Develop Reference

Android Recyclerview is slow

This is just a mock to give you some idea of what I am doing.
My recycler view has complex logic. Let me point out them,
View holder UI is complex.
Loading banner ads after each 5 view holders.
My data is coming from network and I have been using Room + Retrofit + Paging adapter.
User experience is very bad. I need some suggestions. I believe there are 2 things effecting my scrolling function.
xml ui inflation.
Loading admob ads in UI thread.(They want us to do it in ui thread. still I dont know why they do this crazy stuffs. )
I need some suggestions how can I improve and give some good user experience .

Since there is no source code, I'm unable to try to evaluate the exact cause of this. But I experienced something like this before, I have some possible solution for you.
1) Move long-running task away from UI thread:
I noticed that your data is coming from Room + Retrofit. By default, Room must operate in async manner, unless allowMainThreadQueries() is called. If you did called allowMainThreadQueries(), you can check your code if you accidentally trying to fetch data on UI thread.
2) Did you implement RecyclerView (RV) properly?
RV reduces the amount of xml inflation whenever possible and improve performance by reusing the inflated layout for the same view type. So, if you only have 2 view types as shown in your question, RV will only inflate 3-6 of your layout (even if you have e.g. 100 items in your list) and attaches it to ViewHolder and then bind and recycle the view with Item as you scrolled through the list.
However, RV may perform poorly if implemented wrongly. One example I experienced before is returning position as view type in RV adapter.
public class SampleAdapter extends RecyclerView.Adapter<RVItem.ViewHolder> {
private final List<Item> items = new ArrayList<>();
#Override
public int getItemViewType(int position) {
return position; //Never do this
return items.get(position).getType(); //Do this
}
}
So, you can try to check if any of your implementation/logic is wrong with RV.
3) Use Profiler in Android Studio
If none of the above suggestions resolve the issue. The last way I can think of is recording the trace using Profiler while u scrolling through the RV and trying to identify which call is time-consuming/blocking by analysis the trace.
More info: https://developer.android.com/studio/profile/android-profiler
Additional info
Lastly, may I know what do you mean by loading AdMob ads in UI thread. As far as I know, AdMob load and return ads asynchronously like UnifiedNativeAd. And only then you try to inflate and set your view using the data from UnifiedNativeAd on UI thread which is not really UI-blocking task

RecyclerView 1.2.0-alpha02: setting shared RecycledViewPool to RV makes MergeAdapter crash and view types in other screens inconsistent

I use shared RecycledViewPool between some Fragments. I decided to try out MergeAdapter in one fragment. For that screen, I created a separate adapter for each viewType and overrode getItemViewType method to return layout ID as view type.
When I go to any other screen that has shared RecycledViewPool but is not using MergeAdapter I see some of the viewHolders from previous screen showing up. When I return back app crashes and in logs I see ClassCastException saying that ViewHolder1 cannot be casted to ViewHolder2.
My code looks like this:
recyclerView.setRecycledViewPool(sharedViewPool)
val adapter = MergeAdapter(adapter1, adapter2, adapter3, adapter4)
recyclerView.adapter = adapter
How to keep shared RecycledViewPool, but eliminate ClassCastException and stop showing ViewHolders in other screens where they should not be shown?

After digging more into the documentation I found that the problem was MergeAdapter with default configuration.
from documentation:
By default, MergeAdapter isolates view types of nested adapters from each other such that it will change the view type before reporting it back to the RecyclerView to avoid any conflicts between the view types of added adapters. This also means each added adapter will have its own isolated pool of RecyclerView.ViewHolders, with no re-use in between added adapters.
If your RecyclerView.Adapters share the same view types, and can support sharing RecyclerView.ViewHolder s between added adapters, provide an instance of MergeAdapter.Config where you set MergeAdapter.Config.isolateViewTypes to false. A common usage pattern for this is to return the R.layout. from the RecyclerView.Adapter.getItemViewType(int) method.
I also read this in article written by Florina Muntenescu and for some reason I thought that isolateViewTypes is only affecting adapters added to one MergeAdapter. But since in default config it will modify returned view types for each ViewHolder it might (most likely will) cause inconsistency in shared RecycledViewPool. Not sure if it is a bug or expected behaviour. Would be great to hear something from team working on RecyclerView.
Solution was setting isolateViewTypes to false.
val adapter = MergeAdapter(
MergeAdapter.Config.Builder().setIsolateViewTypes(false).build(),
adapter1,
adapter2,
adapter3,
adapter4
)
I think it is pretty easy mistake to make and I hope this solution will save some time for others.

