setBackgroundResource() discards my XML layout attributes

I ran into this issue as well. Presumably you're using a LayerList resource drawable? That's what I was using. Unfortunately, I found no "real" way of fixing it, it seems like a bug in the code, but I didn't chase it down. However, I was lucky in the sense that I was setting the "buggy" background after my view had already been rendered properly, so it was just a matter of saving then restoring the padding values after the background is set, e.g:

  if(condition) {    int bottom = theView.getPaddingBottom();    int top = theView.getPaddingTop();    int right = theView.getPaddingRight();    int left = theView.getPaddingLeft();    theView.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.entry_bg_with_image);    theView.setPadding(left, top, right, bottom);  }

EDIT:As an alternative, you don't have to use the previous values of padding, you can also use a dimension value:

  int pad = resources.getDimensionPixelSize(R.dimen.linear_layout_padding);  theView.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.entry_bg_with_image);  theView.setPadding(pad, pad, pad, pad);

Adding onto what dmon has suggested, here is a function you can just throw in your util class so you don't have to jump through hoops every time you update a resource. This is really just his code wrapped in a function.

public static void updateBackgroundResourceWithRetainedPadding(View view, int resourceID){    int bottom = view.getPaddingBottom();    int top = view.getPaddingTop();    int right = view.getPaddingRight();    int left = view.getPaddingLeft();    view.setBackgroundResource(resourceID);    view.setPadding(left, top, right, bottom);}

This is fixed in Lollipop, so

public static void setBackgroundResource(@NonNull View view, @DrawableRes int resId) {    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP) {        int paddingTop = view.getPaddingTop();        int paddingLeft = view.getPaddingLeft();        int paddingRight = view.getPaddingRight();        int paddingBottom = view.getPaddingBottom();        view.setBackgroundResource(resId);        view.setPadding(paddingLeft, paddingTop, paddingRight, paddingBottom);    } else {        view.setBackgroundResource(resId);    }}