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);