Getting Started

Installation

Add iced-layout to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
iced-layout = "0.0.1"

Versioning

iced-layout versions are tied to the iced version they target:

iced-layout	iced
0.0.*	0.14.0

Choose the iced-layout version that matches your iced version.

Basic Usage

Define your layout in an XML file (e.g. src/my_layout.xml):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<layout xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dekamaru/iced-layout/refs/heads/main/schemas/0.0.1.xsd">
    <root>
        <column>
            <text size="24">Hello, iced-layout!</text>
            <button on-press="Message::Clicked">
                <text>Click me</text>
            </button>
        </column>
    </root>
</layout>

Modern IDEs will provide schema validation and autocompletion for layout files out of the box.

Then use the layout! macro in your Rust code:

use iced_layout::layout;

fn view(&self) -> iced::Element<Message> {
    layout!("src/my_layout.xml")
}

The macro expands your XML into iced widget calls at compile time.

Working with the Macro

Because layout! is a proc macro that reads files at compile time, Cargo won't automatically know to re-compile when your XML changes. You need to tell it explicitly.

Keep your layout files in a dedicated folder (e.g. layouts/) and add a build.rs at the root of your crate:

fn main() {
    println!("cargo::rerun-if-changed=layouts/");
}

This instructs Cargo to re-run the build script — and thus re-compile your crate — whenever any file inside layouts/ changes. Without this, edits to XML files won't trigger a rebuild until something else forces one.

Reference layouts relative to your crate root:

layout!("layouts/main.xml")