I have a rather complicated List with nested RecyclerViews. I get it that nested RecyclerViews aren't the best solution, but in my case it is one of few solutions that create structured code and meet the requirements. I have attached an image of the structure. You can take telegram as an example to improve your understanding of the structure. Basically I have an outer RecyclerView RV-1 with Items RV-1-Item and an inner RecyclerView RV-2 with Items RV-2-Item. So far so good, my problem is that the outer RecyclerView recycles views as intended, but if one of the RV-1-Items comes into view, all ViewHolders of RV-2 are created (That means that sometimes more than 100 ViewHolders are created). To sum it all up my question is how to force the inner RecyclerView RV-2 to recycle ViewHolders as well.
I know that the inner RecyclerView RV-2 has to have a hight of wrap_content because it depends in the count of the inner items, also i cannot set setHasFixedHeigth(true) (and I don't know if it would help) because during runtime new RV-2-Items can be added into RV-2. I also tried to set setNestedScrollingEnabled(false) on RV-2 because I read a lot about it online but it didn't help me either.
So basically this is how I configure
RV-1
layoutManager = LinearLayoutManager(context)
isNestedScrollingEnabled = false
RV-2
setHasFixedSize(true)
layoutManager = LinearLayoutManager(context).apply {
reverseLayout = true
}
In addition to that I have some ItemDecorators but they only create the space between the items, so they shouldn't have to do anything with the problem.
To sum it all up:
The outer RV-1 recycles it ViewHolders as intended but the inner RV-2 creates all ViewHolders at once, even if they are not on screen. I assume that this is the case because RV-2 has a height of wrap_content and when the layout_height need to be measured it needs to create all views. THE QUESTION: Is there a way to force RV-2 to recycle its views?
EDIT:
Also I am using a shared RecycledViewPool between all RV-2 RecyclerViews but that isn't really related to the problem, because even if the ViewHolders are shared between the RecyclerViews, an RV-2 RecyclerView shouldn't create ViewHolders that aren't visible when it is initialised.
EDIT 2:
A lot of comments and related questions say that two vertical nested RecyclerViews isn't a possible thing in android, in case all visitors of this question think the same my question is: How would you implement such a structure. It is obvious that I could make a single view which has a IM (Round Image View) and RV-2-Item and just make the IM invisible when it isn't needed. In my opinion this somehow makes the structure more complicated. Furthermore a requirement is that the IM on the left side of RV-1-Item must have the ability to move up and down in RV-1-Item, which is obviously easier with my current structure.
EDIT 3: (My last one I promise)
The Problem I have shown can be solved by using the approche I explain in my EDIT 2, even if it isn't the best solution it would work. But the issue is that I have an even more complex screen where this approche wouldn't work anymore because I have three nested RecyclerViews. I could get that number down to two with the approche of EDIT 2 but I would still be left with two nested RecyclerViews and I cannot think of a workaround that could solve the problem of the remaining two nested RecyclerViews. I attached an image of the even more complex screen which contains a the interface of the app with marked sections to help you to understand the structure.
(Not quite an answer to your specific question in solving "how to not get the RecyclerView to create all items at once", but something that most likely will fix your specific problem by not using nested recyclerviews at all)
I would suggest (in a quite similar way as already suggested in this answer), to flatten your feed into one recyclerview
(No matter how much you tweak your nested recyclerview architecture, imho it will never be as performant than having just one recyclerview, and as you don't need nested scrolling (I guess), just one recycler view should be your best option).
I would propose to not think of your feed in the way your data is structured, but in a way you want to show it and how it can be split into smaller items which are "look alikes" / consist of the same things.
From your screenshot I would see for example the following items / view types for each chat item:
Chat header (the thing with the icon and the text "New Group")
the user badge (the picture with the text "Jürgen")
a message item (one bubble of text, so e.g. in your screenshot at the bottom there would actually be 3 of those items, one for each message)
The section with the date and the action/reply items.
Those items are way smaller than a whole chat item, and therefore can be faster created / recycled.
For each of those items, create a view-type and a view-holder, and treat them as seperate recycler-view items.
The recyclerview will, when the getItemViewType method is correctly used, create / prepare the correct type of view for the position you need.
For this to work, the adapter needs to add some logic, as your data most likely will be structured something like
a list of chats, and each chat has a name and some messages to display
and we need it as
the first 6 elements are for the first chat, where the first position
is the header, the second the user badge, the next 3 items are message
items and then we need an action item.
So you basically need to calculate how many recyclerview items you will need to show each single chat-item, which could be a calculation along the lines:
1 chat header item + 1 user badge item + 3 message items + 1 action/reply item = 6
This calculation needs to be performed for each chat item of your data list separately.
