Using custom Views in XML without using fully-qualified class name

So the answer, surprisingly, is “yes”. I learned about this recently, and it’s actually something you can do to make your custom view inflation more efficient. IntelliJ still warns you that its invalid (although it will compile and run successfully) — I’m not sure whether Eclipse warns you or not.

Anyway, so what you’ll need to do is define your own subclass of LayoutInflater.Factory:

public class CustomViewFactory implements LayoutInflater.Factory {
    private static CustomViewFactory mInstance;

    public static CustomViewFactory getInstance () {
        if (mInstance == null) {
            mInstance = new CustomViewFactory();
        }

        return mInstance;
    }

    private CustomViewFactory () {}

    @Override
    public View onCreateView (String name, Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        //Check if it's one of our custom classes, if so, return one using
        //the Context/AttributeSet constructor
        if (MyCustomView.class.getSimpleName().equals(name)) {
            return new MyCustomView(context, attrs);
        }

        //Not one of ours; let the system handle it
        return null;
    }
}

Then, in whatever activity or context in which you’re inflating a layout that contains these custom views, you’ll need to assign your factory to the LayoutInflater for that context:

public class CustomViewActivity extends Activity {
    public void onCreate (Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        //Get the LayoutInflater for this Activity context
        //and set the Factory to be our custom view factory
        LayoutInflater.from(this).setFactory(CustomViewFactory.getInstance());

        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.layout_with_custom_view);
    }
}

You can then use the simple class name in your XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<FrameLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
             android:orientation="vertical"
             android:layout_width="match_parent"
             android:layout_height="match_parent">

    <MyCustomView
        android:id="@+id/my_view"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="60dp"
        android:layout_gravity="center_vertical" />

</FrameLayout>