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Scrollable list trailed by fixed views

This might be a very beginner question, but I'm yet unable to find myself around the android jungle.
I've already got a RecyclerView working to show a list of items (with data binding and Room database and DiffUtil.ItemCallback and all).
I'd like to put 2 links after the list: "missing something?" and "add new entry" that will lead to other fragments.
What I have:
When I put 2 buttons (I don't know yet how to put links, but this is not the point of this question) after the RecyclerView, all in a LinearLayout, they stay fixed near the screen bottom. I mean, the RecyclerView is scrollable by itself, scrolling "beneath" the two buttons, the entire LinearLayout expanding to fill the screen (match_parent).
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical">
<androidx.recyclerview.widget.RecyclerView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:layout_weight="1"
android:gravity="top"
app:layoutManager="androidx.recyclerview.widget.LinearLayoutManager" />
<Button
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:text="Missing something?"
android:onClick="#{...}" />
<Button
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:text="Add new item"
android:onClick="#{...}" />
</LinearLayout>
What I want
I'd like the 2 buttons to scroll along with the list, so that they are always positioned after the last item (think as if they were items themselves, albeit an heterogeneous list with different types/RecyclerView.ViewHolder).
For a big enough list the buttons will be initially off screen; to be scrolled in if the user happen to scroll to the bottom of the list.
What I tried
I tried with ScrollView around the LinearLayout, and it works, but everywhere everybody say that one should never put a RecyclerView inside a ScrollView (maybe because it is scrollable itself).
<ScrollView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical">
<androidx.recyclerview.widget.RecyclerView
android:id="#+id/routines_list"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:gravity="top"
app:layoutManager="androidx.recyclerview.widget.LinearLayoutManager" />
<!-- buttons -->
</LinearLayout>
</ScrollView>
Being really a beginner in android programming, I'd like to know how usually this kind of layout should be done. Only main directions will be enough for me.
NB. I don't know if I really need a RecyclerView because I don't expect this list to be lengthy. Maybe usually something around 4 to 8 items, possibly 10. But I really don't expect it to be much bigger than that. For many users the two links will even be visible all the time (i.e. no scroll at all).

RecyclerView is always the most efficient to show a list especially if you are getting the data from a database or an API. Don't put your recyclerview in a scrollview. You can add two items to the bottom of the list as your links and program your recyclerview to exhibit different properties for last two items. That is the best way I can think of. Good Luck!
Also, Recyclerview is very difficult to work with when you are working with complex data. With small lists such as in your case, it can seem inconvenient to create a whole adapter class and do everything you are supposed to do. When you have grasped the concepts on xml android and have plenty experience with that. You can move to jetpack compose and lazy column will make your life easy.

Form with list, RecyclerView in ScrollView or multiple ViewHolder in RecyclerView?

I'm making a form where user can see uploaded files and add new ones, besides other general inputs.
As of now, I'm nesting a LinearLayout (for general part of the form) and a RecyclerView (for the uploaded list) inside NestedScrollingView, with nestedScrollingEnabled=false and layout_height=wrap_content in RecyclerView.
<android.support.v4.widget.NestedScrollView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:fillViewport="true"
android:scrollbars="none">
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:padding="15dp">
<EditText/> and a bunch of other inputs....
<android.support.v7.widget.RecyclerView
android:id="#+id/attachment_preview_list"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:nestedScrollingEnabled="false"/>
</LinearLayout>
</android.support.v4.widget.NestedScrollView>
However, I've read that doing that is not good because it RecyclerView will not recycle its view and renders everything instead. And from a test I tried, (set a log on onCreateViewHolder), it does renders everything. And I'm worried it will cause OOM because the users range from low-end devices (512MB RAM) to high-end (2MB+ RAM)
But, making the general part as another view in RecyclerView will be tricky, because when the view is recycled I probably will lose whatever data changed in the input, unless I set up on change listener and update the actual data with the changes.
I'm trying to get the best of both worlds, recycling views for the upload list (because it can easily go to tens/hundreds) while keeping it easy to maintain the general form data especially when navigating away from/return to the app.
So, is there a way to make this work with the two options? Or is there a better solution to this case?

May changing the visibility of too many layouts a performance issue?

Suppose you have a FrameLayout containing 10 LinearLayouts, where only one is visible per time.
Each LinearLayout is a complex view, containing Button, EditText, TextView, etc.
<FrameLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/alice
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:visibility="visible">
<!-- complex stuff -->
</LinearLayout>
<!-- many more linear layouts... -->
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/juliett
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:visibility="gone">
<!-- last complex stuff -->
</LinearLayout>
</FrameLayout>
Thus:
Changing the LinearLayout visibility, in order to show another item, would be a huge performance issue?
Given it is an issue, why using ViewFlipper does not slow down the app performance?

It's bad practice because the code easily become a mess. Ignoring that and focusing only on performance, when you set the visibility to GONE, the view isn't measured (it's different from INVISIBLE). The view occupies a little bit of memory, though. Depending on what you're doing, consider using ViewGroup.removeView().
It's hard to say without a benchmark, but theoretically it shouldn't have performance issues.

This is not a good way to implement because each time you need to show another view, other views must be gone. So that, you are going to write duplicated lines of codes for it. Viewswitcher is better choice. So what about performance then? View switcher is going to measure all children views which make only draw inside of itself. This trick makes view switcher faster because it does not need to recalculate dimensions for itself unless you disable it to use heterogeneous children views.
İf your views are homogeneous, the best way is implement a custom view and giving a class to changing state. For example, you set Alice object to your custom view to show Alice's properties and changing it programmaticly up to your business logic.
Good luck
Emre

Seriously, you need to consider fragment for above situation.
why to inflate un-necessary views.

