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ListView frequently hangs when Sqlite database cursor is updated

I have one EditText which is used for the purpose of taking user input. Once the user enters certain data, the text changing listener associated with the EditText calls for a refreshed cursor and tries to update the result which is being displayed in the ListView, placed just below.
Everything is fine. But whenever any change in the search query occurs, the resulting cursor and ListView update takes some time, say around n seconds. During this span of n second, the UI stops (halts/hangs whatever you may call) and does not respond until a refreshed cursor is available and the entire ListView is populated.
When I tried to put the updating of the cursor in a different thread, it did not allow the same to be reflected in the UI as the UI-thread does not allow being commanded by other threads in action. Any UI activity such as the list update has to be implemented through runOnUiThread in the MainActivity class.
Kindly suggest ways by which I can allow the EditText to be modified by the user as well as the updated cursor refreshing the ListView happen without affecting the former.

Basically, you are trying the wrong approach. When we want the data for the list to be sourced directly from an SQLite database query, we can use a CursorAdapter.
Create an adapter
public class MyCursorAdapter extends CursorAdapter {
// Default constructor
public MyCursorAdapter(Context context, Cursor cursor, int flags) {
...
}
public void bindView(View view, Context context, Cursor cursor) {
...
}
public View newView(Context context, Cursor cursor, ViewGroup parent) {
...
return null;
}
}
Get Values from database
Cursor todoCursor = db.rawQuery("SELECT * FROM todo_items", null);
Now, we can use the CursorAdapter in the Activity to display an array of items into the ListView:
// Find ListView to populate
ListView lvItems = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.lvItems);
// Setup cursor adapter using cursor from last step
TodoCursorAdapter todoAdapter = new TodoCursorAdapter(this, todoCursor);
// Attach cursor adapter to the ListView
lvItems.setAdapter(todoAdapter);
This will then trigger the CursorAdapter iterating through the result set and populating the list. We can change the cursor to update the adapter at any time with:
// Switch to new cursor and update contents of ListView
todoAdapter.changeCursor(newCursor);

ContentProvider - returning multiple Cursors or custom Object

I have a working implementation of a ContentProvider loading data via CursorLoader into a listview (with custom CursorAdapter). It's a list of events. Every item has a title, place, etc. but also a set of offers which should be displayed in a LinearLayout inside every list row.
The problem is that a Cursor row can only contain flat data, not a set of other items.
My only idea is to make a joined query on database like this:
SELECT * FROM events, offers WHERE events.id=offers.event_id;
But then I'll have as much rows as there are offers (and the list should display events, so it's not good) and the list would be overpopulated. Maybe there is a possibility to tell CursorAdapter to only populate list rows with unique events.id but somehow retrieve the offers data as well?
The best solution would be to put a Cursor or custom Object containing offers inside the events Cursor. But afaik it's not possible.

