Develop Reference

setListAdapter(adapter_name) to change the list displayed on screen, but still appears information from the previous displayed list

I have an activity that extends ListActivity, a list of "concepts" (let's call this list "C") and an onItemClickListener defined for this list. Whenever I click a "concept", no matter which one, the app must display another list. I have the following code to change the displayed list:
if(position == 0) change_list("adapter1");
else if (position == 1) change_list("adapter2");
else if (position == 2) change_list("adapter3");
else if (position == 3) change_list("adapter4");
else if (position == 4) change_list("adapter5");
Where position is the position of the clicked element in C
The function change_list performs setListAdapter(parameter) depending on the parameter I pass.
If I click the first element of C (the first concept), a list related to the first concept must appear. However, after calling setListAdapter(adapter), the data related to this concept is displayed, and also part of the C's list data.
For example: let's suppose C has these concepts:
A B C D E
and I click "A", which would lead to display a list with the following data: {a1,a2}
That's the final result:
a1 a2 C D E
And then, when I interact with another element on screen or I scroll down the list, the "ghost" data disappears and only the correct data remains on screen, just like this:
a1 a2
To make things worse, when I want to display list C again, nothing strange happens. Everything is displayed correctly.
At any time incorrect data is stored where it doesn't have to. One function my app must allow is to generate a txt file , and the generated txt file contains exactly the data I introduced. No data is corrupted or duplicated. I also tried using notifyDataSetChanged() and other functions, but I didn't solve the problem.
EDIT :
Here goes the xml code used for the main list of the activity:
<ListView
android:id="#android:id/list"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#FF0000"
android:layout_below="#+id/afegir"/>
And an example of code in which I determine which contents must be displayed on screen:
else if(comprovar_concepte_actiu() == 1){
pnt = mydbhandler.getStoredValues("despeses1");
pnt.moveToFirst();
if(pnt.moveToFirst()){
do{
adapter_mostrar.add(pnt.getString(pnt.getColumnIndex("nom")));
}while(pnt.moveToNext());
}
adapter_mostrar.notifyDataSetChanged();
}
Where comprovar_concepte_actiu() returns and integer that tells which concept has been clicked in the main list C and adapter_mostrar is the single adapter I'm using now, instead of using multiple adapters (which made me use setListAdapter)
At the beginning of the activity, I call this.setListAdapter(adapter_mostrar). That's all I have.
EDIT 2 :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7twgy043lkxb2x5/conceptes.java?dl=0
Here is a link to my conceptes.java activity. Press CTRL+F once opened and search "this is where I call.. " and you will directly get to the function where the change of list displayed on screen starts
I haven't found a solution yet. Any idea will be totally appreciated

The problem here is that - when you set a new adapter - the old data is still drawn. In other words, there has been no command to "refresh" the listView. However, the new adapter will be commanded to draw its own views. What ultimately occurs is that the old items are still there, the new items are redrawn, but when scrolled away the new adapter won't redraw/recreate the old items.
The solution is to simply refresh the adapter. However, there are two ways to go about this:
Add a new adapter every time and use myListView.invalidateViews(); or something similar [This is probably the easiest solution to implement, although probably not the best in the long run]
Change the dataset of the adapter and use notifyDataSetChanged() [on the adapter]
The latter option is a far better idea. You should use a single adapter and simply change its data over time. Once its dataset is changed, then tell the adapter that such a thing happened so it refreshes. However, you should read more here on all the different thoughts and processes about it, rather than take my opinion on it.
Edit:
There's apparently some very nicely, thought out answers around. Here's another one, that tells you more specifically about the differences between these two:
Is there any difference between ListView.invalidateViews() and Adapter.notifyDataSetChanged()?
Edit2:
With the onClickListener in mind, invalidateViews() will most likely not work, as it'll probably still draw the old views to "finish" the click (ie, draw the highlighting).
Changing the data directly inside a single adapter and using Adapter.notifyDataSetChanged() is your best bet, as it'll know to redraw everything from a single adapter and use only the current data defined by this single adapter.
Best to leave the data specifics (and defining what to draw based off of that data) up to what actually knows the data, rather than a higher up container that knows nothing specific about the actual data.

