Create a Card-Based Layout

Apps often need to display data in similarly styled containers. These containers are often used in lists to hold each item's information. The system provides the CardView API as an easy way for you show information inside cards that have a consistent look across the platform. These cards have a default elevation above their containing view group, so the system draws shadows below them. Cards provide an easy way to contain a group of views while providing a consistent style for the container.

Figure 1. Card examples

Add the dependencies

The CardView widget is part of the v7 Support Libraries. To use it in your project, add the following dependency to your app module's build.gradle file:

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.android.support:cardview-v7:28.0.0'
}

Create Cards

In order to use the CardView you need to add it to your layout file. Use it as a view group to contain other views. In this example, the CardView contains a single TextView to display some information to the user.

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    xmlns:card_view="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    ... >
    <!-- A CardView that contains a TextView -->
    <android.support.v7.widget.CardView
        xmlns:card_view="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
        android:id="@+id/card_view"
        android:layout_gravity="center"
        android:layout_width="200dp"
        android:layout_height="200dp"
        card_view:cardCornerRadius="4dp">

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/info_text"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="match_parent" />
    </android.support.v7.widget.CardView>
</LinearLayout>

The cards are drawn to the screen with a default elevation, which causes the system to draw a shadow underneath them. You can provide a custom elevation for a card with the card_view:cardElevation attribute. This will draw a more pronounced shadow with a larger elevation, and a lower elevation will result in a lighter shadow. CardView uses real elevation and dynamic shadows on Android 5.0 (API level 21) and above and falls back to a programmatic shadow implementation on earlier versions.

Use these properties to customize the appearance of the CardView widget:

• To set the corner radius in your layouts, use the card_view:cardCornerRadius attribute.
• To set the corner radius in your code, use the CardView.setRadius method.
• To set the background color of a card, use the card_view:cardBackgroundColor attribute.

For more information, see the API reference for CardView.