So if you only have this single chat item in your list of data to display, you actually need to tell the adapter to create 6 items (by returning in this case 6 at getItemViewCount()).
Then, you need to tell the adapter using the getItemViewType(position: Int) function, at which position of the recyclerview which type of view the adapter needs to prepare.
So there you again need some logic to say that e.g. on position 0 the chat header for the first chat item should be, at position 1 the user badge for the first chat item, at position 2-4 message items should be, on position 5 the action item and at position 6 the chat header for the second chat should be and so on
(again, the logic then needs to be in place for all chat items, and it can get really messy / complicated, as to calculate each chat items view types for a position, e.g. all prior chat element view counts need to be recalculated, too (in order to know at which recycler-view position your current chat item starts)).
As this tends to blow your adapter up, I would suggest (if you don't already do so), to get some manager / delegate architecture in there.
So e.g. have a delegate for each view type, and a manager which calculates the number of recyclerview items / view types needed for each chat item.
Just for reference:
Some time ago we had a situation similar to yours
(a recycler-view with a design similar to a social media feed, which should show the first n comments in the feed and we displayed the comments for each feed item (which was a recyclerview item) with another recyclerview in the item) and also after some troubles with performance which we could not manage to resolve just flattened the recyclerview, and never had performance troubles again.
A lot of comments and related questions say that two vertical nested RecyclerViews isn't a possible thing in android
This is not true; whoever says this is not a thing has not done it and thinks it's not possible. It is possible, albeit with complications, side-effects, and most likely, the annoyance of your users when they tap around trying to scroll up/down and the wrong touch interceptor wins.
Why is this a problem?
On iOS, when you try to do something that the platform devs didn't think it was good, most people and other devs scream at you: don't fight the framework!!!.
On Android, we see the craziest Java (and now Kotlin) implementations of things that makes you wonder what are we -developers- learning at school and what are we teaching?! and yet nobody says anything (for the most part) :p
The truth is, you're trying to design a complicated user interaction and data transformation, and yet, your attempt is biased by trying to use the data "as you have it" (which implies dealing with these two different RV/Adapters), as opposed to do what one should do: transform the data for presentation.
This leads me to the next question:
How would you implement such a structure.
Well, for starters, I don't know how your data looks like, nor where it's coming from; I don't know what your users can do with your data, outside of the obvious scrolling.
I also don't know how your data wants to be presented, aside from your mock up.
But I do know the situation very well. A list of things, which also contain their own list of things.
Case: The List of List
It is doable; you can have a list and inside said list, have another list. I've done it. I've seen it done by others. I've used it. I also never liked the idea of having this "small" scrollable thing, fighting to see who scrolls first when I tap "the wrong place".
I would not do this. If the inner-list is big (say more than 3 items per outer item), I would not present it as scrollable content.
What I would do (considering the things I do not know about your problem) is to have a single list displaying all the content properly flattened.
This has a issue with your content:
What if the inner-lists are super long, wouldn't this cause them all to be displayed? YES, and that's why I wouldn't do it this way if the data (as you described) can have 100 items. An options is to display the 3 first items with a "more" link to now open the inner-list "full screen"; this is 10 times better than the nested list from a user's PoV and from the technical aspect of it.
Another alternative, is to keep this single long list (RV-1) and let users "expand" the list to launch another full-screen list depicting the contents of RV-2, in a separate window. This is even better.
The time you'll spend implementing this and getting rid of the mess of code you probably have right now, will make you wonder why didn't you suggest this in the first place.
If this is something you absolutely cannot do, then I cannot offer you much more advice, for now you're tied to unknown to me business/product rules. Ultimately, the price will be paid by the users of your app, when they have to scroll that nightmare :)
Take a Step Back
Let me be clear, I am not criticizing you or your solution; I'm merely pointing out that, in my experience, this "pattern" you have here is not a good user experience.
Format your data for presentation, not the other way around. Your data should be properly shaped so it can be properly presented with the tools you have.
You're fighting against the tools Android is giving you; you're giving a RecyclerView (and its adapter) a lot of new problems to deal with when it already has a lot going on.
Think about it: RecyclerViews have to do a lot of things; Adapters must also conform to a few interfaces, ensure things are dispatched as soon as possible, calculate Diffs (if using a ListAdapter<T,V>), etc. Activities/Fragments? They have a lot on their plates dealing with ... well "Android"; now you're asking all these components to also handle a complicated scenario of scrolling content, touch recognition, event handling, view inflation, etc.
All this, while expecting each view to take 16ms or less (to stay above 60 FPS scrolling speed, your view/viewHolder should not take more than 16ms to do all it needs.
Instead, I'm asking you to take a step back, grab the data you have, compose it, transform it, map it, and create the data structure that can better serve the components you have (a RV + Adapter + a simple View).