Programatically changing the background of an ExpandableListView's group during onResume in Android

I've been having some trouble with onPause and onResume when implementing an ExpandableListView in my app. I may be doing this all wrong (in which case please tell me and I will endeavor to do it correctly) as I'm learning Android mainly from what I can find on the net. So, to jump into it, I've pretty much got my ExpandableListView working as I would like, but for one little bugbear. When I resume the activity (for example after the screen shuts off) I recreate my cursors (is that the best way to resume the activity? I was getting cursor errors before...) and then programatically expand the groups that were expanded when the activity was paused. Now ALL I want to do is change the background drawable for the expanded groups, but I can't seem to find a way to get their views. Any ideas?
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
#Override
protected void onResume() {
super.onResume();
String searchText = ((QueryString)this.getApplicationContext()).getQuery();
if((searchText == null || searchText.length() < 1))
if(!hasQuery)
refreshCursor();
else
searchCursor(queryString);
else
searchCursor(searchText);
ArrayList<Integer> ToExpand = (ArrayList<Integer>) ExpandedList.clone();
ExpandedList.clear();
for(Integer i : ToExpand)
{
listContent.expandGroup(i);
listContent.getChildAt(i).setBackground(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.listview_style_selected)); //NOT WORKING
}
}
EDIT:
What I really want is the View that I have just expanded programatically with listContent.expandGroup(i) so that I can then change the background drawable manually. Unfortunately getGroupView (where the background is normally changed) doesn't fire when you expand a group programatically so the background drawable remains unchanged. How can I get this view?

Call notifyDataSetChanged() in your adapter of your list. This should work. Maybe logging the "getChildAt" view helps.

Displaying an array of objects, one at a time through a single dialog... instead of several dialogs

In my application I have a list of questions stored in an ArrayList, and I want to display a dialog that shows one question, and then continues to the next one after the question is answered. The way that I'm currently doing it (iterating through a loop) hasn't been working because it just layers all of the dialogs on top of one another all at once which causes a host of other issues. What I'm looking for is a way to still iterate through the questions, but just change the layout of the dialog each time until it has finished each question in the list. Can anyone give me a good pointer for how to get this going?

You can make a function that takes title and message as parameters and shows a dialog.
showDialog(String title, String message){ // Show dialog code here}
Within that dialog's answer button's listener call another function (showQuestion(currentQuestion)) that iterates the arrayList till it is over
int currentQuestion=0;
ArrayList<QuestionObject> questionList;
showQuestion(int i){
if(i<questionList.size()){
showDialog(questionList.get(i).getTitle,questionList.get(i).getMessage);
currentQuestion++;
}else{
//quiz is over
}
}

I assume you mean that you just want to change 1 single layout(created within XML i.e main.xml). In order to do this, make sure that the class your working on is pointing to that layout. From there (assuming your using an Event listener for when the user submits an answer) you can change do as you want by the following:
TextView txt = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView); // references the txt XML element
and in your Event listener, if the answer is correct then change(Have i be a global variable thats initially set to 0).
if(i<arrayList.size()){
txt.setText(arrayList.get(++i));
}else{
txt.setText("You Finished");
}
From there, in the else statement, you can change arrayLists and reset i to 0;

If you are trying to use the positive, neutral, and negative buttons; then you may have problems with multiple dialogs. Try defining a customized layout with your own TextViews, ListViews, and Buttons. You can implement listeners and everything else like a regular layout. Then just pass your customized layout to the dialog through AlertDialog.Builder.setView().
PS If you include code examples of what you are currently doing we can provided answers that are less vague.

android setBackgroundColor in runtime and other general confusion help?