Setting RecyclerViews itemAnimator to null does not remove animations

My outer RecyclerView crashes either with
IllegalArgumentException: Scrapped or attached views may not be recycled. isScrap:false isAttached:true...
or
IllegalStateException: The specified child already has a parent. You must call removeView() on the child's parent first.
Like the title suggests I have an RecyclerView in the list item layout of the first RecyclerView. This layout is used to display messages and the
inner RecyclerView to display attachments that come with the message. The inner RecyclerViews visibility is set to either GONE or VISIBLE depending whether the message has any attachments or not. The simplified outer list item layout looks like this
ConstraintLayout
TextView
TextView
TextView
RecyclerView
And the part of the adapter that handles the inner RecyclerView looks like this
private fun bindFiles(message: Message?) = with(itemView) {
if (message != null && message.attachments.isNotEmpty())
{
sent_message_attachments.setAsVisible()
sent_message_attachments.layoutManager = GridLayoutManager(this.context,Math.min(message.attachments.size,3))
sent_message_attachments.adapter = AttachmentAdapter(message.attachments)
sent_message_attachments.itemAnimator = null
sent_message_attachments.setHasFixedSize(true)
}
else{
sent_message_attachments.setAsGone()
sent_message_attachments.adapter = null
sent_message_attachments.layoutManager = null
}
}
The bug has something to do with the way I fetch the attachments in the inner adapter since once I disable the part that start the download process, everything is fine. There's no problem when loading images from the device, but once I start the download process, everything goes to hell. This is the part that handles images and kicks off the download process in the inner adapter. I have functions for videos and for other file types that are pretty much the same exact thing but use slightly different layout.
private fun bindImage(item: HFile?) = with(itemView) {
if (item != null)
{
if (item.isOnDevice && !item.path.isNullOrEmpty())
{
if (item.isGif)
{
attachment_image.displayGif(File(item.path))
}
else
{
attachment_image.displayImage(File(item.path))
}
}
else
{
//TODO: Add option to load images manually
FileHandler(item.id).downloadFileAsObservable(false)
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
.subscribe(
{ progress ->
//TODO: Show download process
},
{ error ->
error.printStackTrace()
//TODO: Enable manual retry
},
{ notifyItemChanged(adapterPosition)} //onComplete
)
}
}
}
I use the same structure as above in my DiscussionListAdapter to load discussion portraits (profile pictures etc.) and it does not have the same issue.
These are the extensions functions used to inflate the viewHolders and to display the images
fun ViewGroup.inflate(layoutRes: Int): View
{
return LayoutInflater.from(context).inflate(layoutRes, this, false)
}
fun ImageView.displayGif(file:File){
GlideApp.with(context).asGif().load(file).transforms(CenterCrop(), RoundedCorners(30)).into(this)
}
fun ImageView.displayImage(file:File){
GlideApp.with(context).load(file).transforms(CenterCrop(), RoundedCorners(30)).into(this)
}
I've been on this for the past couple of days and just can't get my head around it. Any help in any direction is greatly appreciated. I know my explanations can be a bit all over the place so just ask for clarification when needed :)
UPDATE
I have now been able to produce this with a GridLayout as well as with RecyclerView. It's safe to assume that the nested RecyclerViews were not the culprit here. I even tried to ditch the Rx-piece that handled loading the images and created an IntentService for the process, but the same crashes still occur.
With GridLayout I mean that instead of having another adapter to populate the nested RecyclerView I use only one adapter to populate the message and to inflate and populate views for the attachments as well and to attach those views to the nested GridLayout.
The crash happens when I start to download a file and then scroll the view, that is supposed to show the downloaded file, out of the screen. That view should get recycled but for some reason the download process (which in my test cases only takes around 100ms-400ms) causes the app to throw one of the two errors mentioned in the original question. It might be worth noting that I'm using Realm and the adapter takes in a RealmResults<Message> list as it's dataset. My presenter looks for changes in the list and then notifies the adapter when needed (changed due to the implementation of IntentService).
This is how I'm capable to reproduce this time and time again:
Open a discussion that has messages with attachments
Start to scroll upwards for more messages
Pass a message with an attachment and scroll it off screen while it's still loading
Crash
There is no crash if I stop and wait for the download to complete and everything works as intended. The image/video/file gets updated with a proper thumbnail and the app wont crash if I scroll that out of view.
UPDATE 2
I tried swapping the nested ViewGroup for a single ImageView just to see is the problem within the nestedness. Lo and behold! It still crashes. Now I'm really confused, since the DiscussionListAdapter I mentioned before has the same exact thing in it and that one works like a charm... My search continues. I hope someone, some day will benefit from my agony.
UPDATE 3
I started to log the parent of every ViewHolder in the onBindViewHolder() function. Like expected I got nulls after nulls after nulls, before the app crashed and spew this out.
04-26 21:54:50.718 27075-27075/com.hailer.hailer.dev D/MsgAdapter: Parent of ViewHolder: android.view.ViewOverlay$OverlayViewGroup{82a9fbc V.E...... .......D 0,0-1440,2168}
There's a method to my madness after all! But this just poses more questions. Why is ViewOverlay used here? As a part of RecyclerView or as a part of the dark magicians plans to deprive me of my sanity?
Sidenote
I went digging into RecyclerViews code to check if I could find a reason for the ViewOverlaymystery. I found out that RecyclerView calls the adapters onCreateViewHolder() function only twice. Both times providing itself as the parent argument for the function. So no luck there... What the hell can cause the item view to have the ViewOverlay as it's parent? The parent is an immutable value, so the only way for the ViewOverlay to be set as the parent, is for something to construct a new ViewHolder and supply the ViewOverlay as the parent object.
UPDATE 4
Sometimes I amaze myself with my own stupidity. The ViewOverlay is used because the items are being animated. I didn't even consider this to be an option since I've set the itemAnimator for the RecyclerView as null, but for some odd reason that does not work. The items are still being animated and that is causing this whole charade. So what could be the cause of this? (How I chose to ignore the moving items, I do not know, but the animations became very clear when I forced the app to download same picture over and over again and the whole list went haywire.)
My DiscussionInstanceFragment contains the RecyclerView in question and a nested ConstraintLayout that in turn contains an EditText for user input and a send button.
val v = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_discussion_instance, container, false)
val lm = LinearLayoutManager(context)
lm.reverseLayout = true
v.disc_instance_messages_list.layoutManager = lm
v.disc_instance_messages_list.itemAnimator = null
v.disc_instance_messages_list.adapter = mPresenter.messageAdapter
This is the piece that handles the initialization of the RecyclerView. I'm most definitely setting the itemAnimator as null, but the animations just wont stop! I've tried setting the animateLayoutChanges xml attribute on the root ConstraintLayout and on the RecyclerView but neither of them worked. It's worth mentioning that I also checked whether the RecyclerView had an itemAnimator in different states of the program, and every time I check the animator, it is null. So what is animating my RecyclerView?!

