaselineOf   id view       16  Relative Layout    android layout alignBottom   id view     16  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintBottom toBottomOf   id view       17  Relative Layout     android layout toStartOf   id view     17  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintEnd toStartOf   id view       18  Relative Layout    android layout toLeftOf   id view       18  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintRight toLeftOf   id view       19  Relative Layout    android layout toEndOf   id view     19  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintStart toEndOf   id view       20  Relative Layout    android layout toRightOf   id view     20  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintLeft toRightOf   id view       21  Relative Layout    android layout above   id view      21  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintBottom toTopOf   id view       22  Relative Layout    android layout below   id view      22  Constraint Layout equivalent    app layout constraintTop toBottomOf   id view

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Reported by  davidpbr ConstraintLayout performance  I made two similar 7-child layouts  one each with a parent ConstraintLayout and RelativeLayout  Based on Android Studio method tracing tool  it appears the ConstraintLayout spends more time in onMeasure and performs additional work in onFinishInflate   Library used  support-v4  appcompat-v7       com android support constraint constraint-layout 1 0 0-alpha1  Devices Android versions reproduced on  Samsung Galaxy S6  SM-G920A  Sorry  no Nexus atm   Android 5 0 2  Quick method tracing comparison     Sample Github repo  https   github com OnlyInAmerica ConstraintLayoutPerf

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The only difference i ve noted is that things set in a relative layout via drag and drop automatically have their dimensions relative to other elements inferred  so when you run the app what you see is what you get   However in the constraint layout even if you drag and drop an element in the design view  when you run the app things may be shifted around   This can easily be fixed by manually setting the constraints or  a more risky move being to right click the element in the component tree  selecting the constraint layout sub menu  then clicking  infer constraints    Hope this helps

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A big difference is that ConstraintLayout respects constraints even if the view is gone  So it won t break the layout if you have a chain and you want to make a view disappear in the middle

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Following are the differences advantages    Constraint Layout has dual power of both Relative Layout as well as Linear layout   Set relative positions of views   like Relative layout   and also set weights for dynamic UI  which was only possible in Linear Layout   A very powerful use is grouping of elements by forming a chain  This way we can form a group of views which as a whole can be placed in a desired way without adding another layer of hierarchy just to form another group of views  In addition to weights  we can apply horizontal and vertical bias which is nothing but the percentage of displacement from the centre     bias of 0 5 means centrally aligned  Any value less or more means corresponding movement in the respective direction     Another very important feature is that it respects and provides the functionality to handle the GONE views so that layouts do not break if some view is set to GONE through java code  More can be found here  https   developer android com reference android support constraint ConstraintLayout html VisibilityBehavior Provides power of automatic constraint applying by the use of Blue print and Visual  Editor tool which makes it easy to design a page    All these features lead to flattening of the view hierarchy which improves performance and also helps in making responsive and dynamic UI which can more easily adapt to different screen size and density   Here is the best place to learn quickly  https   codelabs developers google com codelabs constraint-layout  0

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The real question to ask is  is there any reason to use any layout other than a constraint layout   I believe the answer might be no   To those insisting they are aimed at novice programmers or the like  they should provide some reason for them to be inferior to any other layout    Constraints layouts are better in every way  They do cost like 150k in APK size    They are faster  they are easier  they are more flexible  they react better to changes  they fix the problems when items go away  they conform better to radically different screen types and they don t use a bunch of nested loop with that long drawn out tree structure for everything  You can put anything anywhere  with respect to anything  anywhere   They were a bit screwy back in mid 2016  where the visual layout editor just wasn t good enough  but they are to the point that if you are having a layout at all  you might want to seriously consider using a constraint layout  even when it does the same thing as a RelativeLayout  or even a simple LinearLayout  FrameLayouts clearly still have their purpose  But  I can t see building anything else at this point  If they started with this they wouldn t have added anything else

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The Conclusion I can make is  1  We can do UI design without touching the xml part of code  to be honest I feel google has copied how UI is designed in iOS apps  it will make sense if you are familiar with UI development in iOS  but in relative layout its hard to set the constraints without touching the xml design   2  Secondly it has flat view hierarchy unlike other layouts  so does better performance than relative layout which you might have seen from other answers  3  It also have extra things apart from what relative layout has  such as circular relative positioning where we can position another view relative to this one at certain radius with certain angle which cant do in relative layout  I am saying it again  designing UI using constraint layout is same as designing UI in iOS  so in future if you work on iOS you will find it easier if you have used constraint layout

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In addition to  dhaval-jivani answer    I ve updated the project github project to latest version of constraint layout v 1 1 0-beta3   I ve measured and compared the time of onCreate method and time between a start of onCreate and end of execution of last preformDraw method which visible in CPU monitor  All test were done on Samsung S5 mini with android 6 0 1 Here results   Fresh start  first screen opening after application launch    Relative Layout  OnCreate        123ms  Last preformDraw time - OnCreate time   311 3ms  Constraint Layout  OnCreate        120 3ms  Last preformDraw time - OnCreate time   310ms  Besides that  I ve checked performance test from this article   here the code and found that on loop counts less than 100 constraint layout variant is faster during execution of inflating  measure  and layout then variants with Relative Layout  And on old Android devices  like Samsung S3 with Android 4 3  the difference is bigger   As a conclusion I agree with comments from the article      Does it worth to refactor old views switch on it from RelativeLayout or LinearLayout       As always  It depends       I wouldn   t refactor anything unless you either have a performance problem with your current layout hierarchy or you want to make significant changes to the layout anyway  Though I haven   t measured it lately  I haven   t found any performance issues in the last releases  So I think you should be safe to use it  but     as I   v said     don   t just migrate for the sake of migrating  Only do so  if there   s a need for and benefit from it    For new layouts  though  I nearly always use ConstraintLayout  It   s so much better compare to what we had before

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Intention of ConstraintLayout is to optimize and flatten the view hierarchy of your layouts by applying some rules to each view to avoid nesting    Rules remind you of RelativeLayout  for example setting the left to the left of some other view    app layout constraintBottom toBottomOf    id view1    Unlike RelativeLayout  ConstraintLayout offers bias value that is used to position a view in terms of 0  and 100  horizontal and vertical offset relative to the handles  marked with circle   These percentages  and fractions  offer seamless positioning of the view across different screen densities and sizes   app layout constraintHorizontal bias  0 33   lt  -- from 0 0 to 1 0 -- gt  app layout constraintVertical bias  0 53   lt  -- from 0 0 to 1 0 -- gt    Baseline handle  long pipe with rounded corners  below the circle handle  is used to align content of the view with another view reference   Square handles  on each corner of the view  are used to resize the view in dps     This is totally opinion based and my impression of ConstraintLayout

[android] Differences between ConstraintLayout and RelativeLayout

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