I was facing the same problem. In fact, I think a lot of people are.
The whole mechanism of URI - to Relational DB through contentprovider, and everything that was built around it (like the various change listeners, file and stream handling) - this is all very impressive and useful, but for very simple data models.
Once your application needs a more elaborate data model, like - a hierarchy of tables, object relational semantics - this model breaks.
I've found a bunch of ORM tools for Android, but they seem too 'bleeding edge' to me (plus, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out if they have data change notification support).
ORM is very common today, I really hope the Android folks agree and add ORM capabilities to the platform.
This is what I ended up doing:
A cursor of cursors, with a a leading index cursor that helps choose the correct internal curosr.
It's kind of a temp solution, I just needed to move on with my code and get back to this later. Hope this helps.
Of course if you use a listview, you probably need to also create a custom adapter to inflate the correct views, and do the binding.
public class MultiCursor implements Cursor {
private final String TAG = this.getClass().getSimpleName();
ArrayList<Cursor> m_cursors = new ArrayList<Cursor>();
Map<Long, CursorRowPair> m_idToCursorRow = Collections.synchronizedMap(new HashMap<Long, CursorRowPair>());
Set<Long> m_idSet = new HashSet<Long>();
Cursor m_idCursor;
/**
* #precondition: _id column must exist on every type of cursor, and has to have index of 0 (be the first)
* #param idCursor
*/
public MultiCursor(Cursor idCursor) {
m_idCursor = idCursor;// this cursor binds the order (1,2,3) to ids
// go over all the ids in id cursor and add to m_idSet
initIdSet();
// m_cursors.add(idCursor);
// m_position = -1;
}
private void initIdSet() {
m_idSet.clear();
long id;
m_idCursor.moveToPosition(-1);
while (m_idCursor.moveToNext()) {
id = m_idCursor.getLong(m_idCursor.getColumnIndex(ContentDescriptor.ShowViewItem.Cols.ID));
m_idSet.add(id);
}
m_idCursor.moveToFirst();
}
public void addCursor(Cursor cursor) {
// when something changes in the child cursor, notify parent on change, to notify subscribers
// cursor.registerContentObserver(new SelfContentObserver(this)); // calls my onchange, which calls the ui
m_cursors.add(cursor);
updateIdToCursorMap(cursor);
}
private class CursorRowPair {
public final Cursor cursor;
public final int row;
public CursorRowPair(Cursor cursor, int row) {
this.cursor = cursor;
this.row = row;
}
}
private void updateIdToCursorMap(Cursor cursor) {
// get object_type
// for each row in cursor, take id, row number
// add id, <cursor,rowNum> to map
long id;
int row = 0;
cursor.moveToPosition(-1);
while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
id = cursor.getLong(cursor.getColumnIndex(ContentDescriptor.ShowViewItem.Cols.ID));
if (m_idSet.contains(id)) m_idToCursorRow.put(id, new CursorRowPair(cursor, row));
row++;
}
cursor.moveToFirst();
}
private Cursor getInternalCursor() {
if (getPosition() < 0 || getCount()==0) return m_idCursor; // todo throw a proper exception
// get the id of the current row
long id = m_idCursor.getLong(m_idCursor.getColumnIndex(ContentDescriptor.BaseCols.ID));
CursorRowPair cursorRowPair = m_idToCursorRow.get(id);
if (null == cursorRowPair) return null;
Cursor cursor = cursorRowPair.cursor;
int row = cursorRowPair.row;
cursor.moveToPosition(row);
return cursor;
}
// //////////////////////////////////////////////
#Override
public void close() {
Log.d(TAG, "close");
for (Cursor cursor : m_cursors) {
cursor.close();
}
m_idCursor.close();
}
#Override
public void copyStringToBuffer(int columnIndex, CharArrayBuffer buffer) {
Log.d(TAG, "copyStringToBuffer");
getInternalCursor().copyStringToBuffer(columnIndex, buffer);
}
etc etc etc.

In you're adapter query the offers cursor for all records and make it a class variable. Then in your getView use the event id to iterate through the offer cursor and add the necessary textviews to your row layout when it find an appropriate match. It's not elegant, but it should work.

Unfortunately one CursorLoader can only load one Cursor. So the solution was to write a custom AsyncTaskLoader which returned two Cursors.

How do you amend a row value before displaying it using ListView and SimpleCursorAdaptor?

I'm using SimpleCursorAdaptor and a ListView to display the values in my SQLite database rows. One of the values in my row is a date (column 'date'). Rather than display this date I need to run this through a method that will return another string based on what the date is. This is the value I want displayed in my list rather than the actual value taken straight from the Database.
In short I wish to display all values from my database table row except for one, where I need to change it before displaying it.
Here is my code:
public class BinCollectionDayListActivity extends ListActivity{
//
private static final String fields[] = { "name", "date", BaseColumns._ID };
//
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
//
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
//
DatabaseHelper helper = new DatabaseHelper(this);
SQLiteDatabase database = helper.getWritableDatabase();
Cursor data = database.query("names", fields, null, null, null, null, null);
CursorAdapter dataSource = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.binrow, data, fields, new int[] { R.id.name, R.id.date });
dataSource.getCursor().requery();
//
ListView view = getListView();
view.setHeaderDividersEnabled(true);
setListAdapter(dataSource);
//
helper.close();
database.close();
}
}
As you can tell I am pretty new to Android development and would love to know what the best approach would be to achieving the desired result.
Thanks in advance,
Tony

Two options that I've used before:
Array Adapter (Preferred):
Create an ArrayAdapter and populate the Cursor data into your ArrayAdapter.
http://anujarosha.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/how-to-create-a-listview-using-arrayadapter-in-android/
ViewBinder: On your Cursor, you can setup/specify a ViewBinder where you can check the data that's about to be mapped, perform some logic on it, and spit out a different result if desired. This is probably exactly what you're looking for, but do consider the ArrayAdapter as it tends to give you better control and it's a pain to switch these things later on.
Changing values from Cursor using SimpleCursorAdapter

Query into list activity with rawquery using multiple tables?