Recyclerview binds all views at the same time

I have a vertical recyclerview (with a GridLayoutManager) inside another recyclerview (with LinearLayoutManager). The problem I am facing right now is that, the inner recyclerview (with GridLayoutManager) binds all of it's items at the same time, even the views that are not on the screen at the moment (onBindViewHolder() gets called for all of its items).
To give you more information, in my layout file, I put height of my recycler view as wrap_content.
I think the problem is, since there are 2 nested vertically recyclerviews, when the parent RV wants to measure its children and the children is another RV, in onMeasure() it computes the size needed for the entire RV, not just the portion that it wants to bind on the screen.
Any idea how to solve this?
Here is the layout file for my outer recyclerview:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FrameLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
<android.support.v7.widget.RecyclerView
android:id="#+id/component_list"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"/>
</FrameLayout>
And here is the code for my inner recyclerview:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#+id/container"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:paddingTop="#dimen/gutter"
android:paddingBottom="#dimen/gutter">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/title_text"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginBottom="#dimen/gutter"
android:textSize="30sp"
android:textColor="#android:color/white"
android:fontFamily="sans-serif-thin"/>
<android.support.v7.widget.RecyclerView
android:id="#+id/my_slider"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>
</LinearLayout>
P.S.: I'm using this adapter delegate for my outer recyclerview:
https://github.com/sockeqwe/AdapterDelegates

I think nested recyclerviews are a very bad idea. When i try to scroll, which recyclerview has to respond the the scolling, the parrent or child.
That is why I think you are looking for the ExpandableListView? That's limited to only two levels of listings, but that sounds like it would work for your needs). It also solves the soling issue.
It would look something like this:
EDIT: even nested ExpandableListViews are possible:
EDIT: check this lib for horizontal scroling

This is a known bug.
You should not put a RecyclerView inside another RecyclerView because RecyclerView gives its children infinite space. Hence the inner RecyclerView keeps measuring till the dataset is exhausted. Try setting setAutoMeasureEnabled(false) to false on layout manager or you can solve this problem by using a wrapper adapter instead of inner recycler view.

The first thing you need to know is that, when you nest scrolling layouts, the inner ones will get infinity allowed height, effectively making them wrap_content. There is in fact a relatively easy way to fix this problem.
Say I had two nested RecyclerViews such as these, in this case vertically oriented.
<RecyclerView
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical>
<View .../>
<!-- other stuff -->
<RecyclerView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical"/>
</RecyclerView>
The inner recyclerView here will bind all of it's children immediately every time because, from it's position, your screen will have infinite height.
The solution is to set the height of your inner recyclerview to some static value, not wrap_content or match parent, as either of those will simply fill up the outer recyclerview with one view that will all be bound at once due to it's large height. If you make the height of the inner recyclerview the same as the display's height, you should see your problem go away.
Here is an implementation that will not bind all children at once:
<RecyclerView
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical>
<View .../>
<!-- other stuff -->
<RecyclerView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="#dimen/screen_height"
android:orientation="vertical"/>
</RecyclerView>
Note the layout_height of the inner RecyclerView is now a fixed value pulled from the dimensions file. You yourself will have to come up with a reasonable value to put there.
Side Note: In order to make all of this work and for scrolling to work properly, you may have to play around with the parameter: NestedScrollingEnabled in your RecyclerViews - there are several known bugs relating to this that you may need to work around.
i.e.: innerRecyclerView.setHasFixedSize(true); and innerRecyclerView.setNestedScrollingEnabled(false).

so what happens here when you place a scrollview(no fixed size because of wrap content) inside another scrollview(again no fixed size because of wrap content),both nested scroll view fails to render.
So there is two solutions--
1- Either you will have to think of alternative solution for nested scrollviews
2- You can give outside recyclerview cell fixed height so that inside recycler view can get some fixed layout to render itself.

I could solve my issue by using only one Recyclerview, where it has a grid layout, and based on the component items i'm adding into it, i change the spancount for that. Basically instead of adding the inner recyclerview, i add the items that were supposed to go to the inner recyclerview, to the outer recyclerview.

How to use multiple ListView/GridView in same UI?

I want to use multiple ListView/GridView within same User Interface; I don't want them to be expanded to their full length and placed under ScrollView.

If you want to learn about ListView, here is a nice tutorial. About your question, here is the similar one! Your question might even be duplicate of this.

I don't think that putting multiple ListView/GridView objects inside ScrollView is a good idea.
The biggest advantage of ListView/GridView is that they reuse View's. When you scroll a ListView what the system really does is to use fixed number of views, and swaps the view settings (text, image source etc.). This is done by requesting the getView(int,View,ViewGroup) method from the list Adapter.
What you are trying to do is to force the ListView/GridView to render all it's raws, which pretty much beats the whole purpose of using ListView/GridView in the first place.
Use LinearLayout inside the ScrollView instead, and then add Views dynamically from your Activity/Fragment

Just specify dimensions to your ListView/GridView that are not all match_parent.
Also, if you want to proportionally allocate say 50% and 50% of available height to your list and grid, put them in a LinearLayout and use the layout_weight mechanism:
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical">
<ListView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="0px"
android:layout_weight="1"
... />
<GridView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="0px"
android:layout_weight="1"
... />
</LinearLayout>

you can set the layout to include how many listViews and gridViews as you wish. just choose a layout and set their sizes yourself. if you put them in a linearLayout, you can set a weight for each of them, to make their width/height proportional to the layout width/height.
However, do note that the more you put, the more cluttered the UI is.
Also note that Google suggests to never put listViews and gridViews inside ScrollViews (this was being talked about on the "the world of listView" lecture) .