Good luck :)
I need to create a view where products are compared (min 2, max 5). I had two thoughts:
Create a RecyclerView and each column would be a different item. On init I would have to set number of colums. The bad part is that if one item has more text and would go on another line, the whole column would move down, but others won't.
Create a gridView, but I would have to hardcode or create more cases for every amount of products.
Is there any suggestion on how to implement this view in a better way?
What you need is a GridLayout:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/GridLayout.html
Here's a useful tutorial:
http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Working_with_the_Android_GridLayout_in_XML_Layout_Resources
A GridView however is completely unsuitable for your needs. It can only show equal width items that overflow to the next row when the width of the GridView has been filled.
I am developing an application that needs to show calendar agenda, much like the agenda in the native calendar. I have a list view showing different events (Note: in the context of the question events is entity of my system). I want to provide a 'Today' button on this screen. When the user clicks on this button the events are supposed to be scrolled until the first event of the current's day schedule is on top of the screen. The problem occurs when I have only a few events scheduled from today on - so few that they do not fill a whole screen. Then the list view just scrolls until the last event in the calendar is on the bottom. This usually means that the desired effect of having the first today's event on top is not achieved.
Any suggestions how this can be done? I have thought of adding some blank elements at the end, but this seems ugly workaround, and furthermore it will require special device-specific calculations that will tell me how many elements to insert.
Edit:
Adding some code as requested in comment
Actually I am not sure this code will surprise anyone, but:
public void onTodayClicked(View target) {
// calculate the indexOf. It works and is not related to the question
if (indexOf >= 0) {
ListView list = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.events_list_view);
list.setSelection(indexOf);
}
}
I am not sure the layout definition is important to aid the answering of the question, but if you think so I can add it too.
You can achieve this by two ways:
call smoothScrollToPositionFromTop method
call setSelectionFromTop method
Using the smoothScroll method is better, because it actually does the transition smoothly - that means it really scrolls to it.
The only downside is that it's only available after API level 11.
The setSelectionFromTop method works since API level 1, but instead of smoothly scrolling, it jumps to the row.
If you don't need to position to the top of the screen, only to view the row, you can also use smoothScrollToPosition, which is an API level 8 call.
If you give these methods the position, which is the FIRST in the list, they will work well. (From your description I think you probably calculate the last position, but I can't be sure).
One of the requirements of the application I am currently working requires that the ListView should support drag and drop of child views. I am using the TouchInterceptor class from the Android Music app as reference, and while I have managed to adapt this to my app needs there is one issue which I am still struggling to resolve. Would really appreciate some comments from anyone who has used/adapted the TouchInterceptor class and has experience/knowledge of how the ListView works in conjunction with the adapter.
My ListView has circular edges at the top and bottom and also can have different color for each row depending on the type of data that row contains. This means that my adapter getView() method supplies the appropriate background resource for that view. Also, for the first and last rows, I supply the background resource that have the curved top and bottom edges.
Now, anyone familiar with the TouchInterceptor row expansion mechanism (doExpand() method) would know that when a row is dragged out, it's height is set to 1 and the row below that is expanded to give an illusion that space is being made for a new item. My problem is that when the first item (which has a curved edge) is moved below, the expansion logic causes its height to become 1 so that it becomes invisible and the next item becomes the first one (or appears to be the first one.) In this case, I would now like to supply the correct background resource for this item from the adapter. In terms of logic I was trying to do this is roughly in the getView() method of the adapter:
//do the row inflation logic and data setting
;
;
;
if ( position == 1 && mListView.getChildAt(0).getHeight()==1) {
//set background resource with curved top edge
}
However getHeight() never returns 1. It always seems to return 0. Is anyone able to point out if calling getChildAt() and getHeight from the getView() method of adapter is valid? Anyone familiar with the ListView and TouchInterceptor class could plese provide any guidance on when getView()is exactly called by the ListView in the context of above and what would be a good way to set the correct background resource?
I did search around various questions related to the one I'm about to ask. I just want to ask it in clear and simple manner and hopefully get a clear and simple answer :)
I have a List of several hundred items that I want to present to the user in ListView widget. Initially I want to start with say 50 items and as user scrolls near the bottom I want to add another 50 and so forth. I think GMail Inbox would be a good example of what I need. I'm not interested in Cursor implementation - the dataset is quite simple as I said for now it's just a List.
Also - say ListView grows too big, it would be nice to start chopping it from the top so it behaves as a sliding ruler at it max showing about 200 rows (with 30 viewable)
You can try my EndlessAdapter. It wraps a ListAdapter that you supply and lets you load additional data when the user reaches the bottom. You could try also removing items from the top (e.g., remove() on ArrayAdapter), though I'm a bit nervous about that -- Android might not make the right decisions if, say, your list does not change size but the lineup of rows changes.