Basicly I have two tables in my database brought together with a rawQuery and a ListActivity that is supposed to pull info from both tables and show it inside of the ListActivity. I don't get a force close or anything the problem is the information does not show up.
MY RAWQUERY
public Cursor fetchName() {
return ourdb.rawQuery("SELECT wwJobTable._id, wwJobTable.JobName, wwLatLonTable.JobLatitude FROM wwJobTable, wwLatLonTable WHERE wwLatLonTable.JobLatitude=wwJobTable.JobCode", null);
}
HOW I AM VIEWING THE TABLE INFORMATION
private void fillData() {
// Get all of the rows from the database and create the item list
mTimeNotesCursor = mDbHelper.fetchName();
mTimeNotesCursor.moveToFirst();
startManagingCursor(mTimeNotesCursor);
// Create an array to specify the fields we want to display in the list (only TITLE)
String[] from = new String[]{WWDatabase.KEY_JOBNAME,
WWDatabase.KEY_LATITUDE};
// and an array of the fields we want to bind those fields to (in this case just text1)
int[] to = new int[]{R.id.textView1, R.id.textView2};
// Now create a simple cursor adapter and set it to display
SimpleCursorAdapter notes =
new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.time_text_row, mTimeNotesCursor, from, to);
setListAdapter(notes);
}
What could I possibly be doing wrong?

Using buffer in sqlite select statement android

i'm making select statement and it works fine
the problem is selecting more than thousands of records ate one and this cause the program too slow.
is there a possibility to select fifty by fifty and when select the first fifty record show them then add the next fifty record to them.
how can i do that .
thanks in advance ...

Use LIMIT/OFFSET Clauses is selection statement

I haven't worked on that but can give some idea reagarding that. You can use AsynTask here. In the doingInbackground() you can get the records and then you can call publishProgress() when 50 records are fetched and update the UI.
UPDATE:
You can use the LIMIT/OFFSET clause that Kiran said to get the limit of the record fetched and can update the UI using AsyncTask.

Here is the code you need to back your AutoCompleteTextView with a cursor adapter.
#Override
protected void onResume() {
super.onResume();
text = (AutoCompleteTextView) findViewById(R.id.autoCompleteTextView1);
final AdapterHelper h = new AdapterHelper(this);
Cursor c = h.getAllResults();
startManagingCursor(c);
String[] from = new String[] { "val" };
int[] to = new int[] { android.R.id.text1 };
CursorAdapter adapter = new MyCursorAdapter(this,
android.R.layout.simple_dropdown_item_1line, c,
from, to);
adapter.setFilterQueryProvider(new FilterQueryProvider() {
public Cursor runQuery(CharSequence constraint) {
if (constraint == null) {
return h.getAllResults();
}
String s = '%' + constraint.toString() + '%';
return h.getAllResults(s);
}
});
text.setAdapter(adapter);
}
class MyCursorAdapter extends SimpleCursorAdapter {
public MyCursorAdapter(Context context, int layout, Cursor c,
String[] from, int[] to) {
super(context, layout, c, from, to);
}
public CharSequence convertToString(Cursor cursor) {
return cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("val"));
}
}
The database that I am using has 3k rows of data in it and the Autocomplete works fine.
The things to note are that you need make sure that the your adapter puts the correct value in the text box once a user selects it. Do this with the convertToString method (at the end of the snippet above). You get to this method by extending SimpleCursorAdapter and overriding the method as shown.
Then you need to provide a FilterQueryProvider to your adapter. This allows your query to be run with the where clause of your typed text. If you have a huge dataset, then setting the threshold large enough (either programatically, or in xml) will prevent the filter query running until it will return a suitably sized resultset.
Hope this is useful.
Anthony Nolan