Android SlidingTabLayout with icons

Just want to give example for the Correct and accepted answer. 🙂
Firstly, add the tabs and set their custom view when you are adding the adapter to your viewpager. For example see following lines:

mViewpager = (ViewPager) view.findViewById(R.id.pager);

//Do something with your view before setting up adapter

ViewPager.setAdapter(mSectionsPagerAdapter);
mSlidingTabLayout = (SlidingTabLayout) View().findViewById(R.id.sliding_tabs);
mSlidingTabLayout.setCustomTabView(R.layout.custom_tab_title, R.id.tabtext);
mSlidingTabLayout.setViewPager(mViewPager);

Where sliding_tabs are the tabs_titles to be added and are defined in xml file of the viewpager like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:fitsSystemWindows="true">

    <com.packagename.SlidingTabLayout
        android:id="@+id/sliding_tabs"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        />

    <android.support.v4.view.ViewPager xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
        android:id="@+id/pager"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_below="@+id/sliding_tabs"
        tools:context=".ActivityUser"
        android:fitsSystemWindows="true"
        android:textStyle="bold"
        android:textSize="20dp"/>

</RelativeLayout>

and where custom_tab_title is a separate xml file in your layout folder.For example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:id="@+id/titletab">

    <ImageView
    android:id="@+id/tabimage"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_gravity="top"
    android:layout_marginLeft="2dp"
    />

    <TextView
    android:id="@+id/tabtext"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="50dp"
    android:gravity="bottom"
    android:paddingBottom="15dp"
    android:paddingLeft="4dp"
    android:paddingRight="4dp"/>

</LinearLayout>

and you can set the image for a particular tab by:

Drawable tab_image = getResources().getDrawable(getResources().getIdentifier("image_name_in_drawable", "drawable", "com.packagename"));
tab_image.setBounds(0, 0, 40, 40);  //Setting up the resolution for image
ImageSpan imageSpanresource = new ImageSpan(tab_image);
//Notice the additional space at the end of the String
resourcesstring = "Tab1 ";
//here we are setting up the position to display image..
SpannableString viewpager_tab_title = new SpannableString(resourcesstring ); 
viewpager_tab_title.setSpan(imageSpanresource, resourcesstring.length()-1, resourcesstring.length(), 0);

Notice that I have added an additional space to the viewpager_tab_title and am setting up the image to that position, so that the actual string is displayed completely.