i have a row of buttins created like this
i want to change the background colour at runtime in code.
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
LinearLayout track1 = (LinearLayout)findViewById(R.id.my_toggle_container);
for (int i = 0; i<32; i++) {
ToggleButton tgl = new ToggleButton(this);
tgl.setId(i);
...
track1.addView(tgl);
this names the id of the togglebuttons 1, 2, 3... (i presume?)
i have an int variable called 'xBtn' that changes 1, 2,..
this is how i get a reference to the button using xBtn
String buttonID = ""+xBtn;
int resID = getResources().getIdentifier(buttonID, "id", "com.thing");
//find the button
ToggleButton tb = (ToggleButton) findViewById(resID);
//change its colour
tb.setBackgroundColor(Color.BLUE);
it crashes on the setBackgroundColor line.
it may be obvious to someone whats wrong and thats what im hoping
any help would be totaly ace ta
thanks
main.xml
<LinearLayout android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:id="#+id/my_toggle_container" android:orientation="vertical">

The id of your togglebuttons is gonna be a number from 1 to 32... However, trying to find the toggle button by id will return null because simply instantiating a new toggle button and giving an id wont help you. findViewById looks in the parent view for a child view with the specified id. If you havent added that toggle button with that id to the view, then findViewById will return null. I am 99.99% sure even without looking at the log, that it crashes because you are calling setBackgroundColor on a null object.
In other words, the id that you set a view to is only relevant once the view is actually added to a parent view. In your case you are probably trying to add these toggle buttons to your main content view, in which case you need grab hold of that view that you used for setContentView and call addView on that view and pass in each new toggle button. Note that this will probably not look right unless you also specify layoutparams for the togglebuttons.
EDIT
If thats your entire main.xml, then you've got other issues. Post the full xml file. In any event, you still are going to have to do what I've said, which is to grab hold of the view or a child view of that view and then add the toggle buttons to it via addView (after giving the togglebuttons their proper ids). Once the button has been added, then you can find it. Note though that if you're gonna add the toggle buttons to a child view of your main view, then you'll likely have to grab hold of that child view and call findViewById on THAT.
For example, you can do a nested call like this. findViewById(1) <--- gets you the LinearLayout or whatever inside of your main content view, then once you have that you can call addView on it. So LinearLayout ll = (LinearLayout)findViewById(someNumber); ll.addView(tb);

Try to use the method setTag() , and then you can get all your ToggleButton by using : findViewByTag();

Perhaps tb is null? Could you check that out?

To expand on what LuxuryMode said... What gets an ID INTO your java is inflating it via setContentView and setting it as content. That's why it's ok to have overlapping (duplicate) IDs in different layouts. You can have #+id/submit_button in layout1.xml and in layout2.xml and the Activity will get you the object via findViewById(R.id.submit_button) based on which one you have loaded into setContentView() at any given moment.
So, we're all guessing that you're probably not setting the content view and hoping that the code will find your object in your non inflated XML, which it won't. Which would lead (as everyone has guessed) to you now dealing with a null object, which you obviously can't set a background color on.
I know it gets confusing cause you have the XML RIGHT THERE!!! But the reality is that the xml isn't "alive". It's just stuff for you to look at until you have tasked the Application with inflating it and converting all of it into Android objects of some kind. A lot of the time this is done mostly transparently to you, so, it's easy to forget that none of these things really exist.

It's very likely that tb is null, because findViewById() didn't go as you expected.
You can verify this by surrounding the erroneous line with try.. catch block:
try {
tb.setBackgroundColor(Color.BLUE);
} catch (Exception e){
}
and watch for the message of e. It's likely to be null pointer exception.
In fact, I think you should not use getResources().getIdentifier(buttonID, "id", "com.thing") in the first place. It seems to me that all these resources are continuously numbered in R file, thus you should simply get the first id (as an integer), and then increment on that.
That is, you should do things like:
// The following code is not tested; I just wrote it here on SO.
for (int resID = R.id.button1; resID <= 32; resID++) {
ToggleButton tb = (ToggleButton) findViewById(resID);
tb.setBackgroundColor(Color.BLUE);
}
this should make all 32 buttons blue.

How to correctly use TextSwitcher in ListView?