I have faced the same issue
Try this in your child RecyclerView it works for me
RecyclerView childRC = itemView.findViewById(R.id.cmol_childRC);
layoutManager = new LinearLayoutManager(context);
childRC.setItemAnimator(null);
childRC.setLayoutManager(layoutManager);
childRC.setNestedScrollingEnabled(false);
childRC.setHasFixedSize(true);
now set your Adapter like this
ArrayList<Model> childArryList = new ArrayList<>();
childArryList.addAll(arrayList.get(position).getArrayList());
ChildOrderAdapter adapter = new ChildOrderAdapter(context, childArryList);
holder.childRC.swapAdapter(adapter, true);
hope this helps

I finally figured out what was causing this. In my DiscussionInstanceView I have a small view that is animated into and out of view with ConstraintLayout keyframe animations. This view only shows the download progress of the chat history and is used only once, when the discussion is first opened. BUT since I had a call to hiding that view every time my dataset got updated, I was forcing the ConstraintLayout to fire of an animation sequence thus making everything animate during the dataset update. I just added a simple check whether I was downloading the history or not and this problem got fixed.

Testing ViewPager with multiple fragments using android espresso

I am trying to test my app which uses ViewPager. Each page contains fragments but these fragments are not always visible. I want to check visibility of a fragment in the currently visible page.
onView(withId(R.id.container_weather))
.check(matches(withEffectiveVisibility(ViewMatchers.Visibility.VISIBLE)));
But the problem is that espresso looks are all the pages not just the current page and I get the following error:
android.support.test.espresso.AmbiguousViewMatcherException: 'with id: eu.airpatrol.android:id/container_weather' matches multiple views in the hierarchy...

