Android Application Development Cookbook: 93 Recipes for Building Winning Apps

Recipe 3.4 Creating Custom ListViews

Android Versions

Level 1 and above

Permissions

None

Source Code to Download from Wrox.com

CustomListView.zip

The standard ListView simply displays a list of items. While it may suffice when you just want to display a list of text, it is not enough for more sophisticated applications. In this recipe, you will see how you can customize the ListView so that you can display images, multiple lines of text, and more.

Solution

To display a ListView in your activity, you need to add the <ListView> element to your UI, such as the activity_main.xml file:

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent" >
    <ListView
        android:id="@+id/android:list"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent" />

</RelativeLayout>

The first thing you will learn in this recipe is how to display an image next to each item in the ListView. To do that, add an XML file in your res/layout folder and name it, for example, lvrowlayout.xml (see Figure 3-5).

Figure 3-5

Populate the lvrowlayout.xml file as follows:

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:orientation="horizontal" > ...