My TextSwitcher for each record in ListView should display first value (text1) and then another value (text2), then first value again and so on. It should happen only if text2 not empty. Otherwise text1 should be always shown (without any changes and animation).
I've created Runnable(), which changes boolean variable (time2) to then call items.notifyDataSetChanged(). It works as expected and in result setViewValue() for my ListView is called.
Here is the code:
items.setViewBinder(new SimpleCursorAdapter.ViewBinder() {
#Override
public boolean setViewValue(View view, Cursor cursor, int columnIndex) {
int viewId = view.getId();
switch(viewId) {
case R.id.timetext:
TextSwitcher itemTime = (TextSwitcher) view;
if (itemTime.getChildCount() != 2) {
itemTime.removeAllViews();
itemTime.setFactory(new ViewSwitcher.ViewFactory() {
#Override
public View makeView() {
TextView t = new TextView(MyActivity.this);
t.setTextSize(18);
t.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD);
t.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
return t;
}
});
itemTime.setAnimateFirstView(true);
itemTime.setInAnimation(AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(MyActivity.this,
R.anim.push_up_in));
itemTime.setOutAnimation(AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(MyActivity.this,
R.anim.push_up_out));
}
if (!text2.equals("")) {
if (!time2) {
itemTime.setText(text1);
} else {
itemTime.setText(text2);
}
} else {
itemTime.setCurrentText(text1);
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
} );
It works almost as expected. With one minor item - when text2 should be shown, it changes displayed value to some other value first (from another record!) and then animation is played. Change of text2 to text1 happens correctly.
My understanding that the reason is the following - before displaying text2, all views of itemTime are removed and hence it is recreated and that is why some other value is shown for a second. But why does it show value from some other record?
Actually text2 and text1 are values from the database, for ex.
text2 = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(DbAdapter.KEY_TIME_2)), probably, something is wrong here and setViewValue called with wrong parameters?
Upd. text1 and text2 are read from the database at setViewValue. Here is example of the full code:
itemTime.setText(cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(DbAdapter.KEY_CLOSE_TIME_1)) + " - " + cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(DbAdapter.KEY_OPEN_TIME_1)));

I know this might not answer the question directly, but I'm going to respond to your comment about creating a Runnable() to do the work of switching for you because I suspect that it is probably messing with your data (hard to tell when you cant see the full code).
I advise you to use a ViewFlipper instead of a TextSwitcher. The reason for doing that is that once you added the TextView's inside your ViewFlipper, you can just set your flip interval and then start the flipping and it will do it automatically for you.
As simple as this:
/* Add your items to your ViewFlipper first */
myViewFlipper.setFlipInterval(1000); //time in millseconds
myViewFlipper.startFlipping();
In your current method that you described, when you call items.notifyDataSetChanged() you incur a huge performance hit because all items of your database are going to be re-read and your list will be "re-drawn" again. You should only do that if your actual data really changed rather than using it to switch between text that you already have and doesn't change from creation time.
As a nice surprise, you might notice that your problem goes away because you don't have to re-read everything from you DB again and reduces the chances of mix-up of item1 and item2 since you will only need to read them once when the row is created in your ListView
Just my 2 cents.
Let me know how it goes.

I think I see what's going on here, and it's because of the way ListView works.
ListView recycles all of its views internally so that you only have as many views created as can be displayed on the screen. However, this also means that when you bind values to a view in your setViewValue method, you are not always given the view that was in the same position in the list before.
Say you have three list items: itemA, itemB, itemC in that order. Each contains text1, text2, and text3 respectively at first.
When you call items.notifyDataSetChanged(), ListView recycles all those list items however it feels like, so you may get a new order of itemC, itemA, itemB; and the text would then read text3, text1, text2.
As a result, when you change the text of the first list item to "text2", you will in fact see "text3" change to "text2" instead of a transition from "text1" to "text2" like you are expecting.

Are text1 and text2 stored in the resources file (res/values/strings.xml)? If so, Android will sometimes confuse variables. Simply running Project > Clean on this project may fix the problem.

This worked for me :
myViewFlipper.setFlipInterval(1000);
myViewFlipper.startFlipping();