I had the same problem, however using the condition isCompletelyDisplayed() solved this problem as it only takes into account the on-screen views.
So, something like this should work:
onView(allOf(withId(R.id.container_weather), isCompletelyDisplayed()))
.check(matches(withEffectiveVisibility(ViewMatchers.Visibility.VISIBLE)));
Note: isDisplayed() works too in some cases but it also takes views off-screen into account and won't work if the ViewPager has any other page pr fragment loaded with the same view id.

Your tests are failing because of multiple elements with the same id. You can combine conditions using allOf(...). Then use isDisplayed() to check that matched view is visible on the screen. Below example can work:
onView(allOf(
withEffectiveVisibility(ViewMatchers.Visibility.VISIBLE),
withId(R.id.container_weather)))
.check(matches(isDisplayed()));

Ran into this exact same problem. I was fortunate because the view hierarchies in my ViewPager can be easily identified by their siblings, so I was able to solve this using the hasSibling matcher, like so:
onView(
allOf(
hasSibling(withId(R.id.some_sibling)),
withId(R.id.field_to_test)
)
).perform(replaceText("123"));
Not a perfect solution as it can be slightly brittle, but in my case I think it was an acceptable compromise.

I had similar problem, where I was reusing the button layout and it was giving me a matches multiple views in the hierarchy exception.
So the easy work around I did was to create 2 different screens and have 2 different methods with different text.
Withdraw Screen:
public WithdrawScreen clickWithdraw() {
onView(allOf(withId(R.id.save_button), withText("Withdraw")))
.perform(click());
return this;
}
Deposit Screen:
public DepositScreen clickDeposit() {
onView(allOf(withId(R.id.save_button), withText("Deposit")))
.perform(click());
return this;
}
and in my tests, I create a new instance of both screens and call the above methods based on screen reference which is a bit easy to test for.
WithdrawScreen withdrawInstance = new WithdrawScreen();
withdrawInstance.clickWithdraw();
DepositScreen depositInstance = new DepositScreen();
depositInstance.clickDeposit();
The point was they were using same id - R.id.save_button for button and I was replacing text of button based on visibility of the fragment we are on.
Hope it helps.

Android Robolectric Click RecyclerView Item

Is there any way to simulate a click on a RecyclerView item with Robolectric?
So far, I have tried getting the View at the first visible position of the RecyclerView, but that is always null. It's getChildCount() keeps returning 0, and findViewHolderForPosition is always null. The adapter returns a non-0 number from getItemCount() (there are definitely items in the adapter).
I'm using Robolectric 2.4 SNAPSHOT.

Seems like the issue was that RecyclerView needs to be measured and layed out manually in Robolectric. Calling this solves the problem:
recyclerView.measure(0, 0);
recyclerView.layout(0, 0, 100, 10000);

With Robolectric 3 you can use visible():
ActivityController<MyActivity> activityController = Robolectric.buildActivity(MyActivityclass);
activityController.create().start().visible();
ShadowActivity myActivityShadow = shadowOf(activityController.get());
RecyclerView currentRecyclerView = ((RecyclerView) myActivityShadow.findViewById(R.id.myrecyclerid));
currentRecyclerView.getChildAt(0).performClick();
This eliminates the need to trigger the measurement of the view by hand.

Expanding on Marco Hertwig's answer:
You need to add the recyclerView to an activity so that its layout methods are called as expected. You could call them manually, (like in Elizer's answer) but you would have to manage the state yourself. Also, this would not be simulating an actual use-case.
Code:
#Before
public void setup() {
ActivityController<Activity> activityController =
Robolectric.buildActivity(Activity.class); // setup a default Activity
Activity activity = activityController.get();
/*
Setup the recyclerView (create it, add the adapter, add a LayoutManager, etc.)
...
*/
// set the recyclerView object as the only view in the activity
activity.setContentView(recyclerView);
// start the activity
activityController.create().start().visible();
}
Now you don't need to worry about calling layout and measure everytime your recyclerView is updated (by adding/removing items from the adapter, for example).

Just invoke
Robolectric.flushForegroundThreadScheduler()
before performClick() to ensure that all ui operations (including measure and layout phases of recycler view after populating with the dataset) are finished